Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Israeli army says Hezbollah commander killed

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A drone infiltration alert has sounded in Eilat and surrounding areas in the southernmost parts of Israel, the Israeli military has said.

There is no immediate confirmation on the cause of the alarm but drone attacks launched by the Houthi group in Yemen have previously sounded the alarm.

At the end of today’s huge antigovernment rallies in Jerusalem, Israelis are camping out near the building housing the country’s parliament, known as the Knesset.

Calling for elections and the release of captives held in Gaza, they are preparing for several days of protests.

Translation: Israelis staged a sit-in near the Knesset in Jerusalem to protest the policies of the Netanyahu government.

Hamas has accused the Palestinian Authority of sending security officers into northern Gaza under the cover of securing aid trucks, the Reuters news agency reports.

A senior Hamas Interior Ministry official told the group’s Al-Aqsa TV that the force’s mission was supervised by Majed Faraj, the PA’s chief of intelligence.

It said six members of the force, which escorted aid trucks coming through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, were arrested, and that police were pursuing additional members.

“The suspicious security force that entered yesterday with Egyptian Crescent trucks coordinated its operations entirely with the occupation forces,” the Hamas official said.

A PA official in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was quoted as saying in a statement that the claim was “incorrect” and that the authority is uninteresting in exchanging media comments with Hamas.

Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) office says that 205 aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip today, 77 percent of which carried food packages, via the Karam Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) and Rafah border crossings.

It also said that 242 total food packages were airdropped over northern Gaza.

Israel has been repeatedly criticised for blocking the entry of aid to the Gaza Strip, with global NGO Oxfam accusing Israel last week of blocking the aid “deliberately”.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths says Israel and its allies must stop their attempts to undermine the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

“UNRWA is the backbone of the humanitarian operation in Gaza. Any effort to distribute aid without them is simply doomed to fail,” he said in a post on X.

“No other agency has the same reach, experience or community trust needed to do the job.”

Top Israeli officials have said they wish to dismantle UNRWA on unsubstantiated charges that it works with and for Hamas across the Gaza Strip.

Hamas says the Israeli military is committing a “war crime” by establishing so-called “kill zones” across the Gaza Strip where any approaching Palestinian may be shot and killed.

The establishment of such zones was reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which also described how the Israeli military has indiscriminately killed unarmed Palestinians in multiple instances.

One of the latest such instances was exposed by Al Jazeera earlier this week, which forced the Israeli military to confirm that its forces killed two unarmed Palestinians and buried their bodies along the Gaza coastline with bulldozers.

Hamas, in its statement, called on the UN and international judicial institutions led by the International Criminal Court to immediately begin investigations into “these heinous crimes” and other acts of aggression that Hamas said the Israeli military was committing with support from the administration of US President Joe Biden.

The Lebanese group says it fired artillery shells at the Israeli army’s Metulla site which led to casualties among the Israeli forces.

It said the attack, Hezbollah’s eighth of the day on Israeli army positions, occurred at 11:10pm local time (21:10 GMT).

Earlier, Hezbollah confirmed the death of Ismail al-Zin, who Israel claims was the commander of the group’s antitank missile unit. He was killed today after the Israeli Air Force attacked a car in the southern Lebanese village of Kounine, the Israeli army said.‏

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said that 21 patients have died since the start of the Israeli military operation inside and around the al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza on March 18.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the 107 patients who remained inside the hospital include four children and 28 critical patients, many of whom suffer from infection and have been moved multiple times within the hospital compound. Dozens of medical staff are also stuck inside.

“Since yesterday only one bottle of water remains for every 15 people. Contagious diseases are spreading due to extremely unsanitary conditions, and a lack of water,” he wrote in a post on X, saying food is also extremely limited and a humanitarian corridor to evacuate patients as well as a ceasefire were needed.

The Israeli military has rejected multiple WHO missions to the hospital in Gaza City over the past weeks.

The US army’s Central Command (CENTCOM) says it completed another airdrop of aid over northern Gaza.

The US military said it used four C-130 military cargo aircraft to drop more than 50,000 meal equivalents into the northern part of the Strip and promised that the much-criticised airdrop plan will continue.

