Gaza live: UN warns of 'calamitous' West Bank situation as Syria strikes kill at least 16

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to convene an emergency meeting to discuss Israel's war in Gaza.

Erdogan called on Muslim-majority nations to form an alliance against what he described as Israel's "expansionism".

Following a cabinet meeting in Ankara, Erdogan said Israel was also targeting Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, saying it was a part of its "expansionist" drive.

Erdogan said that Al-Aqsa is a "red line" for Turkey.

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir recently said he would build a synagogue within Al-Aqsa Mosque complex if given the opportunity.

Ben Gvir has also repeatedly led religious extremists in storming Al-Aqsa Mosque, actions that have been widely condemned as highly provocative and incendiary.

"It is unthinkable for the OIC, whose duty is to take care of the Jerusalem cause, to remain indifferent to these attacks. It is urgent that the organisation convenes at the leadership level without losing more time," Erdogan said.

US State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said that Israel is looking into how Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was killed last week in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Eygi was killed by Israeli forces – she was shot in the head – during a demonstration against illegal settlement activity in the West Bank.

Patel urged Israel to quickly conclude its investigation.

“We expect that process to be thorough, transparent,” Patel told a news briefing.

Axios is reporting, based on a diplomatic cable, that Israel is lobbying members of the US Congress to press South Africa to drop its case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in which Pretoria is calling on the court to label Israel's actions against Palestinians a genocide.

"We are asking you to immediately work with lawmakers on the federal and state level, with governors and Jewish organizations to put pressure on South Africa to change its policy towards Israel and to make clear that continuing their current actions like supporting Hamas and pushing anti-Israeli moves in international courts will come with a heavy price," read the cable from Israel's foreign ministry to Israel's embassy and all consulates in the US.

According to Axios, Israeli diplomats were instructed to reach out to South African diplomats in the US and tell them their country will "pay a heavy price" if it doesn't change its policy towards Israel.

The Israeli diplomats were also instructed to ask US lawmakers to issue statements saying South Africa's ICJ case could lead to a suspension of US-South Africa trade, a highly unlikely possibility.

Israel's military said that two of its soldiers were injured in a drone attack near the Lebanese border.

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it targeted a military base in the area.

The Israeli military also said it struck several Hezbollah observation posts in southern Lebanon.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he will take "every legal step" to achieve justice for the killing of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, the Turkish American activist killed last week by Israeli forces while she was protesting illegal Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

Those steps could include taking the issue to the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Erdogan said he will ensure Eygi's blood "does not go in vain".

An influential patron of a pro-Israel legal advocacy group seeking to challenge the UK government’s decision to suspend some arms exports to Israel has resigned from the organisation and said he supports the partial ban.

Lord Carlile, a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, told MEE he had resigned as a patron of UK Lawyers for Israel but had no further comment.

Writing for the Independent website on Monday, Lord Carlile said that the decision by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to suspend 30 export licences was the right one.

Carlile also accused the previous foreign secretary, David Cameron, of sitting on the same legal advice relied on by his successor, David Lammy, since February.

To read the full story, click below.

UK Lawyers for Israel patron quits, says Starmer right to suspend arms exports

Multiple news outlets are reporting that several Palestinians were killed in an Israeli bombing in the area of Tal al-Hawa in northern Gaza.

The bombing reportedly took place near the Jordanian Hospital. One report states that three were killed, and another states that at least five people were killed.

At least 40,988 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday.

The new toll includes 16 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry. An additional 94,825 people have also been wounded.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society and the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs said in a joint statement that at least 12 Palestinians were detained by Israel during overnight raids in the West Bank, according to reporting by Al Jazeera.

Among those detained was a female journalist.

The joint statement added that 20 people were placed under administrative detention, including three women from Hebron.

A new report by Defence for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) details how Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 140 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank since 7 October.

The researchers at DCIP documented the number of Palestinian children killed between 7 October 2023 and 31 July 2024, which totalled 141 children.

On average, this comes out to Israeli forces and settlers killing a child every two days during this period.

In many cases, the children were targeted by snipers, who are regularly deployed during military incursions into Palestinian communities across the West Bank.

To read the full story, click below.

Israeli forces 'kill a Palestinian child every two days' in West Bank

A funeral was held for the 26-year-old Turkish American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who was killed last week by Israeli forces who shot her in the head.

Hundreds of mourners gathered in Nablus to pay their respects to Eygi. Her body was wrapped in a Palestinian flag, with her head covered by a keffiyeh.

Last week, Eygi was shot dead by Israeli forces after participating in a protest against illegal Israeli settlement expansion in the town of Beita, south of Nablus.

An activist who was with Eygi at the time told Middle East Eye that she and other volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement had been attending the weekly demonstration at Beita.

The activist said they retreated from soldiers, who had shot tear gas into the crowd. Then two rounds of live ammunition were fired at the group, the activist said, one of which struck Eygi in the head.

"It was a deliberate shot to the head," the activist told MEE.

The commemoration was postponed from Sunday, due to a dispute between the US and Turkey over "details such as the burial location and the route her body would take," Mahmud al-Aloul, a senior Fatah official, told the AFP news agency.

Israel's actions in the occupied West Bank are worsening a "calamitous" situation, the UN rights chief said Monday.

Volker Turk decried soaring violence in the West Bank while opening a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

"In the West Bank, deadly and destructive operations, some at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades, are worsening a calamitous situation there, already aggravated by serious settler violence," Turk told the council.

Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth reports that the leaked Hamas documents used to describe the group's reported plans to smuggle Israeli captives out of Gaza were forged.

Speaking to military officials, the outlet says the documents were leaked in an attempt to influence public opinion and present a view that Hamas and its leader, Yahya Sinwar, were uninterested in a deal and working to frame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the failures of negotiations.

The documents were used by the UK's Jewish Chronicle and Germany's Bild.

Yedioth Ahronoth says that Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate is not aware of the document used by the Jewish Chronicle.

Additionally, Bild uses a document it claims shows Hamas' lack of interest in a deal with Israel, but the Israeli outlet says examination of the document does not show any reference to that.

Syria's foreign ministry said in a statement that 16 people were killed in the Israeli strikes on central Syria on Sunday and 36 were wounded, six of them in critical conditions.

"[Israel's] persistence in its attacks on Syrian territory and other countries in the region, and its continuation of its brutal war on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and its perpetration of the most horrific massacres and crimes of genocide against the Palestinians, only indicate the frantic pursuit of this bloody fascist entity for further escalation in the region and pushes it into dangerous slopes that will have dire consequences that cannot be predicted," the statement said.

A suspected drone from Lebanon hit a building in northern Israel's Nahariya, Israeli media reports.

Medics and rescue services are responding to initial reports of a direct impact on a building in Nahariya.

Sirens warning of a suspected drone infiltration are sounding in the northern coastal city and other communities near Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/HnZKbh0FdJ

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) September 9, 2024