The Israeli military has arrested six people in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reports. Violent clashes have also broken out between Palestinian resistance fighters and Israeli forces in the Nur Shams refugee camp, east of the city of Tulkarem, after Israeli troops raided the area and arrested a Palestinian man.

Two Palestinians have also been arrested in the village of Asira al-Qibliya, south of Nablus, Wafa reports. Israeli raids have been reported in the Shu’fat refugee camp, north of occupied Jerusalem, and the town of Tuqu, southeast of Bethlehem.

Israeli forces arrest seven people in Hebron

Israeli military carries out more arrests in the occupied West Bank

Israel’s Ben-Gvir cheers on home demolitions in Negev

Negev demolitions will destroy the homes of an entire Bedouin family

Israeli forces killing Palestinians in West Bank with impunity: HRW

And it only got much worse since October 7

Israel tears down six Palestinian homes in occupied West Bank

Overnight and into the early hours of the morning, the Israeli military continued to pound parts of eastern Rafah city.

The majority of residential homes and farmland have been cleared, as well as the central part of Rafah city, including the vicinity of al-Najjar Hospital, which is the only large health facility in Rafah city. That facility, which has been ordered to evacuate, is not operational at all, putting more pressure on the city’s remaining health facilities.

There are reports of more casualties being taken to field hospitals in the western part of the city, including the Kuwaiti Hospital, a small health facility that is largely unprepared and unequipped to receive a large number of casualties.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military continued to pound the central area of Gaza. As of early this morning, loud explosions could clearly be heard from anywhere in the central area.

They were largely concentrated in the Nuseirat refugee camp, which has been repeatedly targeted. Over the past few weeks, the Israeli military stormed the northern part of the camp, destroying the vast majority of its residential homes and public facilities, forcing people into more internal displacement.

The attack, which also wounded several people, happened in the Brazil neighbourhood of eastern Rafah, our colleagues on the ground are reporting. The casualties add to dozens who have been killed and wounded in Rafah since Israel launched its military incursion on Monday.

Over the past 24 hours, the Kuwaiti Hospital, one of the few health facilities still operational in Rafah, has received the bodies of 35 people killed and 129 wounded, medical sources have told Al Jazeera.

More air strikes and attacks concentrated in Rafah city, mainly in the eastern part, have been reported.

Within the past 45 minutes, there have been reports of constant artillery shelling of the entire eastern area, including the Salam neighbourhood. That’s in the southeastern part of Rafah city, where the vast majority of residential buildings have been targeted. The Israeli military also continues to strike at al-Jnaina neighbourhood.

These are the two most attacked neighbourhoods, not just in the last 48 hours, but since the initial weeks of this war.

I am familiar with as-Salam neighbourhood, as I sheltered there for the past five months. It is densely populated, with displaced families setting up tents on the roads and the side of the roads. Every pocket of land there turned into a tent refugee camp. Now people are forced to move out of the area to seek shelter elsewhere.

There are reports of many with injuries being transferred to field hospitals in the western part of Rafah city, as well as the Kuwaiti Hospital.

Gaza death toll rises

The military says it has killed Hamas fighters and dismantled military infrastructure in eastern Rafah as it presses on with its incursion in southern Gaza. As part of this operation, the Israeli army is carrying out “targeted raids” on the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, which it took operational control of on Tuesday morning, according to a military statement.

Israel has also continued to wage attacks on military infrastructure across Gaza over the past day, the statement said, hitting 100 targets, including launch sites and observation posts. The latest attacks have created a new wave of displacement from Rafah and caused dozens of casualties, according to health officials in Gaza.

Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, said he expects Hamas to regroup and continue operating even after the Rafah operation, but that Israel will keep pursuing it wherever it goes.

“I want to tell the public so that they do not delude themselves: Even after we deal with Rafah, there will be terror,” Hagari said in an interview with Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

“Hamas will move northwards and try to reconstitute itself, even in the next few days. In every place Hamas returns to, including in northern and central Gaza, we will return to operating.”

