The Biden administration is working to get a group of American doctors out of Gaza after Israel closed the Rafah border crossing.

The Palestinian American Medical Association, a US-based non-profit, said its team of 19 healthcare professionals, including 10 Americans, had been denied exit from Gaza after a two-week mission providing medical services at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, a city near Rafah in southern Gaza.

Israel seized and closed the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on May 7, disrupting a vital route for people and aid into and out of the besieged coastal enclave.

“We’re tracking this matter closely and working to get the impacted American citizens out of Gaza,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.

Jean-Pierre said the United States is engaging directly with Israel on the matter.

The Biden administration has been warning Israel against a major military ground operation in Rafah, but Jean-Pierre said efforts to get the doctors out are continuing regardless of what happens there. “We need to get them out. We want to get them out and it has nothing to do with anything else.”

What's the problem, there is no humanitarian crisis (Netanyahu), there is no genocide (Biden), nothing to worry about...

Israel carried out 80 attacks on aid in Gaza since January

NEW: Our analysis of reported data identifies at least 80 separate attacks by Israel on aid in Gaza since January. The frequency and widespread nature of these attacks suggests that Israel is systematically targeting aid. pic.twitter.com/gvmOt7mt61

— Forensic Architecture (@ForensicArchi) May 15, 2024

‘It’s Bisan from Gaza, and this is a second Nakba’

‘Our Nakba is the worst ever’

Lily Greenberg Call is the first “Biden appointee” to resign as a result of Joe Biden’s complete acquiescence to Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. Actually, another Jewish member of the US administration did resign – a career military officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Greenberg Call talks in her resignation letter about how she was a true believer in the Biden administration having worked on Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

However, she writes that she can no longer, in good conscience, continue to represent this administration amidst President Biden’s disastrous, continued support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. She actually goes on to say that President Biden has the blood of innocent people on his hands.

And she particularly centres her opposition on being Jewish. In particular, she is very triggered by President Biden’s consistent conflation of Jewishness and supporting what Israel is doing in Gaza. Biden, she writes, is making Jews the face of the American war machine – and that is so deeply wrong. And she says that both Biden and Israel are making Jews less safe around the world.

A group of top Congress Democrats have urged President Joe Biden’s administration to expand its efforts against extremist Israeli settlers and their financial backers in the occupied West Bank.

The letter – penned to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Ben Cardin, Senate Armed Services Committee chair Jack Reed, and Senate Intelligence Committee chair Mark Warner – urged them to “‘follow the money”.

“We urge the Administration to continue to increase efforts to target all actors complicit in this violence, including private entities involved in materially supporting violent acts or the forcible displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank,” the letter reads.

The Biden administration has issued sanctions against several Israeli settlers and entire settlement outposts in recent months, but the efforts have been criticised as ineffective.

Meta Platforms META.O has restored Facebook posts showing Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s meeting with a Hamas leader after drawing backlash from the Malaysian government over the removal, the Reuters news agency reports.

Malaysia, a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, had criticised Meta’s decision to remove posts by local news outlets covering Anwar’s meeting with Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, in Qatar on Monday.

A letter was sent to Meta asking for an explanation and a warning was issued that social media companies could face penalties in Malaysia if they were found to be blocking pro-Palestine content on their platforms.

“Two posts were removed in error and have now been restored,” a Meta spokesperson told Reuters. Meta has designated Hamas as a “dangerous organisation” and bans pro-Hamas content on the platform.

Lol 2 posts removed in error. Remember the roll Meta played in the Myanmar Genocide
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/

As in previous years, Palestinian refugees in Beirut held a rally to commemorate the anniversary of the Nakba, or the “disaster”, which saw the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948.

They emphasised the importance of preserving identity and resisting occupation as Israel’s war on Gaza lays siege to the Palestinian enclave.

There is a Nakba rally here at the University of Michigan. We are at an encampment and they have been asked to disperse, but they have not done so.

There are hundreds of people here and they are talking about the demands that they have literally taped on the doors of the homes of each of the university’s eight regents. The regents are the people in the university who can make decisions about changing policy towards Israel.

The rally continues with hundreds of students who insist they are going to continue to remain here and keep making those demands, and their demands have actually increased today.

