Gaza live: Israeli attack hits Unrwa centre
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Norway's international development minister, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, said on Monday that the country will increase its current roughly $25 million budget to Unrwa by another roughly $9 million.
Egyptian security forces in Alexandria have detained more than 250 fans of Al Ahly Football Club at Borg El Arab Stadium for raising the Palestinian flag and chanting in solidarity with Gaza, according to a local rights group.
The crackdown is the latest in a series of measures against pro-Palestine activism in Egypt since October, with more than 120 people detained for protesting against Israel's war on Gaza, including students and two children.
The fans were detained during their team's match against Farco on Friday, according to the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF).
Children aged 13 and 15 were among those detained, according to ECRF. The group said that authorities had yet to confirm the detention of the fans, and that many were released a day later.
Read more: Egypt detains 250 Al Ahly fans over pro-Palestine chants
Gaza's government media office has condemned Israel and the United States for “deliberately" withholding humanitarian aid from Gaza as a "tool for political pressure."
The media office added that around 2.4 million Palestinians are living in dire conditions, with famine taking old in Gaza's north.
Continued border closures have deprived tens of thousands of sick and wounded people of badly needed food and medicine, it said.
Yair Golan, leader of Israel's Labour Party, has condemned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bill to exempt ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service.
Golan said that the move would "seriously undermine [Israel's] national security."
“This bad government has chosen to increase the burden on those serving in the ranks of the compulsory army and the reserves and to continue giving political bribes to coalition partners on the backs of all our sons and daughters,” he added.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid met with representatives of his Yesh Atid party to discuss strategies to block the passage of the coalition's ultra-Orthodox draft exemption bill.
If approved, the contentious legislation, which has been put forward by Israel's government, would lower the age of exemption from service for Torah students from 26 to 21, and aims to "very slowly" increase conscription among the ultra-Orthodox.
Lapid spoke to his party members ahead of a debate in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the bill, saying that: “I believe that there are decent people in the committee from all factions of the house whose conscience and values will not allow them to pass the law as it is."
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should dissolve the Israeli government, following the leader's decision to disband the war cabinet after the resignation of key opposition figure Benny Gantz.
Lapid applauded Gantz's decision as "important and correct".
"The time has come to replace this extreme and reckless government with a sane government that will lead to the return of security to the citizens of Israel, to the return of the abducted, to the restoration of Israel's economy and international status," he added.
Lapid, who has emerged as a key figure in the antigovernment protests, has urged the government to secure a hostage release deal with Hamas and repeatedly called for Netanyahu's resignation.
US Special Envoy Amos Hochstein is set to meet with the Israeli leadership, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, on Monday to discuss de-escalation between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, the Times of Israel is reporting.
Hochstein brokered an Israel-Lebanon boundary agreement in 2022.
Last month he told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that he did not expect “everlasting peace” between Israel and Hezbollah.
Russia's human rights commissioner is renewing calls on senior UN officials to act to secure the release of Russian hostages held in Gaza.
In a statement on Telegram, Tatyana Moskalkova said that she had appealed to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross Mirjana Spoljaric, and other officials, after speaking to the hostages' relatives.
There are reportedly five captives with Russian passports still held captive, while three others have been released.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee and the Gaza-based Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children have started constructing Gaza's first shelter for people with disabilities in Deir el-Balah.
When Israel's war on Gaza began in October, there were an estimated 50,000 people with disabilities.
Most shelters in Gaza are facing dangerous overcrowding and are not equipped to cater to special medical needs.
The PRCS disaster risk management teams, in partnership with the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees and the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children, have started building the first shelter camp for people with disabilities in the Gaza Strip. Located in Deir al-Balah in central… pic.twitter.com/zAWkUFEGuL
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) June 17, 2024
Israeli forces have killed Palestinian reporter Mahmoud Qasem, bringing the death toll among journalists and media workers in Gaza since 7 October to 151.
According to the Gaza-based government media office, Qasem worked for the Falasteen online news outlet.
عاجل 🔴 | المكتب الإعلامي الحكومي في #غزة: ارتفاع عدد #الشهداء #الصحفيين إلى 151 صحفياً وصحفية منذ بدء حرب الإبادة الجماعية على قطاع غزة
— الخليج أونلاين (@AlkhaleejOnline) June 17, 2024
🇵🇸📷📰🎙🗞
| #الخليج_أونلاين
⭕️- ذلك بعد ارتقاء الزميل الصحفي "محمود قاسم"
⭕️- صحفي في صحيفة #فلسطين وموقعها الإلكتروني "فلسطين أون لاين" pic.twitter.com/IHBGLzhKSQ
Gaza is now likely to have the largest number of child amputees of any conflict in modern history.
That number has risen enormously in line with Israel’s ongoing onslaught through densely populated areas in a strip no longer than a marathon route.
One of the challenges of telling the truth about the effects of Israel’s war on Gaza’s civilian population has been the refusal by Israeli authorities to allow access to foreign journalists into Gaza.
While Palestinian journalists have been killed in record numbers covering the massacre of their own people, no foreign news outlets have pushed hard enough for access for their own journalists.
This has meant the conflict has been heavily skewed in favour of an Israeli official narrative, designed to protect the framing of the violence as defensive, despite its continuity with a history of ethnic cleansing, and the huge level of harm to all forms of life and infrastructure.
Read more: The TikTok generation is seeing the truth about Israel's war on Gaza by Myriam François
The Palestinian Authority could collapse in the coming months, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said on Monday, citing a lack of funding, continuing violence and the fact that half a million Palestinians are not allowed to work in Israel.
"The Palestinian Authority, with whom we work closely, are warning us that they might be collapsing this summer," Barth Eide told Reuters.
Norway chairs the international donor group to the Palestinians and is a backer of the PA.
Reporting by Reuters
Israeli forces have killed at least 10 Palestinians and wounded 73 more in the past 24 hours, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
This brings the Palestinian death toll since 7 October to 37,347, with more than 85,372 wounded and an estimated 10,000 missing, likely dead and buried under rubble.
Health officials report that over 70 percent of the victims are children and women.
An Israeli drone strike hit a car near in the Selaa village in Tyre on Monday, according to Lebanese media reports.
The Lebanese National News Agency said ambulances were dispatched to the scene. There were no immediate reported of injuries.
فرق الإسعاف نقلت مصاباً من السيارة المستهدفة في #سلعا. pic.twitter.com/uuDxR6Xbf7
— جريدة الأخبار - Al-Akhbar (@AlakhbarNews) June 17, 2024
Nothing has changed on the ground after the Israeli military announced "tactical pauses" along a road in Rafah, as hostilities continue across the Gaza Strip, Unrwa chief Philippe Lazzarini said on Monday.
Speaking from Oslo, Lazzarini added that Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, has funding until July but the future beyond that was unknown.
He also warned that a "silent war" was taking placed in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli military announced a "tactical pause" on Sunday along a key road in Rafah to facilitate aid delivery, but later backtracked and said operations there would not stop after coming under pressure from the government.
Reporting by Reuters and MEE staff
