State Department spokesman Matthew Miller says “Hamas did not accept a ceasefire proposal.” “Hamas responded and in its response made several suggestions. It’s not the same as accepting,” Miller told reporters in Washington, DC.

He said Israel told the US it will open the crucial Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing in Rafah on Wednesday. “Israel has committed to reopen Kerem Shalom tomorrow. We’re working to make sure that actually happens so humanitarian assistance can continue to come through.”

Miller suggested Israeli ground forces taking over the crossing and massing near Rafah doesn’t mean a large-scale attack is imminent.

“It is not our assessment that a major military operation has begun at this point. But that can obviously change at any moment, and we’ll continue to make clear that’s not one we can support.”

PM Netanyahu ‘stands to pay a very, very significant personal price’

Well Miller is trying to help Netanyahu out by stalling for more time and denying Hamas accepted a ceasefire proposal.

‘The goal is to destroy Gaza’: Why Israel rejects a truce with Hamas

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/7/the-goal-is-to-destroy-gaza-why-israel-rejects-a-ceasefire-with-hamas

US Congresswoman calls on Biden to ‘use his power’ to stop Rafah assault

Israeli forces are attacking Rafah, the final place of refuge in the Gaza Strip.
 
Over 1.4M Palestinians are sheltering there & are facing more death & destruction.
 @POTUS called an Israeli invasion of Rafah “a red line” & must use his power to stop this attack. #CeasefireNOW https://t.co/45YNbv3wpC

— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@RepPressley) May 7, 2024

The US news outlet Politico has reported that the Biden administration has indefinitely delayed the release of a State Department report on whether Israel is violating international law in Gaza. The administration gave no reason for the last-minute change.

“The State Department was supposed to issue the report today,” reads the article, which cites three Senate aides and one House aide. “If it had concluded there was a violation, the U.S. would be expected to stop sending Israel military aid.”

The reporting comes as Israel pushes forward with military operations in Rafah, where the international community and the Biden administration have warned that an Israeli incursion could have disastrous impacts on hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians who sought refuge there under Israeli instruction.

The US military completed construction of its Gaza aid pier, but weather conditions mean it’s currently unsafe to move the two-part facility into place, the Pentagon says.

“As of today, the construction of the two portions of the JLOTS – the floating pier and the Trident pier – are complete and awaiting final movement offshore,” Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists, using an acronym for Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore – the official name for the pier capability.

Aid groups warn the $320m pier is far less effective than land routes that Israel continues to heavily restrict with truckloads of aid for Gaza waiting to get in.

The Sinai Organization for Human Rights publishes a video showing a large number of aid trucks on the road heading to Egypt’s al-Awja crossing with Israel south of Rafah. It is known as the Nitzana crossing to Israelis.

Egyptian authorities moved aid trucks from their waiting spots near the Rafah crossing to outer areas with the start of the Israeli military operation in the Philadelphi Corridor.

By preventing the transfer of much-needed humanitarian aid into Gaza, Israel is violating orders handed down by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Human Rights Watch says.

“Despite children dying from starvation and famine in Gaza, the Israeli authorities are still blocking aid critical for the survival of Gaza’s population in defiance of the World Court,” said Omar Shakir, a director at Human Rights Watch. “With each day that Israeli authorities block life-saving aid, more Palestinians are at risk of dying.”

The ICJ has twice ordered Israel to do more to allow aid into Gaza. The closure of land crossings into Gaza is “unacceptable”, the White House said earlier.

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says it has begun discharging patients from Rafah Indonesian Field Hospital and is suspending its activities at Shaboura Clinic given the escalation in Rafah.

It said in a statement it will be handing over its activities at Al-Helal Al-Emairati Maternity Hospital to the Ministry of Health on Wednesday and will relocate its staff to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis “to continue to support maternity care in a safer area”.

“This movement was planned before the recent evacuation orders. Additionally, MSF is considering establishing two new field hospitals in the Middle Area/Deir Al-Balah,” its statement read.

The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, says a group of Israeli protesters have attacked the agency’s headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem after calls for protests against UNRWA by an Israeli municipal official.

“This protest called by an elected member of the Jerusalem municipality is nothing less than harassment, intimidation, vandalism & damage to UN property,” Lazzarini said in a social media post.

“It took place today at the UNRWA Headquarters in East Jerusalem under the watch of the Israeli Police. This has nothing to do with freedom of expression. Host countries, in this case Israel, are expected to protect United Nations premises, operations and staff at all times.”

The activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest says a pro-Israel driver ran into a pro-Palestine demonstration in New York City earlier today.

A statement from CAUD says the driver was a relative of Meir Kahane, the far-right Jewish radical who advocated violent attacks against Arabs and remains a major influence on the Israeli far-right.

“One member of CAUD’s de-escalation team was struck and has since been hospitalized,” the news release reads, stating that it is the second time their group has been assaulted by pro-Israel individuals in one week and the fourth time this year their members have been hospitalised in such attacks.

PRESS RELEASE: Zionist Driver Runs Down Peaceful Pro-Palestinian Demonstration in Manhattan Street. Columbia University students picketed outside of trustee homes in protest of Columbia’s complicity in genocide. pic.twitter.com/7UUwIKGEhL

— CU Apartheid Divest (@ColumbiaBDS) May 7, 2024

Columbia Law School defends students after conservative judges say they will not hire former students

Hundreds march in New York City against Israeli incursion into Rafah

The Israeli military has bombed an apartment complex in the Zeitoun neighbourhood in the east of Gaza City, killing seven people, the Wafa news agency reports. A family of seven was killed, a husband and wife and their five children, according to Wafa.

Two people have also been killed and more injured in Rafah after the Israeli military bombed a motorcycle at Salah al-Din Gate, south of the city in southern Gaza.


_{A towering cloud of smoke and dust rises from Gaza following an Israeli attack on May 7}

Critical diesel fuel supplies needed to power drinking water pumps, maintain communications and deliver humanitarian aid within the war-torn Gaza Strip will run out today, a senior UN official said after Israel’s closure of the two key border crossing points into the Palestinian territory

Andrea De Domenico, the head of the UN’s humanitarian aid office in the Palestinian territory, said Israel’s military incursion and order for people to leave Rafah has resulted in “the forced displacement of tens of thousands of people”.

De Domenico said the UN normally uses 200,000 litres of diesel fuel a day in Gaza. As of Tuesday night, the UN had 30,000 litres remaining.

Without a fuel delivery, the main water production facility in northern Gaza will be shut, “depriving the entire population of access to drinking water.” The same shutdown will happen in another day for the middle and south of Gaza, affecting 1.9 million people, the Associated Press news agency reports.

De Domenico also said the area that Israeli officials have told Palestinians to move to is mainly sand dunes and has no toilets, water points, drainage, shelter or health facilities.

Israeli authorities are also not on the ground providing humanitarian services, he said, adding that without fuel and more flour, the 16 bakeries supported by the UN throughout Gaza will be forced to suspend operations.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took to social media to warn of the “repercussions” from Israel’s incursion into Rafah and that a “full-scale assault” would amount to a “catastrophe”.

“Countless more civilian casualties. Countless more families forced to flee yet again – with nowhere safe to go,” he said. “The repercussions will be felt far beyond, in the occupied West Bank, and across the region,” he added.

Martin Griffiths, the UN’s humanitarian aid chief, said decisions being made amid Israel’s incursion into Rafah and the “human suffering” that results will not be forgotten.

In a post on social media, Griffiths said more than 1 million people remain in Rafah, including 600,000 children, and Israel’s orders for people to flee the area “and their ground operation will bring more death and displacement”.

Israel’s closure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt also cut fuel supplies and “shuts off the movement of aid and staff to and from Gaza”, he said.

“The decisions that are made today and their consequences in human suffering will be remembered by the generation that follows us. Let us be ready for their reproaches,” he added.


_{A Palestinian boy wounded in an Israeli strike waits to receive treatment at a hospital in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on May 7}

The Associated Press (AP) news agency reports that the US paused sending a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel would launch a full-scale assault on Rafah.

Attributing the information to “a senior administration official”, the AP said the shipment was to have consisted of 1,800 2,000-pound (more than 900kg) bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs (226 kg).

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision to pause the shipment was made last week and no final decision had been made yet on whether to proceed with the transfer of weapons at a later date.

Family members of captives along with protesters calling for a ceasefire deal with Hamas that will secure the release of all the remaining people held in Gaza have blocked an interchange on Ayalon highway in Tel Aviv, according to Israeli media reports.

The protesters are carrying a banner reading “Save who can still [be saved]”.

Students across the UK have set up encampments in solidarity with Palestinians and their fellow protesting students in the US and elsewhere.