Heeding calls from pro-Palestine students pushing for a boycott of Israeli companies and institutions over the war in Gaza, Sonoma State University has said that it will no longer enter partnerships with Israeli universities.

Sonoma State’s president, Mike Lee, said the school had reached an agreement with the protesters and would do more to disclose its contracts and seek “divestment strategies” from Israeli institutions.

In exchange, the students agreed to dismantle their cluster of tents on campus by Wednesday evening.

Police have made arrests after descending on pro-Palestine student protesters, who, for several hours, occupied a building at the University of California, Irvine, the Reuters news agency reports.

Officers from about 10 nearby law-enforcement agencies converged on the campus after university officials requested help, said Sergeant Karie Davies, spokesperson for the Irvine Police Department.

Police said they would not release the number of arrests until the operation was over.

French MP Thomas Portes has criticised the French government’s bias in favour of the Israeli occupation.

Speaking at a demonstration in Paris, Thomas Portes said politicians and the media did not recognise the word genocide and forbid it in all forums, but that the crimes committed in Gaza constituted genocide.

The MP denounced France’s participation in those crimes and the authorities’ treatment of students and pro-Palestine demonstrators.

“Don’t be afraid of those who want to prevent you and silence you and do not stop supporting the Palestinian people … we must stop this government’s support for genocide,” he said.

Student employees of the university – these are student teachers who teach undergraduates, researchers who work in the research laboratories, other workers in various capacities, all of whom are organised under a union – the United Autoworkers Union, as it happens to be.

There are 48,000 of them and they play a vital role in running the 10 University of California campuses. They have authorised a strike as of today, but we don’t know when the walkout will take place.

They say that the students’ rights have been violated. That their rights have been violated. And that they aim to disrupt the operations of the universities and their various campuses as a direct result of the university’s crackdown on the Gaza solidarity protesters.

If they do go out and stay out for a protracted period of time, that’s going to really create a very difficult and disruptive situation on campus. Even though the academic year is nearing its end, these workers perform a vital function.

Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter is reporting that the governing body of the country’s second-largest city, Gothenburg, wants to stop buying goods from Israel.

A coalition that includes the Swedish Social Democratic Party, Left Party and the Green Party, who have a majority in the municipality’s governing committee, has proposed that the city phase out all purchases of goods originating in states that illegally occupy other states.

“Israel is conducting an illegal occupation of the West Bank that has only worsened in the shadow of the widespread killing of civilians in Gaza,” Jonas Attenius, chairman of the municipal board in Gothenburg, said in a press release. “Our tax money should not go to financially support occupation forces.”

The proposal would also affect purchases from Russia and Morocco.

A British shipment of nearly 100 tonnes of aid has left Cyprus, bound for a temporary pier built by the US military off the coast of Gaza, according to the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office.

The shipment – which comprises 8,400 temporary shelters made up of plastic sheeting – will be part of the first delivery of aid to the pier.

The UK Foreign Office noted the maritime corridor was not a replacement for land routes, which remain the quickest and most effective way of getting aid into Gaza. “We continue to urge Israel to meet its commitment to allow at least 500 aid trucks to cross into Gaza through land crossings and open as many routes as possible, including [the port of] Ashdod,” it said.

That's 5 to 7 trucks worth of aid, and seems to be mostly plastic shelters. Way too little. I guess it's a start.

CENTCOM announces Gaza floating aid pier has been anchored

UN food agency’s supplies in Gaza ‘will run out in a matter of days’

There were 6 trucks on May 11 that entered from Kerem Shalom, nothing else from May 6 to May 15. Still no information on anything that enters from the North, Erez crossing.

WFP suspends food distribution in Rafah

Satellite images show preparation of Israeli logistical supply routes for Rafah crossing

Gaza’s main crossings still shuttered, not viable: UN

For days now, crossings into #Gaza have been closed, unsafe to access or not logistically viable.

Aid distribution is almost impossible with no regular fuel imports, unstable telecommunication and ongoing fighting.

The impact is devastating for over 2 million people. pic.twitter.com/2WVh7eOQRp

— OCHA oPt (Palestine) (@ochaopt) May 16, 2024

Access to healthcare continues to shrink in Gaza, UN says

_{A field hospital operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on May 10}

OCHA, the UN’s humanitarian agency, said the Israeli military has issued five evacuation orders for north and south Gaza since May 6, expanding the total area subjected to such orders since the war began to 78 percent of the enclave’s territory.

