Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Ceasefire talks to restart this week – Israel

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This live page will soon close – Here’s a recap of today’s events:

• The Health Ministry said that at least 64 people have been killed and 105 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past 24 hours.
• Netanyahu and Biden will meet as planned in Washington, DC on Tuesday. The meeting was thrown into doubt when Biden announced that he will not be seeing re-election to the US presidency this November.
• Turkey slammed Israeli claims that Ankara was arming and funding Hamas as “lies”, accusing Israel of trying to direct attention away from its war in Gaza.
• The UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory said that under the International Court of Justice’s new ruling, UN member states may now be required to disclose a list of their nationals who live as illegal settlers in the West Bank.
• Israeli settlers injured four foreign nationals – a German and three Americans – as they attacked Palestinian farmers trying to reach their land in Qusra village, near Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society has published an interview with one of its medics, Younes Abdel Qader, who it says has worked for the organisation for 24 years in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.

Abdel Qader speaks about the challenges of how to spend time off work, whether to recover and sleep, spend precious time with family or to go out looking for food and water to provide for their needs.

He also tells of the experience of losing four of his colleagues when their ambulance was hit by an Israeli drone.

Watch the video below:

Over the course of 24 years, colleague Younes Abdel Qader has worked as an EMT with the PRCS teams in Deir al-Balah in central #Gaza. In this interview, Younes describes the harsh and terrifying moments during the ongoing war on the Gaza Strip and the feeling he endured when… pic.twitter.com/hTYi41Pn7n

— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) July 21, 2024

Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi, who is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, has published a post on X saying: “When President Biden visited [Bethlehem] at the beginning of his term, he promised to secure 4G technology for Palestinians.

“The term ended without 4G communication, but with thousands of guided bombs and F-35s that killed thousands of Palestinian children [in Gaza].”

In July 2022, Biden visited Israel and the occupied West Bank, where he proposed US assistance for UNRWA and the East Jerusalem Hospitals Network. Washington also said at the time that Israel would help Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza achieve 4G connectivity by the end of next year.

Biden announced today that he will not be seeking re-election, dropping out of the 2024 US presidential race.

כשהנשיא ביידן ביקר בבית לחם בתחילת הכהונה שלו הוא הבטיח להשיג דור 4G לפלסטינים. הכהונה הסתיימה ללא תקשורת 4G , אבל עם אלפי פצצות מונחות וF35 שקטלו אלפי ילדים פלסטינים.

When President Biden visited Beit lehem at the beginning of his term, he promised to secure 4G technology… pic.twitter.com/uaUZFoLJLW

— Ahmad Tibi (@Ahmad_tibi) July 21, 2024

We reported earlier that US President Joe Biden will not seek re-election come November. In light of this, a number of Israeli officials have come out to thank him for his support for Israel as it wages its war on the Gaza Strip.

On X, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid shared a photo of himself fist-bumping Biden and wrote, “Thank you.”

Thank you. pic.twitter.com/mJtvHwDIqT

— יאיר לפיד – Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) July 21, 2024

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett called Biden a “true friend of Israel who stood by us in our most difficult moments”.

“During my tenure as prime minister, I witnessed his unwavering support of the State of Israel,” he said. “Thank you for everything.”

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant also thanked the US President for his “unwavering support of Israel over the years”.

“Your steadfast backing, especially during the war, has been invaluable,” he said. “We are grateful for your leadership and friendship.”

Thank you President @JoeBiden, for your unwavering support of Israel over the years. Your steadfast backing, especially during the war, has been invaluable. We are grateful for your leadership and friendship. 🇺🇸🇮🇱

— יואב גלנט – Yoav Gallant (@yoavgallant) July 21, 2024

Defend Palestine, a local initiative calling for international civil protection from Israeli violence, has said that there is a dire need for foreign supporters to come to the “West Bank en masse and be part of an organised international protective presence”.