Anna Serafeimidou, a first-year medical student at the University of Oxford, has called on the institution’s administration to label Israel’s war on Gaza a “genocide” and for it to divest from businesses that partner with Israel.

Huge Palestinian flags are hanging on campuses across Spain as thousands of students protest against Israel’s war in Gaza. Some classes have stopped this week as students demonstrate in Barcelona, Valencia, the Basque Country and Madrid.

Across Europe, similar sit-ins have taken place at universities in the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Finland, Denmark and Germany, as young people join their United States peers who are facing a violent police response.

In Amsterdam, police arrested about 125 activists as they broke up a pro-Palestinian camp at the University of Amsterdam on Tuesday. But in Spain, a country that historically supports the Palestinian cause, police have so far not been involved in trying to break up the protests.

The US has played down Israel’s assault on Rafah, claiming that the operation – which saw tanks take over the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and effectively seal the Palestinian territory off from the outside world – appears to be “limited”.

Dozens of people were killed on the first day of Israel’s Rafah operation, while some 100,000 residents in eastern parts of the city have been ordered to evacuate.

The UN, the EU and humanitarian aid groups have warned of a “catastrophe” if the military operation escalates.

Displaced Palestinian families in Rafah are on the move again following orders from the Israeli military to evacuate or risk being killed. Many here were forced from central and northern Gaza to escape Israeli bombardment. They had been told Rafah would provide safety. But with the Israeli military striking, many are grabbing what little they have and leaving.

“I was displaced from Shujayea to Nuseirat, then to Deir el-Balah, then to Rafah – and this will be the fifth displacement,” Mohammad al-Ghul told Al Jazeera. “We have no idea where we will go. The situation is bad. We didn’t sleep throughout the night with shells over our heads,” he said.

Another displaced Palestinian, Emad, said people’s futures were unclear. “My family’s made up of four people, there are also four others in my brother’s family totalling eight. Where can we go?” he told Al Jazeera. “I haven’t even taken down my tent. We need money to take it down.”

As we’ve been reporting, Israeli tanks have blocked the Rafah border crossing. The closure of the crossing has put a chokehold on any essential aid coming into Gaza and also prevented the departure of wounded people and patients who were waiting to travel to receive treatment.

Among them is eight-year-old Lama Abu Holi and her cousin, who both sustained injuries in an Israeli air attack last month. “Today, my name was at the border, and I should travel to get my legs treated,” she told Al Jazeera. “They hurt. I am supposed to have an operation. Because the border crossing is shut today, I could not travel. I am sad because I did not leave today.”

The courtyard of Al-Aqsa Hospital and its vicinity in Deir el-Balah is getting crowded as more people pour into the central area. The vast majority of people are coming from Rafah city, mainly its eastern central parts. They were forced to evacuate as leaflets were dropped and bombing intensified in their areas.

We can see quite clearly that this city is going to be overcrowded and running out of space.

We haven’t gotten any official response from the Israeli government to the reports of the US pausing a shipment of weapons to Israel.

We are seeing statements by some anonymously sourced officials in Israeli media that there are concerns among members of the security establishment that the halting of this weapon shipment is a tactic by the US to increase pressure on the Israeli government to stop an all-out invasion of Rafah and to accept the terms of a ceasefire.

Not many details are being reported about what was in that weapons shipment. We are seeing numbers like perhaps around 1,800- and 2,000-pound bombs and around 1,700 and 500-pound bombs.

We should stress that this is a very small amount of weapons compared to the number of weapons that the US provides to Israel – this is just a drop in the ocean.

There is concern among the security and military establishment based on Israeli media reports that this perhaps is a harbinger of things to come, meaning that if Israel doesn’t start adhering more to what the US wants, perhaps the US will halt further shipments of weapons going forward.

The Israeli military says it resolves any disagreements with the US “behind closed doors” following news that the US has held up an arms shipment amid concerns over Israeli military operations in Rafah.

At a conference hosted by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari described coordination between Israel and the US as reaching “a scope without precedent, I think, in history”.

Israel’s military said jet fighters attacked sites in several areas of southern Lebanon overnight in what it said were operations against “military buildings” and “terrorist infrastructure” of the Hezbollah movement.

Accompanied by grainy, aerial footage of night-time bombing runs and missile attacks, Israel’s military said the sites attacked were located in South Lebanon’s Kfar Kila, Aita al-Shaab, Khiam, Maroun al-Ras, Hula and Aitaroun areas.

Israeli ground forces also attacked the Tayr Harfa area and Jebbayn, the military said.