This encompasses all areas north of Wadi Gaza, whose residents were instructed to evacuate in late October, as well as specific areas south of Wadi Gaza designated for evacuation by the Israeli military since December 1, it said.

“As families continue to be displaced, many for the fifth time since the onset of hostilities, Israeli-designated ‘humanitarian zones’ for the displaced remain unsafe,” OCHA added, citing aid agencies.

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) has warned that Israel’s evacuation orders for the people of Gaza may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity for the forcible transfer of a population.

The Geneva-based group noted that under international law, people must have adequate time to prepare for an evacuation, as well as a safe route to an area of safety with access to aid, which are “absent from Israel’s successive evacuation orders”.

Humanitarian agencies have warned that Israeli-designated safe zones in Gaza are unable to manage an influx of displaced persons and lack basic services, including food, water, medicine, electricity and sufficient shelter, the group said.

“The scale and intensity of mass atrocity crimes in Gaza continues to surpass our worst nightmares,” said Savita Pawnday, executive director of the GCR2P.

“So-called evacuation orders that forcibly displace suffering people again and again, the closure of crossings that deny aid to families and children facing famine, relentless bombardments and mass graves that reveal evidence of torture, all demonstrate a certain contempt for international law and the protections it extends to vulnerable populations.”

‘Scale of crisis defies imagination’, says IRC

A group of 20 prominent human rights organisations has issued a statement denouncing the failure of world leaders to act even as Israel’s invasion of Rafah “worsens the humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.

The statement said third countries “have the responsibility to urgently act in bringing to an end, and pursue accountability for the grave breaches of international humanitarian law” taking place in Gaza.

These breaches include the Israeli military’s evacuation orders as well as its disruption of humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza. The latter violates multiple UN Security Council resolutions as well as the International Court of Justice’s orders, the rights groups said.

Doctors Without Borders says Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are finding it increasingly difficult to access healthcare services amid Israeli attacks and restrictions.

The group, known by its French acronym MSF, said Palestinians who live in refugee camps in Tulkarem and Jenin are trapped and blocked from accessing healthcare facilities, especially during Israeli military incursions. And people with life-threatening injuries must wait to reach hospitals, and in many cases, die before getting there.

MSF also said people in Hebron are reporting frequent roadblocks, military raids and attacks by Israeli settlers creating obstacles to medical care. Mahmud Mousa Abu Eram, a man from Hebron, told MSF that people have to “walk for hours” or use donkeys to reach health facilities. “There hasn’t been transportation in this area for a long time, and even if there is a car to drop us to any clinic, the Israeli army confiscates the cars,” he told MSF.

We continue to witness a shocking increase in extreme violence & restrictions against Palestinians in the West Bank, Palestine.

🔴 479 Palestinians, including 116 children, have been killed by Israeli forces & settlers in the West Bank since 7 October👇https://t.co/ObGelVMK3h

— MSF International (@MSF) May 15, 2024

Israeli military kills Palestinian man in occupied East Jerusalem

Israeli forces have shot a Palestinian man who they claimed had attempted to stab them on Salah al-Din Street in occupied East Jerusalem, the Wafa news agency reports.

Security camera footage of the incident shows the man standing yards away from an Israeli soldier before charging at him. The man is then shot before falling to the ground.

This is the fourth killing in the last 24 hours in the occupied West Bank. Israeli forces shot dead three men during a raid on the city of Tulkarem.

Israeli forces have attacked a number of Palestinian farmers south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency is reporting.

Jaafar Assi, 55, said Israeli forces attacked him and a number of other farmers while they were working on their land with grape vines in Wadi al-Diyar, adjacent to the illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat, located on the lands of the town of al-Khader.

He said Israeli forces threatened them with arrest and confiscation of vehicles and equipment if they returned to working on their land, adding that this is the third time Israeli forces have attacked them during the grape season this year.

Assi said these lands constitute about 80 percent of al-Khader’s agricultural lands, and that Israeli authorities were trying to empty them.

Israeli forces have arrested at least 12 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank overnight, including children and former prisoners, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has said.

Arrests were conducted in the governorates of Ramallah, Hebron, Jenin, Nablus, Tubas and Qalqilya.

