Summary of the day …
Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency Unrwa are members of terrorist organisations, an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has said. Israeli allegations of the involvement of Unrwa staff in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency.
Gaza authorities say over 200 bodies have been recovered so far from a temporary mass grave at what is left of Nasser hospital, which was beseiged and raided by Israeli troops. Residents said Israeli troops fought their way back into an eastern section of Khan Younis in a surprise raid on Monday. Israel’s military has said that it remains operational during the Passover holiday and “is at full readiness in all areas”.
The head of the World Health Organization on Monday again called for safe passage for humanitarian aid missions throughout Gaza after an aid team failed to complete its most recent trip to hard-hit northern Gaza.
Doctors in Gaza have saved a baby from the womb of her mother as she lay dying from head injuries sustained in an in Israeli airstrike. The girl was delivered via an emergency caesarean section at a hospital in Rafah.
At least 34,151 Palestinians have been killed and 77,084 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said on Monday. Israel says that over the same period 260 of its troops have been killed inside the Gaza Strip during its ground operation. 1,582 have been wounded. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
In a resignation letter, Aharon Haliva, the general in command of the IDF’s military intelligence directorate on 7 October, has described the Hamas attack inside southern Israel as a “black day” that he has carried with him ever since. Haliva said he was proud of the way that the men and women of the IDF had responded since that day, but that in failing to prevent the assault his team had not “lived up to the task”. He will stay in post until a replacement is appointed.
Jerusalem police say they have arrested 13 settlers carrying lambs and goats, including one concealed in a shopping bag and another hidden in a baby carriage, as they attempted to access the al-Aqsa mosque compound and sacrifice them as part of a religious ritual.
Two suspects have been arrested after a car rammed into a crowd of ultra-Orthodox men on a Jerusalem street early Monday morning, wounding three.
Israeli forces conducted raids across the Israeli-occupied West Bank early Monday, wounding a man in the Balata refugee camp and detaining at least 25 more according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.
Overnight the Israeli armed forces have said that one of their drones, which was staging an incursion inside Lebanon’s airspace, had been taken down by a surface-to-air missile.
Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi has arrived in Islamabad on a three-day trip to Pakistan.
An initial account of an exchange between a police officer and an antisemitism campaigner adjacent to a pro-Palestinian demonstration that sparked heavy criticism of London’s police did not show the full picture, a former senior officer has said.
The UN secretary general António Guterres said on Monday that he accepted the recommendations from the Colonna report, about ways to improve Unrwa’s capacity to monitor and address neutrality issues.
“Moving forward, the Secretary-General appeals to all stakeholders to actively support Unrwa, as it is a lifeline for Palestine refugees in the region,” the UN chief spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, said in a statement.
The Colonna review makes clear that Unrwa is “indispensable” to Palestinians across the region.
“In the absence of a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians, Unrwa remains pivotal in providing life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services, particularly in health and education, to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank,” the review says.
“As such, Unrwa is irreplaceable and indispensable to Palestinians’ human and economic development. In addition, many view Unrwa as a humanitarian lifeline.”
The Colonna review suggests a number of ways that neutrality safeguards for Unrwa’s more than 32,000 staff could be improved, such as expanding the capacity of the internal oversight service, providing more in-person training and more support from donor countries. But it notes that they are already more rigorous than most other comparable institutions.
“The review revealed that Unrwa has established a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principles, with emphasis on the principle of neutrality and that it possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN or NGO entities,” it says.
The head of the World Health Organization on Monday called for safe passage for humanitarian aid missions throughout Gaza after an aid team failed to complete its most recent trip to hard-hit northern Gaza.
UN agencies and aid groups say the ongoing hostilities, Israeli military restrictions on goods and the breakdown of order inside Gaza make it increasingly difficult to bring vital aid to much of the territory.
Associated Press reports WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement that a mission by the WHO and its partners on Saturday at Kamal Adwan and Awda hospitals in northern Gaza was only partly completed “due to severe delays at checkpoints and ongoing hostilities.”
“As a result, fuel and medical supplies did not reach Kamal Adwan, for the second time in the last seven days, and partners were also unable to assess needs at Awda to support restoration of services,” he said.
He said the team managed to evacuate four patients from Kamal Adwan, along with their caretakers, including a 9-year-old boy suffering from a head tumor.