Israeli artillery attacks have hit several residential buildings in central Rafah, causing fires to break out, according to the Wafa news agency. Palestinian rescue services are struggling to respond to the scene and put out the fires due to continuous artillery shelling, reports Wafa.

Israeli artillery shelling has hammered central and eastern Rafah throughout the day, including in the densely populated neighbourhoods of Salam and al-Jnaina, reports Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud from Deir el-Balah.

Events are evolving rapidly. People in Rafah are filling up the roads and evacuating from the city.

They are moving their stuff either by car or by animal-drawn cart, using whatever means of transportation available as Israel expands its intense bombing campaign. The bombing seems to be moving a little further towards central Rafah, as well as the western part of it.

People are pouring into central Gaza by the thousands, mainly to Deir el-Balah city.

The vicinity of this hospital – Al-Aqsa Hospital – is becoming very crowded, with many families looking for any small, empty area… to set up tents or whatever they’re able to construct.

Exhaustion and panic define what these families are experiencing.

Medical teams have found a third mass grave inside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, with 49 bodies so far recovered, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza. It said the team expects to find dozens more as the process of retrieving bodies continues.

The media office said there have been a total of seven mass graves found inside hospitals so far.

“We condemn in the strongest terms the crimes of genocide and the continuous killing committed by the occupation army against our Palestinian people,” it said in a Telegram post.

“We hold the US administration, the international community and the occupation fully responsible for these mass graves and this blatant aggression.”

“We’re not receiving any aid into the Gaza Strip,” says Scott Anderson, deputy director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza, in a post on X, talking about a situation proving “disastrous for the humanitarian response”.

While aid supplies are cut off, the area around the Rafah border crossing has come under “continued bombardment” today, Anderson added.

Senior UN officials have warned that if aid to Gaza remains blocked, critical diesel fuel supplies would run out by the end of the day, forcing the closure of a major water-production facility and cutting off drinking water supply in northern Gaza.

A video has been circulating on social media of Brian Mast, Florida’s representative in the US Congress, saying he believes, “Israel should go in there [in Gaza] and kick the s*** out of them.”

Mast was responding to a question by human rights activist Medea Benjamin on whether he thinks Israel should agree to a ceasefire following an agreement by Hamas.

“I think Israel should go in there and kick the s*** out of them. Just absolutely destroy them, their infrastructure, level anything that they touch.”

“I think Israel should go in there & kick the sh*t out of them just absolutely destroy them, their infrastructure, level anything that they touch.” This is what Brian Mast had to say to us on Holocaust Remembrance Day, in response to the news that Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/GHxRInq4XR

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) May 7, 2024

At San Francisco State University, one of dozens of US colleges where students have launched pro-Palestinian demonstrations amid the war on Gaza, assistant professor Omar Zahzah says he is “moved” by the mobilisation.

“Watching people on my campus say we also need to be a part of this, we need to stand up and say, ‘No more’, it’s incredibly moving,” Zahzah told Al Jazeera.

“It really just makes you feel that no matter what happens, no matter how high the stakes are … we’re all coming together as part of a broader ethical collectivity that is ready to do whatever it takes to make sure that this does not continue through our institutions, in our names.”

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/He3SAy4dXb0

WHO sounds alarm on state of healthcare in Rafah

The vast majority of the 49 Palestinian bodies so far recovered from the grave in al-Shifa Hospital were decomposed.

Gaza’s Government Media Office has confirmed they found bodies without heads. That’s absolutely terrifying and gives a clear reflection about what was happening inside the compound [during the Israeli raid].

That brings the total number of recovered bodies to 520 bodies that have been recovered from al-Shifa Hospital, Nasser Hospital in the south alongside Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern parts of the territory.

It’s absolutely terrifying as Israeli bombardments across the territory have not stopped in the last 24 hours.

People buried alive at al-Shifa Hospital: Gaza health official

The main maternity hospital in Rafah has stopped admitting patients, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has told Reuters.

The UNFPA said Al-Helal Al-Emairati Maternity Hospital had been handling some 85 births each day out of a total of 180 births in Gaza prior to an escalation of fighting between Hamas and Israeli troops on Rafah’s outskirts.

