Israel's defense minister said the military would send more troops into Rafah, a city along Gaza's southern border with Egypt, as fighting also rages in northern Gaza, where Hamas has regrouped.
South Africa is seeking emergency measures at the U.N.'s top court to halt Israel’s escalating offensive in Rafah, calling the incursion “the last step in the destruction of Gaza.” Israel has portrayed Rafah as the last Hamas stronghold, brushing off warnings from the United States and other allies that any major operation there would be catastrophic for civilians.
No food has entered the two main border crossings in southern Gaza for more than a week. Some 1.1 million Palestinians are on the brink of starvation, according to the U.N.
Around 600,000 Palestinians have been driven out of Rafah since the beginning of last week, the U.N. said. Some 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians have fled their homes since the start of the war, with many relocating multiple times.
Seven months of war have killed more than 35,000 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to local health officials.
The war began Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people there, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostage. Israel says militants still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
Currently:
— U.S. military says Gaza Strip pier project is completed, aid to soon flow.
— The top U.N. court is holding hearings on the Israeli military’s incursion into Rafah.
— Interior Department staffer becomes first Jewish Biden appointee to publicly resign over war.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Here's the latest:
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The Arab League on Thursday called for an immediate end to fighting in the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and blamed Israeli “obstruction” for failed negotiations for a cease-fire.
The Arab League issued the statement after a summit in Bahrain drew top leaders.
“We stress the need to stop the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip immediately, withdraw the Israeli occupation forces from all areas of the Strip (and) lift the siege imposed on it,” the statement said.
The countries also called for the release of “hostages and detainees.”
The statement blamed Israel for the war continuing.
“We strongly condemn Israel’s obstruction of cease-fire efforts in the Gaza Strip and its continued military escalation by expanding its aggression against the Palestinian city of Rafah, despite international warnings of the disastrous humanitarian consequences,” it said.
The group also reiterated a longstanding call for a two-state solution along Israel’s 1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
The statement called on Palestinian factions to join under the Palestine Liberation Organization, which it said was “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”
The Arab League is a 22-member organization founded in 1945 to promote regional cooperation and resolve disputes. However, it is widely seen as toothless and has long struggled to help solve conflicts in the Mideast.
THE HAGUE — South Africa told the United Nations’ top court on Thursday the situation in Gaza has reached “a new and horrific stage” as it sought emergency measures to halt Israel’s military operation in the enclave’s southern city of Rafah.
It was the third time the International Court of Justice held hearings on the conflict in Gaza since South Africa filed proceedings at The Hague-based court in December accusing Israel of genocide.
“Seven months ago South Africa could not have imagined that Gaza would be largely wiped off the map,” the country’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Vusimuzi Madonsela, told the panel of 15 international judges Thursday.
During hearings earlier this year, Israel strongly denied committing genocide in Gaza, saying it does all it can to spare civilians and is only targeting Hamas militants. Israel says Rafah is the last stronghold of the militant group.
South Africa argues that the military operation has far surpassed justified self-defense. “Israel’s actions in Rafah are part of the end game. This is the last step in the destruction of Gaza,” lawyer Vaughan Lowe said.
According to the latest request, the previous preliminary orders by The Hague-based court were not sufficient to address “a brutal military attack on the sole remaining refuge for the people of Gaza.” Israel will be allowed to answer the accusations on Friday.
In January, judges ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive that has laid waste to the Palestinian enclave. In a second order in March, the court said Israel must take measures to improve the humanitarian situation.
CAIRO — Egypt’s president has accused Israel of undermining talks aimed at a cease-fire in Gaza.
Addressing an Arab League summit in Bahrain on Thursday, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said Israel “continues to engage in evasive actions to shirk its responsibilities and in devious maneuvering around efforts to achieve a cease-fire.”
He said that by seizing the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt last week, Israel aimed to “solidify its siege on the Gaza Strip.”
Egypt was the first Arab country to make peace with Israel and the two countries have long cooperated on security.
But Egyptian officials have expressed mounting frustration since the start of the war in Gaza and tensions soared after the Rafah operation.
Egypt has warned that any major Israeli operation in Rafah could endanger the decades-old peace treaty, widely seen as a cornerstone of stability in the Middle East.