“We again call for compliance with international humanitarian law, including access to health care and humanitarian aid for civilians in desperate need of help.” He also called for a ceasefire.
An initial account of an exchange between a police officer and an antisemitism campaigner adjacent to a pro-Palestinian demonstration that sparked heavy criticism of London’s police did not show the full picture, a former senior officer has said.
Footage released by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) last Friday showed its chief executive, Gideon Falter, being told by a police officer that his “openly Jewish” appearance risked antagonising pro-Palestinian marchers. This precipitated claims Falter was prevented from going about his business simply because he was a Jewish man in the vicinity of a pro-Palestinian demonstration.
But a longer version of the same exchange has since emerged on Sky News, showing the officer explaining his concern was that he had seen Falter acting in a way that led him to believe he was trying to provoke a confrontation with marchers.
That fuller account showed “a totally different encounter to the one that Mr Falter has reported”, said the former Scotland Yard chief superintendent Dal Babu on Monday.
His comments came as the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said he retained confidence in the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, but the latter needed to rebuild “confidence and trust” with the Jewish community.
Read more here: Initial story about ‘openly Jewish’ incident not full picture, says ex-senior Met officer
Reuters reports Israeli troops fought their way back into an eastern section of Khan Younis in a surprise raid, residents said on Monday, sending people who had returned to abandoned homes in the ruins of the southern Gaza Strip’s main city fleeing once more.
In the ruins of what had been Nasser hospital, the biggest in southern Gaza, Reuters saw emergency workers in white hazmat suits digging corpses out of the ground with hand tools and a digger truck. The emergency services said 73 more bodies had been found at the site in the past day, raising the number found over the week to 283.
Gaza authorities say the bodies recovered so far are from just one of at least three mass graves they have found at the site.
“We expect to find another 200 bodies at the same mass grave in the coming two days before we will begin working at the two other cemeteries,” Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run government media office, told Reuters.
He accused Israel of carrying out “executions” at the hospital and covering up the crimes by burying bodies with a bulldozer. Israel strongly denies having carried out executions.
Here are some images taken in al-Daraj neighbourhood after an Israeli attack in Gaza City via Getty Images.
Jerusalem police say they have arrested 13 settlers carrying lambs and goats, including one concealed in a shopping bag and another hidden in a baby carriage, as they attempted to access the al-Aqsa mosque compound and sacrifice them in as part of religious ritual.
Police detained the suspects, all aged between 13 and 21, adding that “the animals were confiscated and transferred for necessary veterinary treatment.”
“The Israel Police operates in Jerusalem and across all sectors, along with other security agencies, both overtly and covertly, against any person who tries to shatter the order and act in contradiction to the law and the existing practices of Jerusalem holy sites,” they added.
Jewish religious extremists have increasingly tried to access the al-Aqsa mosque compound, also known as the Temple Mount, that is holy to both Muslims and Jews. These tensions often increase around the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins at sundown tonight, due to an ancient religious commandment for animal sacrifice, one long abandoned by mainstream groups.
Palestinians and Muslim worshippers at al-Aqsa say that Jewish extremists, backed by the Israeli police, have increased their visits to the compound, one of the holiest sites in Islam that is a flashpoint for tensions.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said a large group toured the al-Aqsa mosque compound on Monday, amid a heavy policy presence.
Even so, allowing groups to follow through and sacrifice an animal in the compound is seen as an act so provocative it risks inflaming tensions in the holy city, which is already on edge after months of war in Gaza.
The initial detentions appear unlikely to deter others, as Jewish religious extremists have reportedly circulated plans to bring animals and gather at one of the entrances to the al-Aqsa mosque compound around midnight, in another attempt to storm the compound and conduct ritual sacrifice.
Updated
Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor
A new western push to help Iranians topple a weak and insecure regime is the key to persuading Israel to support peace and a two state solution in Palestine, the exiled Iranian crown prince has told the Guardian.
Reza Pahlavi, who heads exiled opposition group the National Council of Iran and is seen by supporters as a possible interim leader if the theocratic regime fell, insisted the Iranian regime is weaker than the west realises due to soaring inflation, poverty and the alienation of younger generations in a country where 60% of people are under 30.
