Updates: Israel’s north Gaza siege kills 1,300; Lebanon toll passes 3,000

For more on Israeli attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, check out our story, here.

You can read more on what people in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon think of the US elections, here.

To watch our news story on a Jewish academic arrested under a UK anti-terrorism law after speaking at a recent pro-Palestinian protest in London, see here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of today’s news:

• Israeli soldiers “continue to bomb and destroy” Kamal Adwan Hospital in war-battered northern Gaza, the territory’s Health Ministry says, suggesting that the plan seems to be to “execute” medical workers who refused to evacuate.
• At least 16 people have been killed and 90 others wounded in Lebanon, according to the Ministry of Public Health’s latest figures, bringing the death toll after more than a year of war between Hezbollah and Israel to 3,002.
• Israel’s air force says fighter jets attacked the “intelligence headquarters” of Hezbollah in Syria, while Syria’s SANA news agency reported that “civilian areas” were hit south of the capital Damascus.
• Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant approved sending an additional 7,000 draft notices to members of the country’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, saying the military needs more soldiers.
• The UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said Israel’s ban on its operations would lead to the “collapse” of humanitarian work in besieged Gaza as UN lawyers review the move.

An Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital resulted in six children being injured, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

“Shortly after the WHO-led mission to Kamal Adwan Hospital yesterday, the facility’s third floor was reportedly hit again, injuring six children who are patients there,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“It is appalling that hospitals in Gaza continue to be attacked, patients continue to be harmed, and health workers and humanitarians continue to work under life-threatening conditions.”

More than 1,000 authors – including winners of the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award – “are launching a mass boycott of Israeli publishers complicit in the dispossession of the Palestinian people”.

“Every writer wishes to be published everywhere. But I have told my Israeli publisher that if they will not support the basic principles expressed in this letter – an end to complicity with Israel’s apartheid and full rights for Palestinians – I cannot approve the forthcoming publication of my book, The Refugees,” said Viet Thanh Nguyen, one of the authors, in a statement.

“This pains me but even the laudable impulse for translation, dialogue, and cultural exchange needs to be situated in the context of occupation, apartheid, and genocide.”

See the full letter and list of signatories, here.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has responded to Israel’s announcement that it is terminating the agreement facilitating the work of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees – the main aid provider in Gaza.

Guterres stressed that UNRWA was essential and there was no alternative, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Israel sent a letter notifying the UN General Assembly it was ending its agreement for UNRWA to operate in the occupied Palestinian territory, which has been in effect since the end of the 1967 Middle East war.

If it’s impossible for UNRWA to operate, Israel will be responsible for providing Palestinians in occupied territory with humanitarian goods and services, as well as education and healthcare, Dujarric said.

“Obviously, our lawyers and UNRWA’s lawyers are also taking a closer look at the letter.”

The Lebanese armed group says it fired rockets at a “movement of the Israeli enemy army forces” on the northeastern outskirts of the town of Maroun al-Ras.

The group also said it bombed the Israeli city of Safed with a “salvo of rockets”.

Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging fire across the border of Israel and Lebanon since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023.

The conflict took a violent turn last month after Israel launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon and intensified its air strikes.

The Israeli army raided the town of Qafin, north of Tulkarem, the Wafa news agency reports.

Citing local sources, Wafa said Israeli forces are patrolling the streets including in the western area known as al-Jazayer and around al-Rahman Mosque.

More than 11,500 people have been arrested since the war on Gaza began, according to rights groups, as the crackdown on the occupied West Bank intensified.

Israel has so far failed to significantly turn around the desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza as a deadline set by the US to get more aid in approaches.

The Biden administration told Israel in an October 13 letter that it had 30 days to take specific steps to address the dire humanitarian crisis in the Strip, which has been pummelled for more than a year by Israeli ground and air attacks.

“As of today, the situation has not significantly turned around. We have seen an increase in some measurements… But just if you look at the stipulated recommendations in the letter, those have not been met,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

The results so far are “not good enough” but he stressed that the 30-day period had not elapsed. “They certainly do not have a pass… They have failed to implement all the things that we recommended.”

Miller declined to say what consequences Israel would face if it failed to implement the requests. “What I can tell you that we will do is, we will follow the law,” he said.