Egypt is also one of the main mediators between Israel and Hamas. The last round of talks aimed at a cease-fire and the release of Hamas-held hostages ended last week without a breakthrough.
JERUSALEM — The papal envoy to the Holy Land is visiting the Gaza Strip on a mission aimed at supporting the territory’s small Christian community.
The Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem says Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa entered Gaza on Thursday and visited the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.
It says he and a small delegation “met the suffering population to encourage them and to deliver a message of hope, solidarity, and support.” He also presided over Mass at the church.
It was not immediately clear how he entered Gaza and the patriarchate declined to comment.
The church is in northern Gaza, which was the first target of Israel’s offensive and has been largely isolated by Israeli troops for months. Heavy fighting has erupted in areas adjacent to Gaza City in recent days.
Gaza, with a population of 2.3 million, is home to a small community of some 1,300 Palestinian Christians
BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group says it has attacked an Israeli military post in the northern town of Metula using a drone that fired two missiles at its target. Three Israeli soldiers were wounded, the military said.
Thursday’s strike was the first time that Hezbollah said it used drones that fire missiles since the fighting broke out seven months ago. Previously, they have used on explosive drones.
The Israeli military said later that an explosive drone crossed from Lebanese territory into northern Israel and exploded in the area of Metula, adding that the attack is under review.
As a result of the explosion, an Israeli military said a soldier was severely wounded and two additional soldiers were lightly injured. The soldiers were evacuated to the hospital for medical treatment and their families have been notified, the army said.
Hezbollah said in a statement that the drone flew to a designated point and then fired two S-5 missiles toward military vehicles and troops who were standing nearby, leaving them “dead or wounded.” The statement said the drone then moved toward the target and exploded inside the base, scoring a direct hit.
Hezbollah has been escalating its attacks on northern Israel in recent weeks, mainly after Israel’s military attacked the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip last week capturing the main border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.
Hezbollah officials have vowed not to stop fighting along Israel’s northern border until the offensive on the Gaza Strip stops.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, saying it gave Israel “more pretexts” to attack Gaza. The Western-backed leader of the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, stopped short of condemning the attack.
In a speech at an Arab League summit in Bahrain on Thursday, Abbas said: “The military operation carried out by Hamas on that day provided Israel with more pretexts to attack Gaza, resulting in further killing, destruction, and displacement.”
He also reiterated his longstanding condemnation of any attack targeting civilians.
Abbas’ secular Fatah movement is the political rival of Hamas, which drove his forces out of Gaza when it seized power in the territory in 2007.
Hamas launched a surprise attack out of Gaza on Oct. 7 that overwhelmed Israel’s defenses and allowed thousands of militants to cross into southern Israel. They killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages.
Israel launched a military onslaught in response that has killed over 35,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in Gaza. The air, land and sea offensive has caused vast destruction and driven most of the population from their homes.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s defense minister says more troops will be sent into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where the military says it has destroyed Hamas tunnels and killed dozens of militants.
Israel began what it said was a limited operation in Rafah last week after the United States and other allies pressed it not to launch a full-scale invasion.
But even the limited operation has sparked an exodus of 600,000 Palestinians from the city, according to the United Nations. Before the incursion, more than a million Palestinians who had fled fighting in other areas were sheltering in Rafah.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, visiting the area on Wednesday, said “this operation will continue as additional forces will enter.” He said “we are wearing Hamas down,” more than seven months into the war triggered by the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack.
Even as Israeli troops have pushed into parts of Rafah, Hamas has regrouped in other areas of Gaza that were heavily bombed earlier in the war, and which the military said it had cleared.
The United States has warned Israel not to launch a wide-scale offensive in Rafah because of the toll it would take on civilians. President Joe Biden has said the U.S. won’t provide offensive weapons for such an operation.
JERUSALEM — The Hezbollah militant group said it fired dozens of rockets from Lebanon into Israel on Thursday, the latest in tit-for-tat combat between the sides that has escalated over the last week.
The group said it fired 60 rockets at three military posts in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights in retaliation for earlier Israeli airstrikes.
Israel’s military said it responded to what it said were some 40 rockets launched Thursday by striking Hezbollah military posts.