Pahlavi, the oldest son of the Iranian Shah that was deposed by the Islamic revolution in 1979, said he doubted Israel will be prepared to make peace while it feels threatened by proxy groups backed by Iran.
He said he offered Iran a vision of coexistence in the region, pointing to the success of countries such as the United Arab Emirates that had chosen that path.
He also praised Israel for showing what he called “commendable” restraint in its strikes inside Iran last week, and said ordinary Iranians had been outraged by Tehran wasting money with missiles that could not even reach their targets in its strikes on Israel.
Pahlavi’s preparedness to support Israel even at a time of tension with Iran is likely to be controversial, as was his visit to Israel a year ago this week. He urged the western countries in the G7 to work explicitly to bring the Iranian regime down saying previous relaxations of the sanctions had not brought a change in behaviour, and only funded its wars.
He called for the proscription of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and a tougher round of sanctions on oil exports. He said many ordinary Iranians did not want an endless conflict with Israel. “Iranans unlike the regime, have a completely different opinion and attitude,” he said. “This is not the Iranian people’s war”.
Pahlavi said he understood Israel’s security concerns, but believed a two state solution for Israel and Palestine was the best option. “Once you eliminate elements that are using terrorism or barbaric terrorism you have a real chance for peace and so ultimately we can reach a stage where Palestinians will be able to live side by side with Israelis,” he said. “Israel will never feel comfortable committing to that if it’s constantly being attacked if it’s constantly facing existential threats.”
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires, showing the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Here is our video report on medics saving a baby in Gaza via an emergency caesarean section on a Palestinian woman who was killed by an Israeli attack in the southern city of Rafah.
In an update on its official Telegram channel, Israel’s military has said that it remains operational during the Passover holiday and “is at full readiness in all areas”.
It claimed that, in central Gaza, troops “continue to eliminate terrorists” and to “locate, and dismantle terrorist infrastructure”.
In the north of Israel, where it has repeatedly been engaged with anti-Israeli forces firing from inside Lebanon, the IDF said “forces are conducting ambushes, locating, and eliminating terrorists who pose a threat to IDF soldiers and are targeting command centres, weapon storage facilities, and terrorist infrastructure belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization.”
In a reference to a ramming attack in Jerusalem earlier today, the IDF said “soldiers are currently operating in Hebron, in the residences of the terrorists who carried out the attack earlier today in Jerusalem, and are investigating individuals suspected of assisting them.”
A violent attack in Jerusalem punctured the expected quiet of the Passover holiday, while Israeli forces detained dozens of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank amid a spate of violent raids and shooting by settlers.
Early on Monday morning, a car rammed into a crowd of ultra-Orthodox men on a Jerusalem street, wounding three. Video footage showed two men jumping from the car and pulling out an automatic weapon that failed to fire.
Israeli forces conducted raids across the Israeli-occupied West Bank early the same morning, wounding a man in the Balata refugee camp and detaining at least 25 more according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.
The raids and detentions across Nablus, Jenin, Bethlehem, Hebron, Tubas, Qalqilya and Jerusalem followed a weekend where at least 30 were detained in raids by Israeli forces.
An Israeli raid of the Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarem lasted 50 hours over the weekend, including a prolonged gunfight with armed elements inside the camp. 14 were killed and 15 detained as Israeli forces deployed a mass of military vehicles and three drones.
A 40-year-old woman was shot by Israeli forces at a military checkpoint in the Jordan valley, amid claims by security forces at the scene that she had attempted to stab them according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
Attacks by Israeli settlers also spiked, including storming the village of Burqa near Ramallah where they set fire to a shed full of livestock according to WAFA. The news agency also reported that another group of settlers opened fire on a village near the town of Qalqilya in the West Bank.
The Palestinian health ministry said that a 50-year old ambulance driver was killed by Israeli gunfire at a village south of Nablus, as he attempted to reach those injured by an attack on the village.
Settler attacks as well as violent raids by Israeli forces surged since 7 October, as Palestinians across the West Bank fear what they term retribution by the Israeli military as well as an emboldened settler movement.
Israeli forces have detained over 7,000 in the West Bank since last October according to the Addameer prisoners rights association in Ramallah. The UN, which tracks and verified Palestinians killed by Israeli forces of settlers, says that at least 300 were killed between last October and January this year.
“Israeli authorities are tightening their repression in the West Bank and Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians are surging. That repression was already at a peak before the 7 October Hamas-led attack that killed about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, in Israel, but it has gotten much worse since,” wrote Human Rights Watch last November.
“Between 1 January and 6 October, Israeli security forces killed more Palestinians in the West Bank – 192, including 40 children – than in any other year since 2005, when the United Nations began systematically recording fatalities,” they said.
Israel has yet to provide evidence of Unrwa staff terrorist links, Colonna report says
Julian Borger reports from New York for the Guardian
Israel “has yet to provide supporting evidence” of its claims that employees of the UN relief agency Unrwa are members of terrorist organisations, an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has said.
The Colonna report, which was commissioned by the UN in the wake of Israeli allegations, found that Unrwa had regularly supplied Israel with lists of its employees for vetting but that “the Israeli government has not informed Unrwa of any concerns relating to any Unrwa staff based on these staff lists since 2011”.
Israeli allegations of the involvement of Unrwa staff in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency. The funding was cut despite the dire needs of 2.3 million people in Gaza, most of whom have been forced from their homes by the Israeli offensive and have been struggling since then to find water, food, shelter or medical care.
Most of the donor nations have resumed their funding in recent weeks. UK ministers had said they would wait for the Colonna report to make a decision on resuming funding, but US financial support of Unrwa has been permanently banned by Congress since the allegations were made.
A separate investigation is being carried out into the 7 October attack by the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services.
The Colonna review, which was drafted with the help of three Nordic research institutes and is due to be published later on Monday, makes clear that Israel has yet to substantiate any of its broader claims about the involvement of Unrwa staff in Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
Read more here: Israel has yet to provide evidence of Unrwa staff terrorist links, Colonna report says
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has used a social media post to contrast the behaviour of Aharon Haliva, the general in command of the IDF’s military intelligence directorate on 7 October who has announced his resignation today, with that of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Quoting directly from Haliva’s resignation statement, Lapid posted “‘Along with authority comes heavy responsibility.’ The retirement of the head of Aman is justified and honourable. It would have been appropriate for prime minister Netanyahu to do the same.”
Doctors in Gaza have saved a baby from the womb of her mother as she lay dying from head injuries sustained in an in Israeli airstrike. The girl was delivered via an emergency caesarean section at a hospital in Rafah.
The baby’s mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, was 30 weeks pregnant when her family home was hit by an airstrike. Her husband, Shoukri, and their three-year-old daughter, Malak, also died.
“We managed to save the baby,” Ahmad Fawzi al-Muqayyad, a doctor at the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah, told Sky News. “The mother was in a very critical condition. Her brain was exposed, so we saved one of the two.”
On Sunday the baby lay wriggling and crying in an incubator in the neonatal unit of the nearby Emirati hospital. The tag around her wrist bore her dead mother’s name.
The baby would stay in hospital for three to four weeks, Dr Mohammad Salama, head of the unit, told news agencies on Sunday.
“After that we will see about her leaving, and where this child will go, to the family, to the aunt or uncle or grandparents. Here is the biggest tragedy. Even if this child survives, she was born an orphan,” he said.
The baby’s grandmother Mirvat al-Sakani told Associated Press that she would take care of her.
“She is a memory of her father. I will take care of her,” she said. “My son was also with them. My son became body parts and they have not found him yet. They have nothing to do with anything. Why are they targeting them? We don’t know why, how? We do not know.”
Read more here: Gaza doctors save baby from womb of mother killed in Israeli airstrike
34,151 Palestinians killed in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since 7 October – ministry
At least 34,151 Palestinians have been killed and 77,084 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, Reuters reports the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Israel says that over the same period 260 of its troops have been killed inside the Gaza Strip during its ground operation. 1,582 have been wounded.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
210 bodies recovered from temporary mass graves in Nasser hospital compound – local authorities
Palestinian civil defence authorities in the Gaza Strip said on Monday it had now uncovered 210 bodies from a temporary burial ground inside the main hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Associated Press reports the burial area in the Nasser hospital was built when Israeli forces were besieging the facility last month. At the time, people were not able to bury the dead in a cemetery and dug graves in the hospital yard, the civil defence group said.
