The head of Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, has reportedly resisted pressure to increase surveillance on the growing protest movement against Netanyahu’s government in Israel.

In a report in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, a government official is quoted as saying that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have expressed expectations that the Shin Bet will “use its tools against parts of the protest [movement]”.

“They want to turn it into a thought police,” the unnamed official is quoted as saying.

However, at a meeting some weeks ago with Ben-Gvir and other senior officials, the Shin Bet director Ronen Bar said his agency would “not become a secret police”, the newspaper reports.

“The Shin Bet also does security vetting for senior public figures, meaning it has access to sensitive, intimate information about them that should be inaccessible to politicians. One can only imagine what would happen if the Shin Bet were headed by someone who is serving a government, fighting tooth and nail to survive,” Haaretz added.

An Egyptian official has denied that an agreement was reached with Israel to reopen the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip, Egyptian TV has reported.

Quoting a high-level source, Egypt’s state-affiliated al-Qahera News TV said on Friday that “there is no truth” in media reports about an Egyptian-Israeli agreement to reopen the vital crossing to Gaza – the Palestinian side of which was taken over by the Israeli military earlier this month.

“Egypt insists on a full Israeli withdrawal from the crossing as a condition to resume its work,” the source told the channel, according to Germany’s DPA news agency.

Since the capture of the Rafah border crossing by Israeli tanks, Egypt had indicated it would not coordinate aid transports through Rafah until Israeli forces withdrew and returned control of the frontier to Palestinian authorities.

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

But, Israel’s war on Gaza has fuelled anti-Israeli sentiment in Egypt and ties are strained amid fears in Cairo that Israel wants to trigger a mass exodus of desperate Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares says Spain rejects “restrictions” that Israel plans to impose on the activities of its consulate in Jerusalem in response to Madrid’s recognition of a Palestinian state.

“This morning we sent a note verbale to the Israeli government in which we reject any restriction on the normal activity of the Spanish consulate general in Jerusalem, as its status is guaranteed by international law,” he said during an interview with radio Onda Cero.

Israel has doubled down on planned restrictions to Spain’s Jerusalem consulate, saying they will be “strictly enforced” due to Madrid’s recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Earlier today, Spain’s foreign minister said it had sent a note to Israel rejecting the restrictions, which include a halt to consular services to Palestinians, and requested they be reversed.

But Israel will go ahead with the policy and may totally shutter Spain’s consulate if it commits “violations”, Israeli FM Israel Katz said in a post on X.

“Any connection between the Spanish consulate in Jerusalem and individuals in the Palestinian Authority poses a threat to Israel’s national security and will be completely prohibited”, said Katz.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz has said that Iran is planning a “major wave of attacks” across Europe ahead of the Paris Olympics in August. Posting on X, he also labelled Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the “world’s biggest support of terrorism”.

“We must stop him now before it’s too late,” Katz wrote, but did not provide any supporting evidence for his claims regarding planned attacks.

His comments came after Sweden’s security agency accused Iran of using criminal gangs in the Scandinavian country to target Israeli or Jewish interests.

The demonstrators rallied peacefully against the interview with the Israeli prime minister outside the offices of France’s private broadcaster, TF1, in the western Paris suburbs, the French news agency AFP reports.

Kept back from the building by a heavy police presence, the protesters held Palestinian flags and chanted: “Gaza, Paris is with you”, “Immediate ceasefire!” and “Israel, murderer”.

In the interview broadcast on TF1’s news channel LCI, Netanyahu defended his war on Gaza and told the interviewer that “the number of civilian losses compared to losses of [Palestinian] combatants is the lowest rate we have seen in an urban war”. Netanyahu continued to claim that Israel was not targeting civilians or deliberately trying to cause a famine, which he branded “anti-Semitic slander”.

UN agencies, aid groups and foreign governments say Gaza is experiencing famine as a result of Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid entering the territory, where at least 36,224 Palestinians have been killed and 81,777 wounded since October 7.

More than a million people have also been displaced as Israel pushes on with its ground invasion of Rafah despite global condemnation and orders by the International Court of Justice in The Hague to immediately withdraw from the city.

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— Sébastien DELOGU (@sebastiendelogu) May 30, 2024

Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said the “atrocious events in Rafah” have made the world witness to “hundreds of thousands of people trying to avoid lethal attacks by moving frantically” in the “constrained space” of southern Gaza.

“Among the many images from this conflict that will haunt us for a long time is that of desperate people trapped and often killed inside a war zone,” Grandi told the UN Security Council.

“Palestinians should be protected wherever they are, the atrocious dilemma of whether they should exit Gaza – or not – is one that Israel has the clear responsibility to avoid,” Grandi said.

“In this case, there is also – and especially – the international legal obligation of an occupying power not to force – not to force – the civilian population to flee the territory it occupies,” he added.

“Another forced exodus of Palestinians will only create one more intractable problem and make a solution to this decades-long conflict impossible to find,” he added.

The Israeli military has continued to carry out air strikes throughout the Gaza Strip. The worst was an overnight attack on residential homes in Bureij refugee camp that killed 11 people.

The civil defence crew told us that the victims were part of a displaced family from Rafah city. They include women and children. When we showed up at the hospital this morning, one surviving family member told us there were still more people under the rubble.