Hezbollah has increased the amount of rockets it has been firing into Israel in recent days and on Wednesday it reportedly struck its deepest target in Israel since the start of the fighting in October. Israeli media reported that an Israeli air force target was struck by a drone, a report the military declined to comment on.
“Hezbollah has been escalating the situation in the north,” said military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani. “They’ve been firing more and more.”
Israel has also been striking deep inside Lebanon.
The fighting began shortly after Israel launched its war against Hamas following the militant group’s attack on southern Israel.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said Thursday its forces have killed 100 militants since it launched an invasion into the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah last week.
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters Thursday that Israeli forces found militant tunnel shafts underneath and in the vicinity of the Rafah crossing near the border with Egypt. Israeli forces seized the crossing at the start of the operation in Rafah.
“We are continuing to operate in the Rafah crossing,” said Shoshani.
Israel says it is operating in Rafah to destroy remaining Hamas battalions there and to rescue Israeli hostages. Israel’s plans for Rafah have raised international alarm because the city had provided shelter to more than a million Palestinians. While the current operation does not appear to be a full-scale invasion, it has sent 600,000 people fleeing the city since the offensive began last week, according to the United Nations.
An Israeli strike overnight hit a residential home in central Rafah, killing four men, including a 65-year-old man and his 22-year-old son, according to records from Kuwaiti hospital.
Another strike, in the southern city of Khan Younis, killed five children, said Dr. Ammar Ghanem, a visiting doctor from the U.S. stationed at the European Hospital where the bodies were taken. One of the five, a girl, was brought to the hospital with internal bleeding after surviving the initial strike on Thursday, Ghanem said, but she died while getting a CT scan.
Shoshani said forces were also operating in the northern Gaza areas of Jabaliya and Zeitoun where fierce fighting continued with militants. The spike in fighting suggests that Hamas is regrouping in areas the Israeli military said it had asserted control over months ago. Rocket fire toward Israel has also increased in recent days.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said Thursday that the bodies of 39 Palestinians had been brought to hospitals over the past 24 hours, raising the overall death toll since the start of the war to 35,272. The ministry’s count does not distinguish between militants and noncombatants killed. Israel says it has killed roughly 12,000 militants, without providing evidence.
BERLIN – German authorities say they have banned a group that showed solidarity with “Palestinian resistance in all forms” and raided properties linked to it.
The interior ministry in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous, said it had banned the Palestine Solidarity Duisburg group on Thursday. It accused the group of spreading antisemitic narratives.
The ministry said police searched four properties in the city of Duisburg linked to the group on Thursday.
The region’s top security official, state Interior Minister Herbert Reul, said the move “sends the right signal” and added in a statement that “in many cases nothing other than hatred for Jews is hidden behind solidarity with Palestine, as in the case of the organization banned today.”
In November, Germany’s federal government implemented a formal ban on activity by or in support of Hamas and dissolved Samidoun, a group that was behind a celebration in Berlin of Hamas’ attack on Israel.
JERUSALEM — The Palestinian Health Ministry said Thursday that Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in the northern West Bank.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Ramallah-based ministry said that the three men, all younger than 30, were killed by Israeli fire overnight in the flashpoint city of Tulkarem, though the circumstances of the shootings were uncertain.
Since Oct. 7, violence has flared in the occupied territory, with stepped-up Israeli raids into Palestinian cities and towns often turning deadly. The shootings pushed the Palestinian death toll in the territory since the beginning of the war in Gaza to just over 500.
Also overnight, Israeli police said they shot and killed a man who attempted to stab an officer in east Jerusalem. Police said the officers opened fire as the man charged at them with a knife, killing him. The officers were not wounded and the identity of the attacker was not immediately clear.
Palestinians and rights groups say Israel uses excessive force to subdue suspected attackers. Israel says its forces face complex and often life-threatening situations that demand a response.
In other violence, the Israeli military said Thursday a noncommissioned officer was moderately wounded in a stabbing attack in the West Bank. The army later said it had arrested a suspect in the attack.
Attacks by Palestinians have also been on the rise since the war against Hamas broke out on Oct. 7.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military finished installing a floating pier for the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
Officials said they are poised to begin ferrying badly needed humanitarian aid into the enclave besieged over seven months of intense fighting in the Israel-Hamas war.
