Gaza live: Israeli attack hits Unrwa centre

The Israeli government is still discussing ways to impose heavy duty on Turkish products and impose a licensing protocol on their imports, three sources familiar with the issue told Middle East Eye, despite criticism from local businesses.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far right nationalist, said on Sunday that the tariff increase on imports from Turkey is a “suitable zionist answer” to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who halted bilateral trade in May until Israel approves a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza.

Smotrich said he would propose to the cabinet the cancellation of all reduced customs rates applicable to goods imported from Turkey under a 1996 free trade agreement, and impose additional duty at a rate of 100 percent of the value of any Turkish product.

Smotrich's proposal suggested that such a measure must remain in effect until Erdogan’s presidential term is completed.

Israeli media reports have indicated that discussions were also under way to force companies interested in importing Turkish goods to acquire licences from the government.

Read more: Smotrich talks tough but Israel is in no hurry to sanction Turkey

Israeli forces have detained at least 90 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the first day of Eid al-Adha on Sunday, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society. 

Among those detained were children, three women, and several previously freed Palestinian prisoners, the group said. 

It added that the number of Palestinians in the West Bank detained since 7 October had reached 9,280. 

Khaled Mhajne, a lawyer who was able to meet Palestinian prisoners in the now-infamous Sde Teiman Israeli detention camp, described what he called a "criminal" situation "beyond imagination".

Mhajne told Al Araby Al Jadeed that over 1,000 Palestinians from Gaza are being held in Sde Teiman.

"They sleep on the ground without blankets and pillows, and the Israeli forces deal with them in a criminal manner," he said.

Mhajne met with detained journalist Mohammad Arab, who has been "isolated from the world for months".

Detainees are not allowed to speak to each other, and each one of them is given a singular minute to shower, and is penalised if they take longer, the lawyer said.

Additonally, he said that "there are cases of rape and sexual abuse against Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons".

"The war being waged against Palestinian prisoners, especially against the prisoners from the Gaza Strip, is a war no less criminal than what the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are experiencing," he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party appeared to accuse far-right National Security Minsiter Itamar Ben Gvir of leaking private conversations after media reports said the premier privately offered to include Ben Gvir group of cabinet members receiving security reviews in echange for the latter's support for a controversial bill regulating the appointment of state rabbis.

The Likud said that the articles are "full of inaccuracies" and that Netanyahu told Ben Gvir " one simple thing: whoever wants to be a partner in a limited security consultation team must prove that he is not leaking state secrets or private conversations".

Otzma Yehudit, the party Ben Gvir leads, responded by saying it supports a law that requires cabinet members to undergo polygraph tests, and it "calls on the prime minister to promote it quickly, provided that it also applies to owners of a pacemaker".

Netanyahu had a pacemaker fitted last year.

An Israeli air strike has hit a three-storey building in al-Burgholiyeh, north of Tyre, south Lebanon.

غارات البرغلية استهدفت منزلاً من ثلاث طبقات في بستان مطل على البحر pic.twitter.com/o8WNsZGS21

— جريدة الأخبار - Al-Akhbar (@AlakhbarNews) June 19, 2024

Gaza's health ministry said that 37,396 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on the enclave since the start of the war, 24 of them in the past 24 hours.

Additionally, 85,523 people have been wounded.

Israeli forces may have violated the laws of war in their campaign in the Gaza Strip, The UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on Wednesday.

In a report that assessed six Israeli attacks that caused a high number of casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure, the OHCHR said that Israeli forces "may have systematically violated the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack".

"The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel's bombing campaign," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.

Reports from the occupied West Bank are saying that Israeli settlers have set fire to olive trees in Burin, south of Nablus as well as Burqa, east of Ramallah.

