Updates: Israel launches ‘extensive’ ground attack as 144 killed in Gaza

Learn all about Israel’s expanded ground invasion here.

As Israeli bombings intensify, Gaza’s hospitals are reeling. Read more here.

And for all of our coverage on the Israel-Palestine conflict, go here.

This live page will soon close. Here’s some of the major developments of the day:

• The Israeli military announced the beginning of a wide-scale ground offensive in northern and southern Gaza after calling up 60,000 troops.
• Israel said it will allow a “basic amount” of humanitarian aid into Gaza to avoid a famine, more than two months after imposing a total blockade that has left much of the population facing starvation.
• Yemen’s Houthi group warned it will carry out military strikes targeting Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport and other airports in response to Israel’s expanded attack on Gaza.
• Fighting around the Indonesian Hospital and an Israeli military “siege” prompted it to shut down, meaning there are no functioning health centres in northern Gaza.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “will achieve victory in the Gaza Strip” without addressing ongoing ceasefire negotiations in Doha.

Emboldened by US President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is intensifying his war on Gaza.

The US has blamed Hamas for the renewed Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. But is Washington’s support complicating efforts to reach a permanent ceasefire?

The United Nations had warned of the risk of famine in Gaza long before the aid blockade was imposed on the coastal enclave, and doctors at Kamal Adwan Hospital told a World Health Organization team last year that at least 10 children had starved to death.

Israel has faced increasing pressure to lift its aid blockade, as UN agencies warn of critical shortages of food, clean water, fuel and medicine.

Marwan al-Hams, director of field hospitals at Gaza’s Health Ministry, said that since the blockade began, “57 children have died in Gaza as a result of famine, but in the coming days this number will increase due to the depletion of available food supplies”.

At least 3,193 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,339, the ministry said on Sunday.

Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney, has urged United Nations member states to use their powers to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and protect the rights and lives of Palestinians.

Every year, Palestinians around the world remember the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel.

Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist militias attacked Palestinian cities and villages, killing about 13,000 people and destroying more than 530 villages. At least 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes, becoming refugees.

Here are the stories of five Palestinians who share their memories of displacement and loss – as well as their hope to return home.

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Tens of thousands of red-clad protesters have marched through The Hague in the Netherlands to demand that their government do more to halt Israel’s war on Gaza, in what organizers called the country’s biggest demonstration in two decades.

Human rights groups and aid agencies – including Amnesty International, Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) – estimated the peaceful crowd at more than 100,000 people on the streets of The Hague.

“We are calling on the Dutch government: stop political, economic and military support to Israel as long as it blocks access to aid supplies and while it is guilty of genocide, war crimes and structural human rights violations in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories,” said Marjon Rozema of Amnesty.

David Prins, 64, said he was attending the protest “to speak out against the atrocities”.

In its latest assault on Gaza’s decimated healthcare system, Israel has again targeted the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, this time with drones.

Health officials said fighting around the Indonesian Hospital and an Israeli military “siege” forced it to shut down.

Read the full story here.

Israel’s High Court of Justice has postponed a hearing set for May 21 on a petition for independent media access to Gaza, the Times of Israel reports.

The court did not provide a reason for the postponement or set a new date to hear the petition filed by the Foreign Press Association (FPA), which represents international journalists working in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Israel has prevented all international journalists from reporting independently inside Gaza since the outbreak of the war in October 2023.

Yousef Munayyer from the Arab Center Washington DC says the timing of Israel’s announcement that it will allow “basic” aid into Gaza comes as pressure mounts and famine warnings rise.

Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office said the move was made to assist the expansion of its military action in Gaza, but “that obviously does not make sense”, Munayyer told Al Jazeera.

“The timing suggests this was not an announcement that was planned. What all of this suggests is that there’s been some pressure, particularly American pressure, on the Israeli government to let this aid in. Aid has been completely blocked for more than 78 days, and we’re seeing really scary images of starvation and malnutrition, particularly affecting the most vulnerable in Palestinian society.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said that as Israel has finally announced the resumption of some goods to the Gaza Strip after months of total blockade, the entry of aid to the Strip “must be immediate, massive, and unhindered”.

He said in a post on X that the aid “must put an end to the catastrophic humanitarian situation and definitively halt the famine”.

Israel says it has retrieved the official Syrian archive on spy Eli Cohen – a cache of 2,500 documents, photographs, and personal effects linked to the Mossad agent executed in Damascus in 1965.

“In a complex covert operation by the Mossad, in cooperation with a strategic partner service, the official Syrian archive on Eli Cohen was brought to Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. “The trove contains thousands of items that had been kept under tight security by Syrian intelligence for decades.”

Among the items recovered are a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, audio recordings and files from his interrogations and those of his sources, letters he wrote to family members in Israel, and photographs from his clandestine mission in Syria.

Netanyahu said retrieving the archive reflected Israel’s “unwavering commitment to bringing back all our missing, prisoners, and hostages”.

Al Jazeera is reporting from Amman, Jordan, because it has been banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Israel will now allow the flow of humanitarian aid back into Gaza after a near 12-week blockade of humanitarian assistance.

They’re going to allow the minimum amount of food “to ensure a hunger crisis does not develop”. It’s worth mentioning this hunger crisis has already ensued. The population has been starving. Once the ceasefire stopped, Israel completely blocked all aid.

We’re not just talking about food. We’re talking about water, medical supplies, fuel for hospitals. None of that has entered Gaza in nearly three months. There’s been a lot of pressure on the prime minister, on the Israelis from a lot of international partners.

You even had Donald Trump say “people are starving in Gaza”. Because of this pressure, Netanyahu finally decided to allow aid back in. But what the Israelis are saying is this will be a minimum amount of aid, just food, and it’s unclear still when exactly this will take place.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has denounced Netanyahu’s move to allow aid into Gaza as a “grave mistake”.

“Any humanitarian aid that enters Gaza will benefit Hamas while the hostages suffer in the tunnels,” Ben-Gvir said.

“Netanyahu is making a grave mistake by deciding to bring in aid, and he doesn’t even have a majority for the decision. Hamas must be crushed, not given the means to survive.”

Netanyahu said earlier that his cabinet had approved a decision to allow a “basic” amount of food into Gaza to enable Israel to expand its new military operation.

Israel has imposed a complete blockade on all goods entering Gaza since March 2.

Israel has blocked the entry of medical, food and fuel supplies into Gaza since the start of March. Health experts are warning that famine is imminent if the war isn’t stopped and aid deliveries resumed.

US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, said the United States won’t allow a worsening disaster to come to fruition in Gaza.

“We do not want to see a humanitarian crisis, and we will not allow it to occur on President Trump’s watch,” Witkoff told ABC News.

The Israeli military campaign has devastated the enclave, pushing nearly all residents from their homes and killing more than 53,000 people, according to Gaza’s health authorities.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said in a video that Israel “will achieve victory in the Gaza Strip” as Israeli forces expand their operations in Gaza, without addressing the ongoing ceasefire negotiations in Doha.

“There are two interconnected goals for the operation, which are to eliminate Hamas and to free the hostages, and we will achieve both,” he said.

Netanyahu also said that Israel will “establish a barrier along the Jordan River from the [occupied Golan Heights] to Eilat to prevent the infiltration of terrorists and cells”.