In a statement, the department said a total of 210 bodies have been recovered from the hospital yard since Friday.
It said some of the bodies were of people killed during the hospital siege. Others were killed when Israeli forces raided the hospital, also last month.
After the military withdrew from Khan Younis earlier this month, residents have been returning to the site in search of the bodies of their loved ones with the aim of burying them in permanent graves elsewhere.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that Israel’s aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip has continued on Monday, as “bombing operations targeted various areas in the center and south”. It reported that “a number of Palestinian civilians” have been killed.
IDF military chief on 7 October in resignation letter: 'I carry that black day with me ever since, day after day, night after night'
In his resignation letter, Aharon Haliva, the general in command of the IDF’s military intelligence directorate on 7 October, has described the Hamas attack inside southern Israel as a “black day” that he has carried with him ever since.
Haliva said he was proud of the way that the men and women of the IDF had responded since that day, but that in failing to prevent the assault his team had not “lived up to the task”.
Describing it as “a murderous surprise attack against the state of Israel, whose consequences are difficult and painful”, Haliva, who has been with the IDF for 38 years, said:
Throughout my positions, I knew that along with authority there was also a heavy responsibility: for the task, for the people, for success and failure. On Saturday 7 October 2023, Hamas carried out a murderous surprise attack against the state of Israel, whose consequences are difficult and painful. The intelligence division under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with. I carry that black day with me ever since, day after day, night after night. I will carry the pain with me for ever.
Confiming that he would stay in post until a replacement was appointed, Haliva said:
Until the end of my shift, I will do everything for the defeat of Hamas and those who want to harm us and, the work for the return of the captives and the missing to their homes and land.
He ended the message by saying the loss of many commanders, subordinates and friends during the course of his time in the IDF “burns me”, with an exhortation to always remember those who had paid “the heaviest price” for the protection of Israel.
Here is more detail from Reuters on the denial by Kataib Hezbollah that it issued an earlier statement ascribed to it.
Reuters reports the denial came hours after another statement was circulated on groups thought to be affiliated with the Iran-backed armed faction that declared a resumption in attacks on US interests in the region about three months after they were suspended.
In a message posted on Telegram Kataib Hezbollah described that as “fabricated news”.
Reuters has a quick flash that Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah has denied it issued a statement ascribed to it earlier suggesting it was resuming its attacks against the US.
More details soon …
Haaretz reports that Israeli security forces have arrested two people suspected of carrying out a car ramming in Jerusalem. Three people are reported to have been injured.
Israeli military intelligence head Aharon Haliva resigns over 7 October failures
Aharon Haliva, who was the general in command of the IDF’s military intelligence directorate on 7 October, has resigned over the failure of Israel’s military to prevent the attack inside southern Israel by Hamas that day, according to Israeli media reports.
Haliva had already indicated he would step down after the war was concluded, and looks set to stay in the role until a replacement is appointed, but Hebrew news outlet Ynet has published an image of his resignation letter.
The IDF confirms that Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, will resign over his role in the failures that led to Hamas's October 7 onslaught.
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 22, 2024
Haliva will step down and resign from the military once a replacement is appoint, the IDF says. https://t.co/evb7YwloZA
Haliva had already described 7 October as “an intelligence failure”, saying “the IDF under my command failed to warn of the terrorist attack carried out by Hamas.”
Updated
Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi has arrived in Islamabad on a three-day trip to Pakistan.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said “The Iranian president is accompanied by his spouse and a high-level delegation” including Iran’s foreign minister, and the party would be meeting prime minister Shehbaz Sharif, and also visiting Lahore and Karachi.
Relations between the two countries have been tense in recent months, including an exchange of missile fire, during which both countries said they were targeting separatists militants based over the border with their neighbours.
New EU sanctions against Iran in response to the country’s recent attack on Israel should include the Revolutionary Guards, Belgium’s foreign minister has said, while adding that sanctions against violent settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank should also be expanded.
Reuters reports that speaking to the media ahead of an EU ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg, Hadja Lahbib said:
We will discuss it together. I also think we have to expand sanctions against violent settlers. We have to be balanced and make sure we won’t be accused of having double standards.
State media in Lebanon is reporting that Israel is “firing artillery shells intermittently at the outskirts of Ter Harfa town”.
