Rosena Allin-Khanm, a Labour member of the UK Parliament, says in a post on X that Israeli authorities have denied entry of a British shipment of water filters and solar lights to Gaza.

In October, the UK had said it had delivered essential supplies, including 76,800 wound care packs, 1,350 water filters and 2,560 solar lights “to address the unfolding humanitarian crisis” in the Gaza Strip.

Another journalist killed in Gaza: Media Office

A probe into Israel’s worst civilian disaster found PM Netanyahu “bears personal responsibility” for the deadly 2021 crowd crush which killed 45 Jewish pilgrims. It found that Netanyahu’s office had been forewarned of hazards at a pilgrimage site but did not act to address them.

The probe looked into the April 2021 pilgrimage to a rabbi’s tomb at Mount Meron near the Lebanese border attended by tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews. A crush occurred when crowds of pilgrims got stuck in a narrow entrance to the tomb.


_{Medics respond to a crowd crush at the tomb of a second-century rabbi in Mount Meron, Israel, on April 30, 2021}

The probe’s finding further adds to pressure facing Netanyahu, who has also been blamed for intelligence failures leading up to Hamas’s October 7 attack and for failing to secure the release of some 130 Israeli captives thought to still be inside Gaza. Five months into the war, Netanyahu is also struggling to keep a divided war cabinet on his side and to resist pressure from Western allies to rein in Israeli military operations.

Netanyahu should face jail time, says Israeli opposition leader

Shifting public opinion in the US and Europe on Israel’s war on Gaza could push political leaders in the West to lobby more aggressively for lasting ceasefire conditions and more aid to Gaza, according to Luciano Zaccara, an assistant professor of Gulf politics at Qatar University.

Zaccara told Al Jazeera that the large number of US Democratic primary voters who voted “uncommitted” as a protest vote to Biden’s pro-Israel policies, along with George Galloway’s UK parliamentary election victory on a pro-Gaza platform, shows that voters are thinking more and more about their state’s “foreign policy behaviour” when they go to the ballot box.

While there are indications that US and UK leaders are responding to this trend – and being more assertive to Israel about the need for a ceasefire and to supply more aid to Gaza – it remains to be seen what tangible effect this will have as Israeli officials remain “uncommitted”, said Zaccara.

Israel will allow aid from UAE to enter Gaza Strip by sea

Israeli Channel 13 has reported that Israel will, for the first time, allow the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip by sea.

The report said that the aid will be financed and provided by the UAE, which will send a ship loaded with wide-ranging humanitarian aid to Cyprus first. The aid will then be examined by Israeli representatives and then transported and emptied on Gaza’s beach.

The UAE has requested that the first trial of this aid take place before the month of Ramadan starting next week.

EU’s von der Leyen heading to Cyprus to pursue Gaza maritime corridor

The ministry has called on the Israeli authorities to open the border crossings to allow aid into the Gaza Strip while condemning the prevention of the entry of aid, especially into northern Gaza.

“Israel’s focus on giving approvals to open sea lanes and preventing the passage of aid through land is aimed at the occupation government’s plan to perpetuate the occupation, the separation of the West Bank from the Gaza Strip, and the displacement of our people,” a ministry statement said.

Joe Biden is facing increased demands from some of his closest allies in the US Senate to do more to ease Palestinian suffering in Gaza, according to The Associated Press news agency. Some of these senators are even joining calls to cut the US’s military aid to Israel if Netanyahu refuses to change course, it said. This includes Chris Coons, Biden’s closest confidant in Congress.

In recent days, the senator has called for the US to cut military aid to Israel if Netanyahu goes ahead with a threatened offensive on the southern city of Rafah without significant provisions to protect the more than one million civilians sheltering there, according to the AP.

Senator Jack Reed, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has also appealed to Biden to deploy the US Navy to get humanitarian aid to Gaza, the AP said, while the president’s ally Senator Tim Kaine has challenged the US strikes on the Houthis as unlikely to stop the Red Sea attacks.

Patty Murray, the most senior Democrat in the Senate, has meanwhile called for Israel to “change course”, it noted. “Israel needs to understand that the casualties they’ve inflicted on the people of Gaza – the devastation they have caused – cannot continue,” Murray, the Senate’s temporary president, said in a blistering speech on the chamber floor. “It is not in line with American interests, nor does it make Israel safer.”

A large US shipment of flour intended for Gaza remains stalled 46 days after the White House first announced it and nearly two weeks since a new framework was agreed with Israel for its delivery, a US official has told the Times of Israel.

The official did not elaborate on what was causing the delay to the delivery of the flour, which is capable of feeding 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza for five months. The official said the shipment “should be delivered in the coming days”, the Times of Israel reports.

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blocked the flour’s transfer in early February, stating that it would be distributed through UNRWA, which he called “a central part” of Hamas’s “war machine”. The revised framework stated that the US flour shipment would be distributed by the UN’s World Food Programme.

An official for the World Health Organization (WHO) has said that more than 8,000 people needed to be referred outside Gaza for medical treatment. Dr Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for Gaza and the West Bank, told reporters on Tuesday that some 6,000 people needed to be referred for war-related injuries and ailments.

These include patients with multiple trauma injuries, burns and amputations. The other 2,000 were patients requiring care for cancer and other serious chronic illnesses. The WHO said moving such patients out of Gaza would relieve some of the strain on the medics and hospitals that are struggling to keep functioning in a war zone.

A report by a media watchdog has revealed the UK’s media bias in covering the Hamas attack on October 7 and Israel’s response. “Much of the news coverage of 7 October refers to Hamas’s attacks on Southern Israel as ground zero, with guests or commentators who try and explain the 75-year-old occupation of Palestine being accused by some presenters and columnists as justifying the attacks,” the report by Centre for Media Monitoring said.

By ignoring the context and history of the occupation of Palestine and Gaza in particular, the report said the media landscape has been “favourable to an Israeli narrative which has constantly promoted the attacks on Gaza and in the West Bank as a war between light and darkness”.

The report also called out treating the Israeli military as a credible source without subjecting it to further verification as “one of the glaring failures of journalists and media outlets”.

Difference in the use of language has also been a regular feature of coverage, the report says, with Palestinian deaths often underplayed compared with those of Israelis.

Pro-Palestinian voices and activists have been routinely denounced, misrepresented and targeted by many national media outlets, it says, adding the right-wing media have been particularly hostile towards pro-Palestinian voices, framing them as supporters of terrorism and anti-Semites as well as being hostile to British values.

British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan has launched a new series which sets out to debunk misinformation around Israel’s war on Gaza.

“Israeli officials have told so many lies since October 7 with so little pushback from the media that it’s hard to keep up. So here, from Zeteo, is the first in a new segment we’re calling, ‘The top seven lies about Gaza debunked’,” he says in a video posted on X.

Hasan, who most recently worked for MSNBC, launched his own media company, Zeteo, in January.

Five Palestinian armed groups fighting against Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip did not report any attacks on Tuesday, while two other groups reported one attack each against Israel’s military in the enclave. In what monitors described as “anomalously low” reports of fighting, the drop followed a day after Palestinian armed groups said on Monday that they had launched at least 15 onslaughts against Israeli forces in Gaza.

“This drop in claims represents a sharp decrease in Palestinian militia activity across the Gaza Strip, but it does not indicate that Israeli action has destroyed or defeated Hamas,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) said.

According to the ISW and CTP, both US-based defence think tanks, there are two possible conclusions to be drawn from the silence: Israeli forces are no longer permanently present in Gaza City, therefore there are fewer targets for Palestinian fighters to attack. Or, Palestinian fighters have encountered communications problems – though this would hardly affect all groups simultaneously, the monitors said.

“Palestinian militias appear to conduct a spirited defence when Israeli forces do present themselves as targets deep in the Gaza Strip,” the ISW/CTP also noted, adding that Palestinian fighters attacked Israeli forces 92 times in 11 days during Israel’s recent operation to clear the Zeitoun neighbourhood.

An Israeli settlement-planning authority has pushed forward permits for 3,500 new settlement homes in the occupied West Bank, according to an announcement by Israeli Minister of National Missions Orit Strock.

Pending final approval, the homes are to be built in the Israeli settlements of Maale Adumim, Kedar and Efrat, which are all close to Jerusalem, reports The Times of Israel. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the new planned settlements will add to a record number approved for the occupied West Bank this year. “The enemies try to harm and weaken us but we will continue to build and be built up in this land,” he wrote on X.

South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to order additional emergency measures against Israel, which it says is breaching the measures already in place, the United Nations’ top court says.

In January the World Court, as the ICJ is also known, ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the UN’s Genocide Convention and to ensure its troops commit no genocidal acts against Palestinians, after South Africa accused Israel of state-led genocide.

In February, South Africa had lodged an “urgent request” with the ICJ to consider whether Israel’s military operations targeting Rafah breach provisional orders the court handed down on January 26.

South Africa asks ICJ for immediate ceasefire in Gaza, citing famine

Germany has called on the Israeli government to immediately withdraw the approval of further settlements in the West Bank, saying building settlements in occupied Palestinian territories was a serious violation of international law.

Commenting on Israel’s Supreme Planning Authority approving plans for constructing around 3,500 new housing units in the settlements of Maale Adumim, Kedar and Efrat, the ministry said: “We strongly condemn the approval of further settlement units in the West Bank.”

Seven injured in Israeli raid on Bethlehem refugee camp: Official

Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, has warned of strict actions if UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres does not invoke Article 99 of the UN Charter regarding Israeli captives held in Gaza and initiate a UN Security Council discussion on alleged sexual crimes committed by Hamas.

“Israel should ‘break the tools’ and take severe actions, including closing the UN headquarters in Jerusalem, deporting senior UN officials from Israel and evacuating UNRWA compounds from Jerusalem,” he said in a post on X.

Article 99 allows the secretary-general to “bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.

In December, Guterres invoked Article 99, urging the UN Security Council to act on the war in Gaza. The US vetoed the resulting resolution.

UK’s Cameron tells Israel’s Gantz ‘must change’ aid flow into Gaza

Israeli rights group HaMoked says that as of March, Israel is imprisoning 9,077 Palestinians, including more than 3,500 held without charge in administrative detention. The data, HaMoked says, was provided by the Israel Prison Service.

“Holding prisoners and detainees from the [occupied Palestinian territories] inside Israel constitutes a blatant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibiting the transfer of prisoners and detainees outside the occupied territory, and also violates basic human rights enshrined, inter alia, in Israeli law,” the organisation says.

A Hamas delegation has left Cairo with the group saying ceasefire talks will continue until an agreement is reached.

Earlier, an official from the Palestinian group told the Reuters news agency that negotiations in Cairo failed to achieve a breakthrough as Israel rejected the group’s demands to end its offensive in the enclave, withdraw its forces, and ensure freedom of entry for aid and the return of displaced people.

Israel “thwarted” all attempts by mediators to reach an agreement, Sami Abu Zuhri said.

The European Union has agreed to launch a probe into whether Israel is complying with human rights obligations stipulated in its trade deal with the bloc, according to the EU’s top diplomat.

Josep Borrell, in a blog post, said the Spanish and and Irish governments have asked European institutions to check whether Israel’s actions in Gaza comply with the human rights clauses in the EU-Israel Association Agreement. “We will carry out this work,” he said.

The accord, signed in 2000, sets out a framework for free trade in goods, services and capital, based on “respect for human rights and democratic principles”.

Israel’s aims in Gaza appear to ‘go beyond destroying Hamas’: EU top diplomat