Live: At least 22 Palestinians killed in strike on Gaza shelter, Hezbollah hits military base inside Israel

Israeli forces issued 13 stop-work notices against homes in the village of Jalboun, east of Jenin, Wafa news agency is reporting.

According to the head of the village council, Ibrahim al-Rab, Israeli troops stormed the village and delivered the notices to 13 houses, claiming they lacked building permits.

Rab said that the houses had been inhabited for years, and warned that they were now at risk from demolition.

Muslim civil society organisations have raised the alarm about a rising tide of state suppression of pro-Palestinian activism across Europe at a major security conference in Poland.

Speakers at this week’s Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) Warsaw Human Dimension Conference have included Elias d’Imzalene, a prominent French Muslim activist set to stand trial later this month over a speech in which he called for “intifada in Paris” during a pro-Palestine demonstration in September.

Addressing the conference on Monday, d’Imzalene said France had become “the spearhead of Islamophobia and discrimination in Europe”.

“This year, to make sure it remains ahead of the game, any activist calling for a ceasefire in Gaza is being severely persecuted. The state seeks to silence their voice by any means necessary,” d’Imzalene said, speaking on behalf of Perspectives Musulmanes, a French Muslim advocacy organisation.

D’Imzalene was arrested and held in custody over a speech at a protest in the French capital on 8 September in which he asked the crowd: “Are we ready to lead the intifada in Paris? In our suburbs? In our neighbourhoods?”

Read more: Pro-Palestine activism facing suppression in Europe, Muslim groups warn

Russia's foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Hezbollah has not "lost its chain of command" despite Israeli attacks.

"According to our assessments, Hezbollah, including the military wing, has not lost its chain of command and is demonstrating organisation," foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.

Hezbollah rockets fired from Lebanon towards the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona on Wednesday killed two people, Israel's ambulance service has said. 

Around 20 rockets were fired at the city a short while ago, the Israeli military said. 

The attack was claimed by Hezbollah, which said it targeted a gathering of Israeli soldiers in the city. 

The 7 October Hamas attack overwhelmed Israel and utterly changed its face. The country experienced a tactical defeat after a colossal failure by Israeli security forces, but it quickly recovered to launch a campaign of mass killings, population expulsions, territorial occupations, assassinations, and other terroristic operations, such as the pagers epic in Lebanon. 

Let’s not argue here over the value or cost of these violent actions, many of which were immoral and illegal. What cuts much deeper is the shift in morality and values that Israel has undergone since 7 October. 

The country’s ability to recover from this transformation is highly doubtful. No military victory can return Israel to what it was before 7 October.

Over the past year, Israel has united around several assumptions: firstly, that the massacre of 7 October had no context whatever, occurring solely because of what they percieved to be the innate bloodthirstiness and cruelty of Palestinians in Gaza. 

Secondly, all Palestinians bear the burden of guilt for Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians. And a third assumption relies on the first two: after this terrible massacre, Israel is allowed to do anything. No one anywhere has the right to try to stop it.

In the name of the right to self-defence, which from the perspective of Israeli values is a right reserved exclusively for Israelis but never for Palestinians, Israel may embark on unbridled campaigns of revenge and punishment for what Hamas did to it. 

In the name of its right to self-defence, Israel is allowed to expel hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in Gaza, perhaps never to return; wreak destruction indiscriminately across the territory; and kill more than 40,000 people, including many women and children. 

In the name of its right to self-defence, Israel is also permitted to eliminate the leaders of Hamas without any regard for “collateral damage” - which has not been “collateral” for a long time now - and to kill hundreds of people during assassination missions that Israel views as legitimate operations. 

Opinion: Israel has lost its humanity as it celebrates its power to kill by Gideon Levy

The Israeli army targeted northern Gaza with intense shelling and closed roads, preventing the delivery of aid, the war-torn enclave's civil defence agency said on Wednesday.