Ter Harfa is in southern Lebanon, about six kilometres (3.7 miles) from the UN-drawn blue line which has separated Israel and Lebanon since 2000.
The World Food Programme has said on social media that it has successfully delivered fuel and ingredients to bakeries in northern Gaza, so that they can start production after 170 days without being able to make bread.
#Gaza: WFP has delivered fuel and wheat flour to bakeries in the north so they can begin production again after 170 days of being inoperable.
— World Food Programme (@WFP) April 22, 2024
Four bakeries are now up and running and WFP is urgently working to deliver more supplies. pic.twitter.com/thZUAEdwaw
International aid agencies have repeatedly warned that the population in Gaza is facing chronic food insecurity, and that famine was imminent without a pause in fighting in order to deliver more humanitarian aid.
Last week the office of Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that it rejected claims there was starvation in the territory.
If you would like to listen to something about the conflict in the Middle East, our Audio Long Read podcast today is by Joshua Leifer, and is a version of his essay from March entitled What is the real Hamas?
You can listen to it here …
Israeli drone shot down inside Lebanon's airspace
Overnight the Israeli armed forces have said that one of their drones, which was staging an incursion inside Lebanon’s airspace, had been taken down by a surface-to-air missile.
In a statement on its official Telegram channel, the IDF said:
Earlier this evening, a surface-to-air missile was launched toward an IAF UAV that was operating in Lebanese airspace. As a result, the UAV was hit and fell in Lebanese territory. The incident is under review.
Israel said that its fighter jets struck at the site of the launch which had taken down the drone, and claimed that it is “continuing to operate in Lebanese airspace to carry out IDF missions in order to protect the state of Israel.”
Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor
A plan due to be published today to improve the accountability and transparency of Unrwa, the UN relief works agency for Palestinians, is not expected to lead to a snap British decision to restore funding to the agency.
Britain joined 18 other nations in suspending funding for the agency after Israel claimed that 12 of the 30,000 Unrwa staff had participated in the attack on Israel on 7 October. Almost all those countries have restored funding, and the UK government is facing conflicting domestic pressures over whether to do the same. The UK provided £35m last financial year to Unrwa, including £16m extra for humanitarian aid.
Some MPs from the ruling Conservative party and strong supporters of Israel have written to the foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, to warn that it would be a form of moral bankruptcy to resume funding, since they regard the agency as being too close to Hamas.
They claim the task of food distribution can be undertaken by other agencies such as the World Food Programme, but others say Unrwa has an infrastructure that no other agency can replace.
Read more here: UK unlikely to make snap decision over Unrwa funding
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
At least five rockets were launched from the Iraqi town of Zummar towards a US military base in northeastern Syria on Sunday, the first attack against US forces since early February when Iranian-backed groups in Iraq stopped such strikes.
A post on a Telegram group affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah said armed factions in Iraq had decided to resume attacks after seeing little progress on talks to end the US-led military coalition in the country.
More on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.
Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will fight against any efforts to impose sanctions on Israeli military units, amid reports that an Israel Defense Forces battalion is facing US sanctions over its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. According to reports in the Israeli media, US state department officials have confirmed they are preparing to impose sanctions on the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion, which has been accused of serious human rights violations against Palestinians.
Israel’s foreign minister has hit out at the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, over his decision to publicise his latest meeting with the head of Hamas’s politburo. Israel Katz shared a photo on X which showed Erdoğan shaking hands with Ismail Haniyeh at a presidential office in Istanbul over the weekend, writing that the Turkish president “should be ashamed”.
Hamas has condemned the US House of Representatives’ approval of $26.4bn in military support for Israel. “This support, which violates international law, is a licence and a green light for the Zionist extremist government to continue the brutal aggression against our people,” the Palestinian militant group said.
The Israeli army said that its soldiers killed two Palestinians who tried to shoot and stab them in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, and the Palestinian health ministry said both men had died. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa, quoting local sources, said that Israeli forces shot the two men near the West Bank city of Hebron, and that ambulance crews were prevented from reaching them.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, thanked the country’s armed forces for their 13 April operation against Israel, Iran’s official news agency reported, and he called upon them to “ceaselessly pursue military innovation and learn the enemy’s tactics”.
