Israel’s war on Gaza updates: 12 killed in Israeli strike on Gaza school

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To find out more details about the Israeli air strikes on Gaza today, read this.

You can find out more about where Hamas stands on the US “bridging proposal”, here.

Finally, you can find all our latest coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza, here.

We will be closing this live page shortly but before we do, let’s take a look at the day’s main developments:

• Multiple Israeli air strikes on Gaza have killed at least 52 Palestinians. The bombs targeted a school, a family home, a crowded area near a market and a mobile phone charging point among other places.
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Egypt and Qatar and said Hamas must accept a “bridging proposal” that he claimed Israel has accepted. Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu said he would not agree to any deal that would end the military occupation of Gaza.
• Israeli military recovered the bodies of six captives from Khan Younis. Israeli media is reporting captives are believed to have died as a result of Israeli military strikes months earlier.
• The Qassam Brigades has accused Netanyahu of making empty promises to Israelis.
• The Israeli military launched a series of major strikes on areas across southern Lebanon, along with Baalbek in the east. Hezbollah, which confirmed four of its fighters were killed, hit northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights with rockets and drones.

Hezbollah says on its Telegram channel that four of its fighters, all from southern Lebanon, have been killed in Israeli attacks.

As we reported earlier, Israeli warplanes attacked the village of Dheira with two bombs, with Lebanon’s Health Ministry also confirming four deaths.

Hezbollah claimed 12 attacks on Israeli positions today, which included multiple volleys of rockets and several drones.

The armed Lebanese group also said it fired a surface-to-air missile at an Israeli military jet that had violated Lebanese airspace, forcing it to return.

Canada has refused to comment on a planned US sale of Canadian-made weapons to Israel, after news of the deal drew rebuke from rights advocates who argue the arms will help fuel Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians.

Canada announced earlier this year that it would not authorise new export permits for weapons to Israel amid mass protests over the country’s war in the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians over nearly 11 months.

But rights advocates quickly noted that Canada has not revoked existing arms export permits, nor would the prohibition affect Canadian weapons and components that first go to the US before they are shipped to Israel.

Read full story here.

The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media has published a report about the digital security landscape for Palestinians aged 15 to 30 in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The centre, known as 7amleh, found that since Israel’s war on Gaza began, there has been a decline in active youth political participation on social media networks with 39 percent of respondents resorting to deleting political and social posts for fear of repercussions.

It added that 50 percent of users said restrictions by platforms on publishing, such as shadow banning by Meta (the company that owns Facebook and Instagram), have led them to reduce their digital footprint.

The report also found that nearly half of users had been questioned and investigated by Israeli security agencies or had heard of individuals who had been questioned about their posts on social media platforms.

The killing of Hamza Abdul Rahman Murtaja in the Israeli attack on the Mustafa Hafez school brings the death toll of journalists in Gaza since October 7 to 170, according to the Government Media Office.

The organisation released the names of all the killed journalists, saying they were assassinated in an attempt to “obscure the Palestinian narrative and obscure the truth”.

Murtaja’s brother Yasser, who was also a journalist, was killed by an Israeli sniper while covering the “Great March of Return” in 2018.

The march refers to more than a year of Palestinians protesting along the fence between Gaza and Israel in 2018 and 2019 to demand the right to return to their ancestors’ homes. More than 250 Palestinians were killed after Israeli snipers opened fire at the demonstrators.

Arwa Damon, founder of the charity Inara, says humanitarian organisations in Gaza are struggling to get supplies. She tells Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah that even when supplies arrive in Gaza, it’s almost impossible to transport them to where they are needed the most.

Damon said the situation is so “dire” that Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital is running out of bandages.

“And what that has meant is that a 13-year-old child who has 50 to 60 percent burns on his body was not able to get sufficient bandage changes for wound cleaning, which then resulted in him having blood poisoning and exhibiting signs of early sepsis,” Damon said. “He’s in the ICU.”

At Nasser Hospital, she said, they’re missing many basics, including sufficient paper on which to write patient conditions.

“All of us here are scraping around trying to find whatever we can, from fresh vegetables to hygiene products, and begin to distribute that out to the people, but the numbers we are able to reach – it’s almost embarrassing in the face of how vast the need is right now,” she said.

President Biden’s send-off speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was often interrupted by adoring chants of “Thank you, Joe”. But outside the convention halls on Monday, thousands of protesters held signs accusing Biden of war crimes and referring to him as “Genocide Joe” in response to his support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

Biden paid a nod to the protesters in his address, saying that they “have a point”.

For many Palestinian rights supporters, though, Biden’s statement fell short of the change they seek, especially as Washington continues to provide Israel with the weapons and bombs that are killing dozens of Palestinians daily.