At the weekend, the Israeli army announced it had surrounded the Jabalia area of northern Gaza and it reissued new expulsion orders on Tuesday.

"The shelling is intensifying, targeting civilians and their homes, causing significant fear and terror among the residents," said Ahmad al-Kahlut, the agency's director in north Gaza.

He said the Israeli army was also targeting the northern towns of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanun along with Jabalia. 

"Roads have been closed, and there has been a continuous siege for the fourth consecutive day, with no supplies entering the North Gaza Governorate," Kahlut said.

According to the director, "a large number" of people have been killed in northern Gaza in recent days.

But he said counting the casualties had been complicated by the "difficulty of recovery and access to all areas".

He added that his agency had been receiving calls for help from various parts of northern Gaza, but staff had been unable to enter these areas for security reasons.

Reporting by AFP and MEE

The intensified Israeli military assault in the northern Gaza Strip is forcing Unrwa to shut down lifesaving services, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said. 

At least seven UN-run schools used as shelters for displaced people are being evacuated.

In the Jabalia refugee camp, which is being heavily attacked and tightly besiged by Israeli forces, only two out of eight water wells are currently operational, Unrwa said. 

🚨North #Gaza update

Intensified military operations in the north are forcing us to shut down lifesaving services

🔹7 @UNRWA schools sheltering displaced people are being evacuated

🔹Only 2 out of 8 water wells in Jabalia Camp are still operational pic.twitter.com/nWgXaf6q4g

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) October 9, 2024

Former French anti-terror judge Marc Trevidic said in an interview published on Wednesday that the increase in prosecutions for “apology for terrorism” in France since Israel’s war on Gaza constitutes "a real abuse" and a "totally misuse of the law".

"We can now claim that the bombings on Gaza are legitimate without being prosecuted," or being prosecuted within the framework of the press law, which includes many constraints for prosecution, "while a simple tag in support for Palestine makes you risk prison," he said.

Trevidic, who was in favour in the 2010s of a more severe repression of this offense, said France should "dare to backtrack" on this issue.

Created in 2006, the “apology for terrorism” offence falls under press law and therefore freedom of expression before being transferred to common law in 2014 to be punished more severely. The penalty incurred is five years in prison, seven in the event of online publication.

Since 7 October 2023, the number of reports and complaints for "apology for terrorism" has skyrocketed. At the end of April, the Paris prosecutor's office, which handles the majority of these cases, had 386 referrals related to this conflict.

In comparison, for the year 2022, the online hate unit had been contacted 500 times, all cases combined.

"We are seeing sentences raining down, sometimes very harsh, up to several years in prison," Trevidic said in the columns of the daily newspaper L’Humanité.

"We are in a real abuse, a totally perverted use of the law," he added.

Read more: France's 'apology for terrorism' law used to 'criminalise' Palestine solidarity

A Palestinian citizen of Israel wounded six people in a stabbing attack in Hadera in central Israel on Wednesday, police have said.  

He was identified as a 36-year-old resident of the Palestinian town of Umm al-Fahm. He was shot and arrested but his condition was not immediately clear.

According to Israeli media, he stabbed people at the three different locations, wounding six people, including two seriously. 
 

Since the 1948 Nakba, the tent has been a central symbol of the Palestinian narrative, representing displacement and a life of misery. 

Tents are meant to be temporary shelters in times of conflict, as we wait and hope that the tragedy will end soon. A prolonged tent life, however - as we have seen since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza a year ago - suggests that this hope has been shattered.

From the outset of this war, it was clear that mass displacement was a key part of Israel’s plan. The Israeli government swiftly urged hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes, instructing those in the north to flee south.

As the army’s massacres intensified, including the destruction of entire residential blocks and the bombing of “safe” zones such as hospitals and schools, displaced people were forced to flee over and over again. Residents of Khan Younis flooded Rafah, only to return again to a destroyed Khan Younis.

Everywhere the army entered, it left a widespread path of destruction in its wake. Around two-thirds of all buildings in Gaza have been damaged or razed in the ongoing Israeli bombardments.