The final, overnight construction sets up a complicated delivery process more than two months after President Joe Biden ordered it to help Palestinians facing starvation as food and other supplies fail to make it in.
Israel recently seized the key Rafah border crossing in its push on that southern city on the Egyptian border, complicating those shipments. U.S. troops anchored the pier at 7:40 a.m. local time Thursday. That’s according to the military’s Central Command, which stressed none of its forces entered the Gaza Strip.
JERUSALEM — The Palestinian Health Ministry said Thursday that Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in the northern West Bank.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Ramallah-based ministry said that the three men, all younger than 30, were killed by Israeli fire overnight in the flashpoint city of Tulkarem, though the circumstances of the shootings were uncertain.
Since Oct. 7, violence has flared in the occupied territory, with stepped-up Israeli raids into Palestinian cities and towns often turning deadly. The shootings pushed the Palestinian death toll in the territory since the beginning of the war in Gaza to just over 500.
Also overnight, Israeli police said they shot and killed a man who attempted to stab an officer in east Jerusalem. Police said the officers opened fire as the man charged at them with a knife, killing him. The officers were not wounded and the identity of the attacker was immediately unclear.
Palestinians and rights groups say Israel uses excessive force in attempting to subdue suspected attackers. Israel says its forces face complex and often life-threatening situations that demand a response.
Attacks by Palestinians have been on the rise since the war against Hamas broke out on Oct. 7.
TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military said Thursday that five soldiers have been killed in northern Gaza, which Israeli media said was the result of a friendly fire incident.
The military released the names of those killed, but did not immediately disclose the circumstances of their deaths.
Israeli Army Radio said a tank fired on a building housing the soldiers, killing five and wounding seven.
There have been multiple friendly-fire incidents throughout the 7-month-long war. At least 27 soldiers have been killed in mistaken fire by Israeli forces, according to military figures.
The incident comes as Israel has reinvaded parts of northern Gaza that it previously said it had asserted control over. Heavy battles have taken place with militants in recent days and rocket fire toward Israel has increased, suggesting Hamas is regrouping in those areas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced criticism from Israel’s top ally, the U.S., as well as at home for not moving toward a postwar vision for Gaza that would replace Hamas with different Palestinian governance.
Along with the fighting in northern Gaza, Israeli troops have also pushed into parts of the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah.
BEIRUT -- Israel’s air force conducted airstrikes that targeted mountains in northeast Lebanon close to the border with Syria. There was no word on casualties.
Al-Manar TV of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group said the airstrikes that occurred around midnight Wednesday struck the hills overlooking the town of Brital. It gave no further details.
The area that was attacked is a Hezbollah stronghold and is a vital route that links the group’s positions in eastern Lebanon with Syria’s Qalamoun mountains, where Hezbollah also has military presence.
The Israeli military said there were no injuries from the strike.
The Israeli strikes came hours after Hezbollah said it attacked with explosive drones an Israeli military base near the city of Tiberias, their deepest strike in Israel since the two sides began exchanging fire a day after the Israel-Hamas broke out on Oct. 7.
Israeli soldiers move on the top of a tank near the Israeli-Gaza border, as seen from southern Israel, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
A ship is seen off the coast of Gaza near a U.S.-built floating pier that will be used to facilitate aid deliveries, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
An Israeli Apache helicopter fires a missile towards the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
South Africa's agents Vusimuzi Madonsela, seated right, and Cornelius Scholtz, seated second left, talk prior to the start of hearings at the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, Netherlands, Thursday, May 16, 2024. The U.N.'s top court opened two days of hearings in a case brought by South Africa to see whether Israel needs to take additional measures to alleviate the suffering in war-ravaged Gaza. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
Israeli soldiers move on the top of a tank near the Israeli-Gaza border, as seen from southern Israel, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
A ship is seen off the coast of Gaza near a U.S.-built floating pier that will be used to facilitate aid deliveries, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians walk through the debris after an Israeli air and ground offensive in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, May 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Saher Alghorra)
Palestinians walk through the debris after an Israeli air and ground offensive in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, May 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Saher Alghorra)
Palestinians walk through the debris after an Israeli air and ground offensive in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, May 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Saher Alghorra)