An average of 200 people are leaving Rafah every hour following Israel’s evacuation order, according to estimates by the UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA).

“The displacement is ongoing and people are leaving towards Khan Younis and the Middle Areas,” said UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma. “It’s not possible to give a total number of people displaced at the moment given how fluid the situation is,” she added.

A senior UNRWA official told US broadcaster CNN that approximately 50,000 people had left Rafah since Monday.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are on the move again after being ordered to evacuate southern Rafah by the Israeli military. About 1.5 million people are sheltering there, raising the prospect of mass casualties in an Israeli ground invasion.

People in the Jneina, al-Shawka, al-Salam and other neighbourhoods have fled in anticipation of an assault.

“Some streets look like a ghost town now,” said Aref, 35, who asked his surname not be used, fearing Israeli reprisals. “We don’t fear death and martyrdom. But we have kids to care for and live for another day when this war ends and we rebuild the city.”

The majority of voters from President Biden’s Democratic Party agree that the US ally is committing genocide in Gaza, a new study shows.

The survey by Data for Progress, in collaboration with Zeteo, found that 56 percent of Democratic respondents agree with genocide accusations against Israel, while only 22 percent reject them.

Overall, a plurality of 39 percent of respondents said Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza.

The UN defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, including killings and measures to prevent births.

The findings could spell political trouble for Biden who has been facing increasing pressure from his Democratic base over his “ironclad” support for Israel, months before the presidential elections in November.

The survey, which included responses from 1,265 likely US voters, also found that 70 percent of respondents support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Biden’s decision to hold up the delivery of high payload munitions to Israel was made in the context of Israel’s plan to carry out an offensive in Rafah, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said.

“We’ve been very clear … from the very beginning that Israel shouldn’t launch a major attack into the Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battlespace. And again, as we have assessed the situation, we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions,” he told a Senate hearing.

“We’ve not made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment.”

The influential pro-Israel US lobby group described the move, confirmed by defence chief Lloyd Austin earlier, as a “dangerous and counterproductive message”.

“It emboldens Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and undermines America’s commitments to all our allies,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in a social media post. “Congress must demand the Biden Admin reverse this delay and ensure Israel has what it needs to win this war.”

AIPAC has been spending millions of dollars on US elections to defeat candidates critical of Israel.

Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan says he did not believe the US would stop supplying arms to Israel but called Washington’s decision to hold up some weapons shipments “very disappointing”, even frustrating.

US President Joe Biden “can’t say he is our partner in the goal to destroy Hamas [in the Gaza war] while on the other hand delay the means meant to destroy Hamas”, Erdan said in an interview on Israel’s Channel 12 News.

The progressive US senator has voiced support for Biden’s decision to halt an arms shipment to Israel, calling for further moves to pressure Israel to end abuses against Palestinians.

“This must be a first step. The US must now use ALL its leverage to demand an immediate ceasefire, the end of the attacks on Rafah, and the immediate delivery of massive amounts of humanitarian aid to people living in desperation,” Sanders said in a statement.

“Our leverage is clear. Over the years, the United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel. We can no longer be complicit in Netanyahu’s horrific war against the Palestinian people.”

American right calls arms halt to Israel ‘devastating, obscene, absurd’

The measure was introduced by Republican Congressman Andy Ogles amid a bipartisan US push to punish student protesters and accuse them of anti-Semitism.

The proposed legislation calls for revoking the visas of international students who have been arrested “while establishing, participating in, or promoting an encampment on the campus of an institution of higher education on or since October 7, 2023”, according to a copy of the bill published by The Daily Caller right-wing publication.

US authorities have arrested more than 2,000 students over the past weeks to break up encampments across the country that urged their universities to end investments in Israeli firms and weapon manufacturers.

Ogles faced backlash earlier this year when he said, “I think we should kill them all”, when asked about the killing of children in Gaza.

🚨My message is clear: if you’re a student visa holder rioting AGAINST American values and FOR Hamas terrorists, you can go study abroad in Gaza.

Read more about my latest bill.👇 https://t.co/UekRTahnEY

— Rep. Andy Ogles (@RepOgles) May 8, 2024