Read full story here on why advocates say Biden’s Gaza ceasefire nod at DNC falls short.

Death appears to be the “only certainty” for 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza with no way to escape Israeli attacks, a UN official says, recounting growing desperation across the territory.

“It does feel like people are waiting for death. Death seems to be the only certainty in this situation,” Louise Wateridge, an UNRWA spokeswoman, told the AFP news agency from Gaza.

For the past two weeks, Wateridge has been in Gaza, witnessing the humanitarian crisis, fear of death and spread of disease as the war rages on.

“Nowhere in Gaza is safe. It’s absolutely devastating. We are facing unprecedented challenges when it comes to the spread of disease, when it comes to hygiene. Part of this is because of the Israeli-imposed siege on the Gaza Strip.”

Two young Palestinian men have been wounded in Israeli settler and military attacks in Hebron and Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

The Wafa news agency quoted a local source as saying Israeli forces chased after two young men riding a motorcycle in the town of al-Khader south of Bethlehem and fired rubber-coated metal bullets at them, hitting one in the leg.

Israeli soldiers raided the vicinity of their homes in the area and conducted search operations.

Wafa also cited a local activist as saying a group of settlers, protected by Israeli soldiers, attacked the family home of a young man in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron. He was taken to a medical facility for treatment after being beaten up with batons.

After six more captives in Gaza were confirmed dead, the armed wing of Hamas has released a video that targets Israel’s prime minister, saying Netanyahu “promises them nothing but delusion”.

"كتـ.ـائب القسـ.ـام" تنشر فيديو لأسرى إسرائيليين بعنوان: "يعدهم ويمنيهم وما يعدهم الشيطان إلا غروراً"#الجزيرة #ألبوم pic.twitter.com/Djm44nFyNC

— الجزيرة فلسطين (@AJA_Palestine) August 20, 2024

Translation: Qassam Brigades publishes a video of Israeli prisoners titled: “He promises them and gives them hope, but the devil promises them nothing but delusion”.

An initial assessment of the deaths of six captives, whose bodies were retrieved from Gaza by Israeli forces on Tuesday, suggests that they died of suffocation caused by a gas leak in a tunnel during an Israeli army attack, according to a report by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

According to the report, the captives, who were taken from Khan Younis, appear to have died of suffocation in the tunnel where they were being held. Their deaths are attributed to the result of an Israeli military attack.

The report claimed that the incident occurred about six months ago during an Israeli military attack in Khan Younis by the 98th Division. Evidence collected from the scene supported this preliminary assessment, which is still being investigated, the newspaper report said.

The US secretary of state, who has arrived in Qatar from Egypt and met Emir Sheikh Tamim, says Washington wants a deal within days, urging stakeholders to “get the agreement over the finish line now”. He adds:

• He heard directly from Netanyahu that Israel has accepted the US bridging proposal and hopes Hamas will do the same.
• Once Hamas agrees to the bridging proposal, all sides will have to reach an agreement on the implementation.

After Netanyahu promised Israel will not withdraw its military from Gaza, Blinken said the US has always opposed long-term military occupation of the enclave.

Zahiro Shahar Mor, nephew of captive Abraham Munder, one of the six whose bodies were retrieved by Israeli forces, says authorities had “torpedoed” opportunities to sign a ceasefire and bring the captives back alive.

“My uncle was a war hero who lived his whole life building the country. Hamas took him, but the continuous abandonment is on the hands of the Israeli government,” he told Reuters.

“I will not stop fighting for them to get [back] the people that are still alive. Otherwise, there is no future for the state of Israel. No one will want to live in a state that does not take care of its citizens, that betrays them and abandons them.”

Israel’s military said it retrieved the bodies of six captives from Gaza. It said a total of 109 captives are believed to remain in Gaza, about a third of whom are thought to be dead, with the fate of the others unknown.

The Israeli military has confirmed that about 40 rockets and multiple drones were launched from Lebanon at northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights in the past few hours.

After air raid sirens sounded across the Upper Galilee, it said most projectiles were intercepted and reported no casualties. Some of the drones made impact in the occupied Golan Heights, it said.

Hezbollah, which has claimed 10 attacks on Israeli positions so far today, said it targeted multiple military headquarters in both areas, achieving hits.

The armed Lebanese group has launched more than 100 rockets at Israeli positions today in retaliation for the Israeli air raids last night that caused large secondary explosions after hitting a Hezbollah ammunition depot in the Bekaa region.

Rocket Alert [21:31:08] – 1 Alert:

• Confrontation Line — Ya'ara
Population in the area: 752#Israel #RocketAlert #RedAlert pic.twitter.com/MplEP9jICN

— ILRedAlert (@ILRedAlert) August 20, 2024