The US military confirmed on Saturday that some of its bundles had been dropped into the sea but that there were no casualties. It came shortly after at least a dozen Palestinians drowned trying to recover bundles from the sea.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has condemned Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich’s announcement to develop many more illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, which we reported on earlier.

It also said in a statement that violent settlers have attacked several Palestinians in a community adjacent to the area, beating them with sticks and stones, injuring four and stealing their sheep.

The ministry said it views the move as part of Israel’s intention to seize for itself the entirety of Palestinian lands in the occupied areas and warned that a failure to implement UN Security Council Resolution 2334 on Israeli occupation is undermining the chance of a two-state solution.

The Qassam Brigades of Hamas said its fighters successfully sniped an Israeli soldier in the vicinity of al-Shifa Hospital, and used mortars to target soldiers and vehicles in the area.

It also released a video showing multiple mortar launches in the vicinity of the hospital that has been besieged by the Israeli military for two full weeks.

“If Netanyahu thinks that by killing and starving our children we will deviate from our path, then indeed he has failed and lost,” a blurred-out Palestinian fighter can be seen saying in Arabic as he loads a live mortar shell in the video.

The armed wing of Hamas also said its fighters hit a Merkava tank west of the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood in central Gaza, where intense ground fighting has been ongoing for days.

The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) says it “engaged and destroyed two unmanned aerial systems in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen” earlier today.

It says the aerial systems presented a threat to US and coalition forces in the area.

“These actions are necessary to protect our forces, ensure freedom of navigation, and make international waters safer and more secure for US, coalition and merchant vessels,” CENTCOM’s statement says.

The commander-in-chief of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas inside the Gaza Strip, has called on Palestinians in a video message – one that didn’t show his face, for his protection –  to use all their resources to fight against the invading Israeli army.

“Today is the day. Whoever has a rifle should come out with it, for this is its time. And whoever does not have a rifle should come forth with their machete, their pickaxe, or a Molotov cocktail, with their truck or bulldozer or car,” Mohammed Deif can be heard saying in Arabic in a short video released by Hamas.

“Today is the day history opens its brightest, most splendid, and most noble pages. So, who will inscribe their name, their family’s name, their town’s name in the pages of light and glory?”

Towards the end of his news conference, the Israeli leader delved into why he believes there is so much international pressure against Israel today and why “the whole world is ganging up on us”.

He acknowledged there are people inside and outside Israel who believe there might be some truth behind rising anti-Israeli sentiment and those who believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Netanyahu said, “It must be ignorance”, but then through recounting how his historian father Benzion Netanyahu talked about the rise of “anti-Semitic allegations” throughout history, the Israeli leader cited this as another reason for the current state of affairs.

He said Israelis must “unite in physical and moral defence against accusers” who are armed with lies, hypocrisy and falsehood.

The Palestinian president swore in a new government headed by Mohammad Mustafa, a close ally and leading business figure.

Mustafa formed a new cabinet on Thursday in which he will also serve as foreign minister.

He was appointed premier this month with a mandate to help reform the Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

He was also assigned to lead the relief and rebuilding of Gaza.

Abbas, who as president remains by far the most powerful figure in the PA, appointed the new government in a demonstration of willingness to meet international demands for change in the administration.

Hamas has criticised the appointment of Mustafa but had no immediate reaction to the naming of his cabinet.

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has published this video of himself in Wadi Auja in the occupied West Bank to announce an “unprecedented investment” into the development of more illegal settlements.

He called this “a fitting Zionist response” to a Palestinian attack last week in the Jordan Valley that wounded two Israelis. Smotrich said the Israeli government is surveying the area for expansion, evaluating everything including water resources.

This is coming days after Israel was internationally criticised for declaring 800 hectares (1,977 acres) of land in the occupied West Bank as territory belonging to the Israeli state in its biggest illegal land grab in three decades.

As Israel tries to recover from the financial burden of its deadly war on Gaza and reassure citizens, Smotrich also announced today that businesses in Eilat and Tamar in southern Israel could be entitled to compensation for damages suffered as a result of the war from the state.

Translation: An appropriate Zionist answer: expansion and development of Nahal Yitav (Auja). We arrived at the site in Jordan Valley and announced an unprecedented investment in the site and its development. This is a fitting Zionist response to the attack that took place last week in the Jordan Valley in which two Jews were wounded by gunfire from a terrorist caught this morning.