20 settlers came today from the direction of the Yitzhar settlement and invaded the village of Burin. They burned agricultural land and olive trees, set fire to a car, and wounded several Palestinians. Soldiers who were nearby stood idly by and did not attempt to stop the crimes. pic.twitter.com/jlnYySrXTV

— Yesh Din English (@Yesh_Din) June 18, 2024

The Israeli army conducted two separate air strikes on military positions in Syria, one in the Quneitra countryside and another in the Daraa countryside, killing one Syrian officer, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

The Australian Border Force has "intervened" at the border to ask at least three Australians heading to Israel if they plan to serve in the country's military, the Guardian reports.

While official sources told the outlet that Australia's Criminal Code does not prohibit citizens from serving in another country's armed forces, the government those who seek to do so "to carefully consider their legal obligations and ensure their conduct does not constitute a criminal offence".

The Australian federal police has the power to investigate war crimes and other serious offences committed overseas.

Israel bombed tents in Gaza’s al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone”, killing at least seven people overnight, the Wafa news agency reported.

Tents were reportedly set ablaze following the strikes in what the Palestinian agency called a “massacre”.

Wafa added that Israeli forces also bombed tents near Khan Younis, southern Gaza, and homes in the Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza.

Additionally, Axios says the White House cancelled a high-level US-Israel meeting on Iran that was scheduled for Thursday after Netanyahu’s video slamming the Biden administration for allegedly withholding weapons.

“This decision makes it clear that there are consequences for pulling such stunts,” one US official said.

READ MORE: Israel bombs Gaza 'humanitarian zone', killing at least seven

Our live coverage from Gaza will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are some of the day's key developments

• Gaza's health ministry said that 25 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on the enclave in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 37,372 people killed since the start of the war on Gaza on 7 October

• Gaza's government said in a statement that 3,500 children are at risk of dying due to malnourishment as a result of Israel's war and siege on the Palestinian enclave

• US presidential envoy Amos Hochstein landed in Beirut on Tuesday following his trip to Israel, in another bid to avoid wider conflict between Israel and Hezbollah

• US presidential envoy Amos Hochstein landed in Beirut following his trip to Israel, in another bid to avoid wider conflict between Israel and Hezbollah

• A senior doctor from Gaza died while under Shin Bet investigation in November, six days after Israeli forces arrested him from the Palestinian enclave, Haaretz reports

• Israel's war on Gaza has created unprecedented soil, water and air pollution, destroyed sanitation systems and left tons of debris from explosive devices, according to a UN report on the environmental impact of the war published on Tuesday

• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that there is "momentum potentially in the direction" toward war between Israel and Hezbollah

• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that there is "momentum potentially in the direction" toward war between Israel and Hezbollah

• Editors on Wikipedia have voted to label the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as "generally unreliable" regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on Tuesday

The US military claimed that it had destroyed eight Houthi drones in Yemen and one over the Gulf of Aden in the past 24 hours.

US Central Command said on on X that there were no injuries or damage reported to US coalition or merchant vessels in the incident.

Wikipedia's editors voted to declare the Anti-Defamation League "generally unreliable" on Israel and Palestine as well as the issue of antisemitism, adding the organisation to a list of banned sources, according to a report by the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA).

The report said that an "overwhelming majority" of Wikipedia editors voted to deem the organisation unreliable.

Middle East Eye reached out to Wikipedia for comment on the report.

The decision puts the pro-Israel organisation, which has a long history of demonising Palestine activism, in a group alongside the National Inquirer, Newsmax, TMZ, and the conspiracist website Infowars.

"ADL no longer appears to adhere to a serious, mainstream and intellectually cogent definition of antisemitism, but has instead given into the shameless politicisation of the very subject that it was originally esteemed for being reliable on," wrote a Wikipedia editor known as Iskandar323, as reported by JTA.

Read more: Wikipedia declares Anti-Defamation League 'unreliable' on Israel, antisemitism: Report

According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, Israeli forces shot three Palestinian youths on Tuesday night in Beit Ummar, a town in the occupied West Bank south of Hebron.

Media activist Muhammad Awad reported to Wafa that clashes in the al-Dhahr area led to Israeli soldiers using live ammunition against the young men.

Wafa detailed that one youth sustained a gunshot wound to the foot, while the other two were injured by bullets and shrapnel.