Gaza live: Gaza death toll rises to 35,80

Israeli forces killed at least 35 Palestinians in aerial and ground attacks across the besieged Gaza Strip on Thursday, according to the Reuters news agency.

Israeli tanks advanced in southeastern Rafah towards the city’s western district of Yibna and continued operations in three eastern suburbs, residents told Reuters.

“The occupation [Israel] is trying to move further to the west. They are on the edge of Yibna, which is densely populated. They didn’t invade it yet,” one resident told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

“We hear explosions and we see black smoke coming up from the areas where the army has invaded. It was another very difficult night,” he told Reuters via a chat app.

A recent report in the Washington Post highlighted that conversations between top US officials about a potential end to Israel's war on Gaza are formulating into a multi-step plan but a "still-fuzzy day after".

The reported five-point plan, however, does not describe a concrete end to an Israeli security presence in Gaza and paves the way for an ongoing Israeli occupation of the Strip with Hamas not fully eliminated.

One aspect of the plan that Israel has finalised is its assault on Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled since the start of Israel's war.

The invasion would not be the full-scale one Israeli leaders were touting earlier this year, and would, according to US officials, be a "more limited assault" that Washington thinks "will result in fewer civilian casualties".

Read more: Reported US-Israel plan for Gaza 'day after' leaves enclave in 'permanent instability'

The Israeli Prime Minister's office has directed its negotiating team to resume communications regarding a potential truce deal following a war council meeting, according to Israel’s Channel 12.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not specify the negotiating team's mandate.

Earlier this month, talks fell apart after Hamas accepted a truce draft and Israel rejected the offer.

Last week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held two days of hearings on a request from South Africa to halt Israel's military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The top UN court will deliver its order on the additional measures requested by South Africa on Friday afternoon.

During the hearings, South Africa asked the ICJ, also known as the World Court, to order a halt to Israel’s invasion of Gaza, particularly in Rafah, to ensure the survival of the Palestinian people.

A transfer of eleven Guantanamo detainees to Oman was scheduled for October 2023, when Hamas's attack on southern Israel halted the process, US officials have now acknowledged after American TV broadcaster NBC published the news on Monday. 

Last October, the Biden administration planned and nearly executed the resettlement of eleven detainees who had been cleared for transfer by national security review panels. The detainees to be released are of Yemeni origin or have ties to the country and are being held at the military prison without having been charged with crimes. 

A military cargo plane was reportedly already on the runway at Guantanamo Bay, at the eastern end of Cuba, when the mission was called off, according to security officials, and the plane took off without the group. 

Usually, such detainee movements are kept secret until completed, but the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to NBC, acknowledged the aborted mission.

Read more: Secret Guantanamo prisoner transfer halted by war on Gaza: Report

The Israeli army has pulled out of Jenin after a raid lasting over 40 hours in the occupied West Bank city, according to Palestinian media reports.

At least 12 people were killed and more than a dozen injured during Israels bloody assault in the city and adjacent refugee camp, which began on Tuesday.

There is no confirmation from the Israeli military of a withdrawal from Jenin.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has gathered evidence of “horrific crimes” committed by Israeli forces who routinely subjected Palestinians to enforced disappearance, murder, torture, inhuman treatment and sexual violence.

The Geneva-based group interviewed more than 100 Palestinians and their testimonies confirmed the Israeli use of physical and psychological torture against Palestinian civilian detainees, including “beatings with the intent to kill, sexual violence, electrocution, blindfolding, and long-term hand and foot shackles”, said.

“Israel also denied them access to food and medical care, including critical and life-saving care, spat and urinated on detainees, and committed other cruel and degrading acts,” it said.

A Palestinian man was shot in the head and killed by an Israeli sniper in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, according to a report by the Palestinian Quds News Network.

The Israeli military has laid siege to Jabalia in recent days, with six people killed in a missile strike on a home in the city’s al-Faluja area on Wednesday.

Washington strongly opposes an “outrageous” request submitted by International Criminal Court (ICC) the US Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III told his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant.

Earlier this week prosecutor Karim Khan issued arrest warrants against Gallant and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

“Secretary Austin reiterated strong US objections to the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s outrageous application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders,” the statement said.

Austin also added that he “encouraged the Israeli government to conclude talks with Egypt to reopen the Rafah Crossing and resume the flow of aid from Egypt” on a call with Gallant.

An Israeli drone attacked a vehicle in the Nabatieh region of southern Lebanon, according to reports across Lebanese social networks.

According to some reports, the attack killed two Hezbollah members who were sitting in the vehicle, and wounded several students who were in a bus passing by.

The Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin said that Dublin's decision to recognise a Palestinian state stems from Israel's attempts to undermine the possibility of reaching a two-state solution.

In an interview with CNN, the Irish foreign minister said that Ireland had committed to recognising a Palestinian state as early as 2020, and is discussing it with many other countries in Europe and the Middle East.

"There is a growing impatience with the lack of any political will on behalf of Israel toward a political track and toward realising that in our view, a two-state solution is the only way that Israelis and Palestinians can live in harmony side by side," he said.

Defense for Children International Palestine called on the US to stop sending weapons that the Israeli military uses to kill Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank.

The children’s rights group identified the killing in Jenin of two 15-year-old boys by Israeli snipers on Tuesday morning – one of whom was “returning home from school on his electric bicycle” and killed “in circumstances that may amount to extrajudicial or wilful killings”.

“The United States must stop sending weapons to the Israeli military that are used to kill Palestinian children without restraint, whether in Gaza or Jenin,” the organisation said in a statement.

The death toll from the days-long military incursion in Jenin has now rising to 12, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, after man died from wounds sustained during Israel’s raid on the Jenin refugee camp.

The latest victim, 30-year-old Mustafa Ibrahim Musa Jabarin, died at al-Razi Hospital in Jenin a short while ago, the facility’s director told Wafa.

Other victims include four children, a teacher and a doctor.

For 76 years, Israel had a narrative more robust as a protective shield than any Iron Dome.

For the victims of the worst case of industrial killing in modern history, self-determination for post-Holocaust Jewry was not merely a necessity, this narrative went, it was a moral imperative. Any state that emerged was immune from judgement, the story went. Israel was beyond international law.

It was allowed to have indeterminate borders. It was allowed to occupy. It was allowed to settle the areas it occupied. It was allowed to regularly attack its neighbours pre-emptively. It was allowed nuclear weapons, outside the control of any regulatory authority. 

It could violently discriminate against its non-Jewish minority and still be accepted into the family of democratic nations. It was not just allowed to lay siege to Gaza and starve the territory’s population for 16 years, it was assisted in this by the international community.

Read more: The ICC has suspended Israel's licence to kill

It's day 230 of Israel's war on Gaza. This is a recap of the last few hours to get you up to speed this morning:

• The death toll from Israel’s two-day raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin has risen to 11, including four children, the Palestinian Health Ministry says
• Ireland, Norway and Spain have said they will formally recognise Palestinian statehood next week, with Slovenia saying they may soon follow suit
• Washington has warned Israel against withholding Palestinian Authority funds after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he would withhold tax revenue
• Israeli military bombs house in Nuseirat camp in Gaza, killing eight
• Israeli forces kill 10 Palestinians in attack on mosque in Gaza City