This call came in response to a settler attack in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, in which Israelis from the Esh Kodesh settlement attacked four foreign activists and a Palestinian, injuring them.

Earlier, we reported about this attack in which settlers assaulted Palestinian farmers trying to tend to their lands. Soldiers at the scene did not detain any of the settlers, the campaign said.

Defend Palestine said that three foreigners sustained wounds that required hospitalisation. A German national was hit in the face and arm with a metal pipe, and two American volunteers were clobbered with wooden batons. A fourth American volunteer was hit with rocks and had her phone stolen.

Mohammed Khatib, a campaign organiser, said in a statement: “The attack today, not even 24 hours after the ICJ ruled that Israeli occupation is illegal and that settlers enjoy impunity when exercising violence, serves as further proof for the dire need for international civil protection in Palestine”.

Israeli Settlers in the West Bank Brutally Attack and Injure Palestinians and International Volunteers Only One Day After ICJ Rules Israeli Occupation Illegal #voices_from_the_land #FAZ3A #DefendPalestine pic.twitter.com/jI8O5fyegH

— Popular Struggle CC (@PSCC_Palestine) July 21, 2024

The Associated Press reports that the two leaders will meet as planned as the Israeli prime minister makes his trip to Washington, DC.

The meeting was thrown into doubt when Joe Biden announced earlier today that he will not be seeing re-election to the US presidency this November.

Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, has taken to X to thank Biden for his support during Israel’s war on Gaza.

Herzog thanked Biden for his “friendship and steadfast support for the Israeli people over his decades long career”, adding that he is a “symbol of the unbreakable bond between our two peoples”.

Biden has, since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas’s deadly attacks on Israel, been unflinching in his support for what he calls Israel’s “right to self-defence”, even as the country’s attacks on Gaza have killed at least 38,983 and wounded and 89,727 others.

The outgoing US president has gone against much of the international community, which has called for harsh consequences for Israel over its actions during the war.

The Israeli military has said that its fighter jets struck a missile launcher belonging to Hezbollah as well as an observation post and other infrastructure in southern Lebanon.

The targets were in Aita al-Shaab, Khiam and Yarin, it said.

Turkey has slammed Israeli claims that Ankara was arming and funding Hamas as “lies”, accusing Israel of trying to direct attention away from its war on Gaza.

The angry rebuttal came after Israel’s Foreign Minister Katz accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of “supplying arms and money to Hamas to kill Israelis”.

In a post on X in Turkish, Katz claimed that Israeli security services had dismantled “terrorist cells” that were “under directions from Hamas headquarters in Turkey”.

In response, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said that Israel’s top diplomat was “trying to conceal the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians behind a series of lies, slander and disrespect”.

“But Israel’s dirty propaganda and psychological pressure aimed at our country and our president will remain ineffective,” the ministry’s statement added.

Qaddura Fares, who heads the Palestinian Commission for Detainees’ Affairs, said August 3 will feature local and international protests to shed light on the plight of prisoners inside Israeli jails.

“Detainees in Israeli prisoners are being subject to a war of vengeance similar to the one being waged on the Gaza Strip,” Fares said in a news conference in el-Bireh, near Ramallah.

Fares said he believes that grassroots action in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, can make a difference for detainees, who are being subject to “assault and torture”.

More than 9,750 Palestinians have been detained since October 7, he said.

If it’s a war crime to destroy one house with no military justification, what’s the legal response to Israel’s industrial-scale destruction of homes and neighbourhoods in Gaza? This is the question posed by United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Balakrishnan Rajagopal.

Rajagopal, an associate professor at MIT, tells Al Jazeera’s Steve Clemons that Israel’s destruction of Gaza is unprecedented, both in the percentage of homes destroyed in a short span and in the fact that Palestinians cannot flee the confined space of the Gaza Strip.

Besides being a war crime, domicide should be considered a crime against humanity, Rajagopal argues.

