The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says in its latest report that approximately 300 houses have been demolished by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since October 7.

It says 1,640 Palestinians have been displaced within the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since that time. At 57 percent, over half of them have been displaced since the start of January.

“The majority of those displaced (903) were during operations carried out by Israeli forces, especially in refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarm, followed by displacement due to the lack of Israeli-issued permits (640), and displacement due to the demolition of homes on punitive grounds (138).”

Bernie Sanders says US ‘virtually alone in the world’ in defending Israel

The U.S., virtually alone in the world, is defending Israel’s right-wing government, which is waging total war and destruction against the Palestinian people.

This is a failure decades in the making. We need to fundamentally reorient U.S. foreign policy. https://t.co/6dunT9y42Z

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 18, 2024

UK ‘must respect rule of law’ on arms exports to Israel: Global Legal Action Network

Al Jazeera correspondent Biesan Abu Kwaik has asked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesperson Farhan Haq about the arrest and beating of Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was taken by Israeli forces outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

The pair had the following exchange:

“He was severely beaten,” Abu Kwaik said of al-Ghoul. “He was stripped of his clothing, and then he was taken to an unknown location. Other journalists also were detained, and equipment, broadcast and corporate, was destroyed. Do you have any comments on that?”

“We stand against any harassment of journalists anywhere in the world,” Haq responded. “And certainly we do so in this instance. Our sympathies go to your colleague as well as to all the other journalists who suffered from any violence during the course of this incident.”

Al Jazeera journalist released from Israeli detention

Ismail al-Ghoul gives interview on his detention by Israeli forces

Israeli military says 200 arrested at al-Shifa Hospital

This disturbing footage, originally posted by photographer Omar El Qattaa and verified by Al Jazeera, shows the immediate aftermath of the latest Israeli strike on northern Gaza.

Israeli air attacks on two houses and an apartment in Rafah in southern Gaza have killed at least 14 people and injured several more, the Wafa news agency reports. The Israeli strikes hit the Musabah, Khirbet Al-Adas and Al-Jeneina neighbourhoods in Rafah. Women and children were killed in the attacks, Wafa reported.

Footage, verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad agency, shows the dead and wounded arriving in ambulances at the Kuwaiti hospital.

Israeli forces have shelled a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza on Monday evening, killing at least eight Palestinians, including children, according to the Wafa news agency. Citing witnesses, the agency said the house belonged to the al-Banna family and was destroyed completely. Many others were wounded, it said.

European Union foreign ministers on Monday have “unanimously” approved sanctions against violent settlers who harass Palestinians in the West Bank, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told reporters after meeting with his EU counterparts in Brussels.

“Today, we have approved, unanimously, the sanctions against the violent settlers that harass the Palestinians in the West Bank,” he said.

This move follows several rounds of sanctions against extremist settlers linked to violent attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Israel’s Smotrich says one response to EU sanctions: ‘Entrenching’ settlements

Israeli settlers attack villages south of Nablus with military protection

مستوطنون يهاجمون منازل على أطراف قرية بورين جنوب نابلس#حرب_غزة #فيديو pic.twitter.com/pDlLelGf8f

— الجزيرة فلسطين (@AJA_Palestine) March 18, 2024

Speaking to reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem, UN official Jamie McGoldrick said the organisation’s humanitarian body could not plan its Gaza aid operation for more than two or three days ahead because of conditions he described as uncertain and unstable.

“It would be a really difficult scenario for us to envisage the possibility of hundreds of thousands of people being forced from Rafah because of the incursion,” he said. “We are not in a position to contingency plan that. We’re not in a position to pre-position shelter, material, food, medical supplies and especially water … It will be a real problem for us.”

Defying international calls to halt its military operation, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to push into Rafah on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, where more than half of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents have been sheltering in makeshift tents to escape the Israeli assault farther north.

“If there was to be an incursion, that [aid] system we have, which is already precarious and intermittent, would then be broken,” said McGoldrick.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to send a team of Israeli officials to Washington to discuss with Biden administration officials a prospective Rafah operation, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

“We’ve arrived at a point where each side has been making clear to the other its perspective,” Sullivan said.

Netanyahu has pushed for a ground operation into Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been sheltering, despite international calls saying such a move would be “catastrophic”.

Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has spoken on the phone with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the New Democratic Party in Canada pushed legislation in the country’s parliament to “officially recognise” the State of Palestine.

“I expressed that unilateral recognition, particularly following the 7th of October, is counterproductive to the mutual goal of long-term regional security and stability, and would ultimately reward terrorism,” Gantz said. “I reiterated to the PM that for the sake of the region, any unilateral actions should be avoided,” Gantz said, also thanking the Israel ally for “his personal commitment to Israel’s security”.

Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said on Monday that Canada will continue to back a two-state solution but will not change its overall foreign policy based on the legislation.

I spoke today with Canadian Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau.

I conveyed my appreciation to The Prime Minister for his personal commitment to Israel’s security.

In light of the upcoming vote in Canada’s parliament calling for the unilateral recognision of a Palestinian State, I…

— בני גנץ - Benny Gantz (@gantzbe) March 18, 2024

The Al Masirah television channel, run by the Houthis in Yemen, has reported 10 new air attacks by the US and UK militaries.

It said the attacks targeted the al-Jabbana and al-Faza areas in the port city of Hodeidah, which has been a main target of the US-UK air strikes that have hit multiple governorates across Yemen since the Houthis started targeting cargo and military vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November in support of the Palestinians.

Efforts to limit environmental damage from a cargo vessel that sank after a Houthi missile strike and another vessel abandoned in a separate attack are on hold until attacks on ships let up, the UN’s maritime shipping regulator says.

The UK-owned ship Rubymar last month became the first vessel lost since the Houthis began targeting commercial ships in the Red Sea area in November. The Greek-owned True Confidence was then abandoned this month after being set ablaze in an attack that killed a few of its crew members near Yemen’s port city of Aden.

“We’re limited in what we can do in an area that is not safe and secure,” Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization, said at a media briefing in London.

The Houthis say their campaign against commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden is a show of solidarity with Palestinians against Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

The UN Security Council has “condemned in the strongest terms” attacks by the Houthi group in Yemen on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, including the March 6 attack on the True Confidence that killed two Filipino members and one Vietnamese member of the ship’s crew.

Council members demanded that Houthi attacks against commercial vessels cease, urged caution and restraint to avoid further escalation and “reaffirmed that the exercise of navigational rights and freedoms by merchant and commercial vessels of all States transiting the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab, in accordance with international law, must be respected”.

“The Council members recalled the importance of enhancing international and regional cooperation to counter threats to peace and security in the region and called for a de-escalation in the Red Sea to preserve the peace process in Yemen.”

Oh look the UNSC can demand a ceasefire for attacks on ships, just not for genocide, deliberate starvation of 2.3 million people and the systematic destruction of Gaza. Demand a ceasefire in Gaza, get it done, and the Red Sea will de-escalate.

The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) says it destroyed “seven anti-ship missiles, three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and three weapons storage containers” in attacks on Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

In a post on X, CENTCOM said it determined that “these weapons presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and U.S. Navy ships in the region”.

Israeli forces launched several missiles at military sites near the Syrian capital, Damascus, resulting in some “material damage”, according to the official SANA news agency.

Citing the Syrian government, SANA said Israeli forces launched the missiles from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights. It said Syrian air defences intercepted and shot down some of the missiles.