Israeli forces also carried out large-scale raids on exchange shops in all governorates, it said.

It’s been another busy night in the occupied West Bank. What stands out is the raids on all 11 branches of one exchange company where four people were also detained. Israel says the exchange company is dealing with “terrorist groups”.

The company estimates that their losses are about 4 million shekels, or more than $1m. In December, the Israeli military carried out similar raids on exchange branches of various companies, including this one. Last time, they said they lost 1 million shekels, close to $300,000.

In the latest raids, computers were confiscated. They even took safes and everything inside them. There were no legal proceedings before these raids. The Israeli forces made accusations and left flyers saying that any sort of association with any armed group makes them guilty of being terrorists.

This has the hallmarks of a heist more than any sort of police action. It has made people more afraid and paranoid. It is yet another example of a kind of collective punishment where Israel accuses civilian businesses of being affiliated with so-called terror groups or armed groups, without providing evidence.

In the past 24 hours, Hezbollah has carried out its deepest strike in Israel using what the Israeli army said were two armed drones.

One was downed by Israel’s air defences and the other hit a “sensitive military facility near the Golani Junction, west of Tiberias” some 35km (22 miles) from the Lebanon border.

Hezbollah says the attack was a response to recent Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon that killed its members.

Israel responded to the Golani Junction strike by carrying out at least 15 strikes overnight in Baalbek region, eastern Lebanon. According to the army, a weapons manufacturing plant used to build guided munitions and a drone was among the targets.

The Israeli military has issued an operational update in which it says 40 rockets were launched from Lebanon towards the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

For its part, Lebanese group Hezbollah said it “launched a missile attack with more than 60 Katyusha rockets” on several Israeli military positions. The strikes were “in response to the Israeli enemy’s attacks last night on the Bekaa region” in eastern Lebanon’s Baalbek area, the group said in a statement.

The Israeli military said several of the rockets launched today were successfully intercepted by Israel’s air defence systems. Additionally, it said five rockets were launched towards Zarit in northern Israel from Lebanon.

The Israeli military reported no injuries and said it responded by targeting the source of the attacks.

Five people have been reported killed and many wounded in Israeli attacks overnight on Gaza, our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic have reported.

Three people, including a child, were killed in the bombing of house on al-Sahaba Street in Gaza City that left several wounded. A fourth person was killed and more were wounded in an attack on a building in the Daraj neighbourhood of eastern Gaza City. The fifth person was killed when Israeli warplanes struck an apartment building in the Nuseirat area of central Gaza, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.

All five were killed in fighting in the north of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said, and three other members of Battalion 202 were seriously injured.

The five – four of whom held the rank of sergeant and one a captain – were aged between 20 and 22 years of age and were all in the Parachute Brigade. All appear to have been killed in a single incident on Wednesday, according to the military’s post on social media.

As of Monday, the Israeli military reported that 272 soldiers had been killed and 1,674 injured in Gaza and along the border with the Palestinian territory since Israel began its ground operation against the enclave. The latest deaths reported will add to the overall number of Israelis killed in the war on Gaza.

The Israeli army says “friendly fire” was behind the deaths. Asked to confirm media reports that the five deaths announced earlier in an official statement were caused by Israeli fire, a military spokesperson told AFP: “Yes."

“Five soldiers of the 202nd Paratrooper Battalion were killed last night in a mass casualty incident as a result of fire by our forces,” the Israeli military said in a statement, adding that seven other troops were wounded.

According to a preliminary investigation, two Israeli tanks in the area opened fire on a house used by the Israeli battalion’s deputy commander, the military said. “The shooting consisted of two tank shells,” it said. “From the initial investigation … it appears that the tank fighters identified a gun barrel coming out of one of the windows in the building, and directed each other to shoot at the building.”

Israeli ‘clearing’ operations in Jabalia target of mounting Palestinian attacks: Monitors

A smoke plume rises during Israeli bombardment in Jabalia on May 14


Israeli jets continue bombardment in Jabalia

Israeli attack hits ambulance in Jabalia

Israeli attacks on Jabalia intensifying by the hour

Four more killed in Jabalia

_{Smoke rises after Israeli strikes on Jibalia}

Pregnant woman among those killed in Jabalia

Five killed in Israeli strike on house in Khan Younis