In a separate attack [in Nuseirat camp], an Israeli attack drone struck a car carrying three family members. We’ve learned that the family ran a kitchen that provided free meals for displaced people. This is not the first time this particular family, which is well known in Nuseirat, has been targeted.

In the initial weeks of the war, 24 members of the family were killed.

More than three weeks after Israel seized the Rafah crossing, Gaza is suffering from a severe shortage of fuel, propane and medicine, compounding the suffering of Gaza’s sick and hungry, said Gaza’s Government Media Office.

Due to the lack of fuel and propane, more than 98 percent of Gaza’s bakeries have been forced to close, cutting off a key food source, while more than 700 water wells have stopped functioning, said the media office.

“We warn the international community and all countries of the world against the catastrophic worsening of the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip,” it said.

Israel’s 20-day operation in Jabalia wrecked much of the city, including more than 1,000 homes, civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal told Al Jazeera.

The destruction has been painstaking for residents, who are returning after Israel forces’ withdrawal to find entire neighbourhoods reduced to rubble.

‘Nothing to salvage’ in Jabalia

Fourteen people have been killed and more than 30 injured in US and UK air strikes on Yemen’s Hodeidah province, the Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV reports.

The TV channel reported that the strikes on Thursday targeted a radio building in Hodeidah’s al-Hawak district and the port of as-Salif, Reuters said.

US and UK forces said they launched attacks against Houthi targets as part of ongoing efforts to stop the armed group from carrying out attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement that US and UK forces had hit 13 targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

The UK defence ministry said the joint attack took the “utmost care” in order “to minimise any risk to civilians or non-military infrastructure”.

Houthi fighters in Yemen have carried out months of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea which they say have links to Israel or have frequented Israeli ports. Houthi leaders say the shipping attacks will stop when Israel ends its war on Gaza.

Death toll rises from US-UK attack in Yemen: Report

Houthis claim missile attack on US carrier in Red Sea

The Israeli military has continued to bomb Rafah and push deeper into the western part of the city.

Eyewitnesses described seeing tanks and armoured vehicles, with artillery shells reaching as far as the tent camp for displaced people in the western part of the city, which is an evacuation zone.

As it stated, the Israeli military has full control over the Philadelphi Corridor and is now systematically demolishing homes in the eastern part of Rafah city.

The entire eastern part of Rafah, including the as-Salam and al-Jenina neighbourhoods, has been cleared of residential buildings and public facilities.

Three injured from Gaza City air attack

As we’ve been reporting, residents of Jabalia are returning to their hometown after Israeli forces’ withdrawal yesterday, only to find much of it ruined.

A photo posted by the Palestine Red Crescent Society shows one of its ambulances wrecked, stranded in a pile of rubble.

Rescuers fear bodies are still trapped under the city’s rubble, unable to be reached due to the damaged infrastructure.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) agency says it has received “horrific reports” from UNRWA facilities in Jabalia, northern Gaza.

“Displaced people, including children, reportedly killed and injured sheltering in our school, besieged by IDF (Israeli army) tanks. Tents of people sheltering at our school reportedly set on fire by IDF,” the agency said in a post on X.

UNRWA also said it received reports of its office being hit and destroyed in air strikes, as well bulldozed by Israeli forces.

The statement from the Government Media Office in Gaza comes following the announcement by the Israeli army that it has withdrawn its troops from some parts of northern Gaza.

“The videos and photos that came out of Jabalia Camp after the occupation army withdrew from it, show the ugliness of the atrocities and crimes committed in Jabalia Camp and the Beit Lahia project, and the extent of the destruction and sabotage it inflicted on citizens’ homes, service facilities, and public facilities,” the media office said.

“Ambulance and civil defense teams recovered dozens of martyrs throughout the period of the invasion and after the withdrawal, and the search is currently continuing for dozens of missing people among the rubble of homes, shelter centers, schools and hospitals that were not spared from bombing and destruction …”

The Government Media Office has urged the World Court in Hague and the International Criminal Court to ensure “stopping this aggression and holding the Zionist leaders accountable as war criminals and perpetrators of crimes against humanity”.

Dr Smith tells Al Jazeera that comments by the US State Department that the Israeli army is not conducting a major military operation in Rafah are “absurd”.

“We’ve had soldiers and tanks now reportedly pushing right over towards the coastline. For the last several weeks, I have watched air strikes, artillery strikes firing onto the shoreline from the Israeli naval warships that are positioned just off the coast,” he said. “There is nothing limited about the Israeli military incursion into Rafah.”

“We’ve watched over several weeks now a mass exodus of people, the forced displacements of more than 900,000 people out of Rafah fleeing some of the most grotesque and barbaric Israeli violence that we have seen since October of last year,” he added.

A group supporting the captives in Gaza accused the government of making a “conscious and deliberate decision to sacrifice” them, forgoing the Israeli principle it will never leave anyone behind.

Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel is being held in Gaza, said during a face-to-face meeting with government security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and several families on Thursday they were told the government isn’t prepared to end the war to bring their relatives back.

“I said, ‘Does that mean that we’re doomed, we’re lost?’ He said, ‘Yes’,” said Dickmann.

It was the harshest and most difficult meeting with Israeli officials since the war began because it left families hopeless, he added. Israel has refused to end the war on Gaza and withdrawal its troops, a key demand by Hamas to release more captives.

‘Save us’: Hamas releases audio of female Israeli captive