Washington is Israel’s main supplier of weapons. Section 620i of the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits military aid to countries that impede the delivery of US humanitarian assistance.

In the crucial swing state of Michigan, the Arab and Muslim community is divided over who to vote for in the US presidential election because of Democrat support for Israel’s devastating war on Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s podcast series The Take speaks to our very own Ali Harb on the ground to find out more. Listen below:

A Gaza captives campaign group has called for an investigation into the alleged leak of confidential documents by an ex-aide to Israel’s prime minister, which may have undermined efforts to secure their release.

A court announced on Sunday that Eliezer Feldstein, a former aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had been detained along with three others for allegedly leaking documents to foreign media.

The case has prompted the opposition to question whether Netanyahu was involved in the leak – an allegation denied by his office.

“The [captives’] families demand an investigation against all those suspected of sabotage and undermining state security,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement. “Such actions, especially during wartime, endanger the hostages, jeopardise their chances of return and abandon them to the risk of being killed by Hamas terrorists.”

Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant approved the Israeli army’s “recommendation to issue an additional 7,000 orders for screening and evaluation processes for ultra-Orthodox draft-eligible individuals”.

The order comes after a first round of 3,000 draft orders were sent out in July, sparking protests from the ultra-Orthodox community.

“The defence minister concluded that the war and the challenges we face underscore the [Israeli army’s] need for additional soldiers. This is a tangible operational need that requires broad national mobilisation from all parts of society,” the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

Under a rule adopted at Israel’s creation in 1948, when it applied to only 400 people, the ultra-Orthodox have historically been exempt from military service if they dedicate themselves to the study of sacred Jewish texts.

The orders come at a time when Israel struggles to bolster troop numbers as it fights a multi-front war, with ground forces deployed to fight Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, says Israeli authorities have significantly limited humanitarian access in Gaza, allowing it only on an exceptional basis to Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoon over the past month.

“This has left us unable to confirm the conditions of people inside and we worry, obviously, for their safety,” he said.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has raised alarm about the dwindling supplies, Dujarric noted, adding that “the already limited humanitarian supplies entering Gaza have decreased even further since October”.

Moreover, private imports are virtually banned and access to Gaza is restricted to just three entry points.

We have been reporting for the past several hours on the Israeli strike in southern Damascus.

Mehdi Mahfouz, 34, a resident of the area where the attack took place, said he “heard three successive explosions, one of which was very strong”.

“Then I saw a large black cloud of smoke rising,” Mahfouz said.

The blasts were heard in the neighbouring Jaramana suburb of Damascus as ambulances headed to the area.

Israel earlier claimed to have attacked a “Hezbollah intelligence headquarters”. There was no immediate comment from the Lebanese group that widely operates in Syria.

The chief of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has denounced Israel’s decision to cut ties with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

“Let me be clear: There is simply no alternative to UNRWA,” Tedros said.

“This ban will not make Israel safer. It will only deepen the suffering of the people of Gaza and increase the risk of disease outbreaks.”

Tedros’s comments came after Israel said it formally notified the UN of its decision to sever ties with UNRWA after Israeli lawmakers backed the move last week.

The Carrefour retail chain announced via its Facebook account that it will close all its branches in Jordan starting today.

This comes at a time when the global movement to boycott Israel, BDS, attributed this decision to the boycott against Carrefour, which started with the war on Gaza because of its alleged support for Israel.

In a statement, Carrefour Jordan said: “As of November 4, 2024, Carrefour will cease all its operations in Jordan and will not continue to operate within the kingdom. We thank our customers for their support and apologise for any inconvenience this decision may cause.”

The boycott movement in Jordan said on its Instagram account that Carrefour’s decision was a “victory for the Jordanian people”.

The US has urged Israel to take action over violence committed by settlers in the occupied West Bank, voicing alarm after the torching of nearly 20 cars near Ramallah.

“The United States is deeply concerned by these and other recent reports of increasing extremist settler violence in the [occupied] West Bank,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

In addition to the torching of vehicles, Miller pointed to settler attacks on homes, the killing of Palestinians’ livestock and the hindering of olive harvesting.

“It is critical that the government of Israel deter extremist settler violence and take measures to protect all communities from harm in accordance with its international obligations,” Miller said.