Watch The Bottom Line to hear the discussion:

The military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have said their fighters:

• Attacked Israeli soldiers with a rocket inside a building in the Yibna refugee camp in Rafah, and shelled a group of military vehicles.
• Attacked soldiers with mortar shells in the Netzarim Corridor – named after a Jewish settlement in Gaza that was dismantled in 2005 – which was set up during the war by the army to separate northern Gaza from the south.
• Carried out a series of unspecified operations against Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem.

The office has said the Israeli army has been focused on “savagely attacking” the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip “in an unprecedented way”.

The attacks in one week have killed at least 91 Palestinians and injured more than 251, the office said in a statement.

“More than 75 percent of the victims have been brought to hospitals and many had severe burns on their bodies,” it added.

“Nuseirat camp, which is home to 250,000 people and IDPs [internationally displaced persons], is being subject to shelling and air strikes despite how densely populated it is. The occupation is purposefully targeting neighbourhoods and occupied homes to kill as many people as possible,” the office said.

The most heinous of these crimes, it said, was the “massacre of al-Razi school, which left 23 dead, and 73 injured”.

A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon has carried the Olympic torch in Paris to honour journalists wounded and killed in the field.

The torch relay is part of celebrations in which about 10,000 people from various walks of life were chosen to carry the flame across France before the Olympic Games opening ceremony on July 26.

Christina Assi, of the AFP news agency, was among six journalists struck by Israeli shelling on October 13 while reporting on the conflict between Hezbollah and the Israeli military. She was severely wounded and had part of her right leg amputated.

AFP, Reuters and Al Jazeera accused Israel of targeting their journalists who maintained they were positioned far from where the clashes were, with vehicles clearly marked as press.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said the attack was a deliberate one on civilians and should be investigated as a war crime.

A French member of parliament has sparked a political row by saying Israeli athletes were not welcome at the Paris Olympics because of Israel’s war on Gaza.

France Unbowed (LFI) lawmaker Thomas Portes was “putting a target on the backs of Israeli athletes”, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told broadcaster France 2, echoing criticisms made by a leading Jewish group earlier Sunday.

Portes had said at a rally in support of Palestinians that “the Israeli delegation is not welcome in Paris. Israeli sportspeople are not welcome at the Paris Olympic Games” and called for “mobilisation” around the event.

He later told the Parisien newspaper that “France’s diplomats should pressure the International Olympic Committee to bar the Israeli flag and anthem, as is done for Russia”.

“It’s time to end the double standard,” Portes added.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a limited number of Russian athletes will be allowed to compete in Paris as individuals and not under their country’s colours, and only after being vetted to ensure they have not expressed support for the war.

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory, says on X that under the International Court of Justice’s new ruling, which said that Israel’s presence in Palestinian territory is unlawful, UN member states may now be required to disclose a list of their nationals who have settled there.

This may be especially true “as they commit crimes against the illegally occupied population”, Albanese added.

The ICJ judges pointed to a wide list of policies – including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies against Palestinians – all of which it said violated international law.

Violent settlers must be held accountable. As Israel has proven unwilling or unable to bring them to justice, other countries must do so.

One of the implications of the ICJ AO is that UN member states may now be under an obligation to disclose the list of their nationals… https://t.co/NSWJedh4lM

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) July 21, 2024

The Wafa news agency reports that a group of settlers have attacked the Palestinian community of Madama, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Local sources told Wafa that settlers set fire to land north of the village, causing dozens of olive trees to burn before the residents were able to put out the fire.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior political official and spokesman for the Houthis, addressed Israel’s attack on Yemen’s Red Sea port city of Hodeidah on Al Jazeera.

He asserted that Israeli attacks would only strengthen their resolve to halt the “genocide” in Gaza, regardless of the sacrifices required. Al-Bukhaiti also discussed the Houthis’ military capabilities and their coordination with other regional resistance groups.

Watch the discussion to learn more: