Here’s how things stand on Wednesday, April 10, 2024:
Fighting and humanitarian crisis
- On Tuesday, one day before Eid, an Israeli air strike killed at least 14 Palestinians, including four children, in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.
- Palestinians in Rafah began celebrating Eid al-Fitr with Israeli drones buzzing overhead, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said late on Tuesday.
- Separately, world leaders acknowledged the suffering in Gaza and Sudan in their Eid al-Fitr messages on Wednesday.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that Israel has not apprised the US of any specific date for the start of a major offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, but added that American and Israeli officials remained in contact to try to ensure that “any kind of major military operation doesn’t do real harm to civilians”.
Diplomacy and geopolitical tensions
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the war in Gaza is a “mistake”, US President Joe Biden said in an interview published on Tuesday.
- Separately, on Tuesday, Netanyahu said there is “no force in the world that will stop us” from completing the elimination of Hamas’s brigades, including in the southern city of Rafah.
- Several family members of the captives held by Hamas met US Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House on Tuesday to call for a deal to ensure the release of their loved ones and implement a temporary ceasefire in Gaza.
- In a hearing on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the US does not “have evidence” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his sorrow over the violence and hardships being experienced by Muslims in Gaza and elsewhere in his annual greeting for Eid al-Fitr. “My heart is broken to know that in Gaza, Sudan and so many other places, because of conflict and hunger, so many Muslims will not be able to celebrate Eid properly,” Guterres said in a video message posted on X.
- In a message wishing “Eid Mubarak“, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese acknowledged that “the suffering in Gaza will mean many Muslim Australians will mark Eid al-Fitr with sorrow”.
- Ireland will move to recognise a Palestinian state “in the next couple of weeks”, Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin told local news site The Journal on Tuesday.
Eid Mubarak. pic.twitter.com/473MWspVo7
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) April 9, 2024
Violence in the occupied West Bank
- A young man was shot in the leg during an Israeli raid on the village of Asira al-Qibliya, south of Nablus on Tuesday, in the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reported.
- Israeli soldiers fired live bullets, stun grenades and tear gas during the raid, Wafa added.