Many Palestinians have lost everything they owned: homes, land, furniture, businesses. They have suddenly found themselves with nothing but a tent, a few blankets and mattresses, and some simple tools they salvaged from the rubble of their homes. 

But even obtaining a tent can be a difficult task, due to the limited quantities and sheer numbers of displaced Palestinians in Gaza. Some have instead taken refuge in schools, where education has been disrupted for the second year in a row, or on small pieces of land demarcated by strips of cloth.

Read more: One year on, this war is changing us all by Ahmed Abu Artema

Israeli forces have killed at least 45 Palestinians and wounded 130 in the past 24 hours, according to the Palestinian health ministry. 

This brings the death toll since 7 October 2023 to 42,010, with more than 97,720 wounded and an estimated 10,000 still missing, likely dead and buried under rubble.

Health officials report that over 60 percent of the victims are children and women.

Leaders of Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement will hold further unity talks in Cairo on Wednesday, a Hamas official told Reuters.

According to Taher al-Nono, the media adviser of the Hamas political chief, the Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Tuesday. It was led by Khalil al-Hayya, the group's chief negotiator and Hamas' second-in-command, currently based in Qatar.

"The meeting will discuss the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, and the challenges facing the Palestinian cause," Nono said.

There was no immediate comment from Fatah.

The meeting will be the first in months since the two groups held talks in the Chinese capital in July, agreeing on steps to form a unity government. Similar rounds in the past have so far failed to make progress.

The issue of the post-war Gaza administration is one of the thorniest issues facing the Palestinians, and both factions have said it was an internal affair, rejecting any Israeli or US conditions.

Israel vowed it would not accept any role for Hamas in post-war Gaza. It says it doesn't trust the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority to do the job either.

Reporting by Reuters

The Israeli military is aiming to "take over northern Gaza" with its latest intense aerial and ground assault, sources have told Israeli news outlet Walla. 

"If the move goes ahead according to plans, the IDF [Israeli army] will be able to operationally control a large area of ​​the Gaza Strip," a military source said.

The recent forced mass expulsion orders by the Israeli military in northern Gaza are turning the war-battered area into an "unliveable wasteland" and effectively emptying it out of Palestinian life, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Tuesday.

The orders, which coincide with a new intense ground and aerial assault, are "causing the forced displacement of people". 

"To make matters worse, no humanitarian supplies have been allowed to enter the area since 1 October," the MSF said in a statement. 

The Israeli military has also issued expulsion orders for three main hospitals in the area, which were operating at minimal capacity.
 
“The latest move to forcefully and violently push thousands of people from northern Gaza to the south is turning the north into a lifeless desert, while aggravating the situation in the south, where more than one million people have already been squeezed into a small portion of the Gaza Strip and live in deplorable conditions,” said Sarah Vuylsteke, MSF project coordinator in Gaza.

“Access to water, healthcare, and safety is already almost non-existent, and the thought of more people fitting into this space is impossible to imagine,” Vuylsteke added.

“People have been subjected to endless displacement and relentless bombing for the past 12 months. Enough is enough, this must stop now.”

A letter signed by 130 Israeli soldiers warned they will stop serving in the military if the government does not seek a Gaza ceasefire deal with Hamas that allows the exchange of captives with Palestinian prisoners, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.

Reservists and draftees from various departments, including the air force, the navy, the armoured corps and the artillery corps, addressed the letter to cabinet ministers and the military's chief of staff.

They said continuing the war in Gaza endangers the lives of captives still held there, as many of them have already been killed in Israeli air strikes or during operations to rescue them.

"We, who serve and have served with dedication and while risking our lives, hereby announce that if the government does not immediately change course and work toward a deal to bring the hostages back home, we will not be able to continue serving," the letter said. 

"For some of us, the red line has been crossed already; for others, it is rapidly approaching: the day is approaching when we will, with broken hearts, stop reporting for duty."