Israel’s war on Gaza updates: UN expert reports on genocidal acts in Gaza

The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) office claims that of those 258 trucks that entered the Strip, 166 carried more than 3.1 million kg (7 million pounds) of food.

It also said that 125 aid packages were dropped over northern Gaza, which the UN has repeatedly said faces imminent famine, containing more than 113,398kg (250,000 pounds) of food.

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Read about how the world reacted to today’s ceasefire resolution from the UN Security Council here.

Check out the latest episode of Al Jazeera’s Inside Story on threats to UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, here.

You can find more news, features and videos on the war here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here’s what happened today:

• The UNSC approved a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire during Ramadan and the release of Israeli captives after the US failed to veto it. The resolution was welcomed globally, except by Israel, which cancelled a delegation visit to Washington, DC.
• Hamas said in negotiations with Israel and others that it would be sticking with its original positions of a ceasefire, return of displaced Palestinians and exchange of prisoners.
• Fighting is still ongoing around the al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, while the al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis is out of service after an Israeli siege.
• A top UN rapporteur’s report said Israeli actions in Gaza meet the threshold for genocidal acts on several grounds and called for action.
• Israeli Minister Gideon Saar and another ally have resigned from Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency government, which could put pressure on others to follow.
• UNRWA said more people will die of starvation and other conditions imposed by the Israeli military if humanitarian aid is not significantly increased.

This was a delegation that was supposed to head to Washington at the request of US President Joe Biden.

It was going to include the minister of strategic affairs in Israel, Ron Dermer, the National Security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and representatives from the coordinators of government activities in the occupied Palestinian territories for the Israeli army.

They were supposed to go to Washington to brief American officials about how exactly Israel plans to invade Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah.

We’ve seen a lot of back-and-forth public disagreements between both American and Israeli officials about this topic. The Americans have simply said it’d be a red line and a mistake. Netanyahu has previously said that, with or without US support, the invasion is going to happen.

Now there are some issues internally within Israel’s government.

Benny Gantz, a member of the country’s war cabinet, said that it could be a mistake not to send this delegation at a time when US support is critical in this war.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says it has managed to evacuate staff, patients and dead bodies from the besieged al-Amal Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.

The organisation said it coordinated with the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to evacuate 27 medical staff, six patients and one patient companion.

The organisation was also able to get two bodies out of the hospital, namely of PRCS volunteer Amir Abu Aisha, killed by the Israeli military, and a civilian who was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers.

“PRCS Al-Amal Hospital, in Khan Yunis, is out of service after the occupation forces forced the hospital staff and the wounded to evacuate it and closed its entrances with earthen barriers.”

The Israeli army says its air force struck a “military structure” belonging to Hezbollah in the area of Mais al-Jabal.

It also released aerial footage that it says shows an operative with the armed Lebanese group being detected entering a building, with the site bombed by fighter jets shortly after.

The Israeli military said it also launched artillery attacks on the source of a rocket launch into northern Israel from southern Lebanon.

Earlier, it had released footage of an attack on two purported Hezbollah operatives in southern Lebanon after aerial surveillance tracked their movement.

The resolution that has been passed today by the UN Security Council is a gate of hope for Palestinians here who have been under unrelenting bombardment for (more than) five months, with the UNSC not managing to pass a ceasefire resolution until now.

Palestinians believe that Israel might not fully commit to the UN Security Council resolution. But they believe that it will create the way later to increase international pressure on Israel to commit to the resolution.

However, there has been no letup in air raids in the past 24 hours. (Israel is) intensifying its bombardment from land, air and sea.

Israeli forces are manoeuvring troops on the ground, adopting a strategy of blowing up residential neighbourhoods one after the other.

Rafah has been bombarded in the past hour where a number of Palestinians have been reported injured after being hit with a drone missile in the western part of the city.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during her regional tour to discuss Israel’s war on Gaza.

The meeting took place at the presidential headquarters in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, with Abbas saying the UN Security Council resolution must be implemented, the Wafa news agency reports.

Abbas discussed humanitarian aid, opposed further displacement of Palestinians and slammed an Israeli move to seize more Palestinian land.

He also reportedly discussed the two-state solution with the German foreign minister, urged all countries to formally recognise a sovereign state of Palestine and stressed that the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) must be supported.

Avril Benoit, the US executive director of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says that while the UNSC resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza during Ramadan was a “constructive step”, there was a need for “a sustainable ceasefire”.

“A two-week ceasefire is not nearly enough time to respond to the overwhelming humanitarian needs. We repeat our urgent demand for a sustained ceasefire now,” she said in a statement posted on the group’s website.

“In the meantime, Council members must ensure that the ceasefire is put into action immediately and doesn’t end up being merely words on paper.”

US Senator Bernie Sanders points out that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is apparently upset after the UN Security Council vote, having cancelled a delegation to Washington, DC, and blasting the resolution.

“But he’s not so upset that he’ll turn down $3.3bn in taxpayer dollars to fund his immoral war,” the Democratic senator said in a post on X, adding that the US should cease sending Israel money “to starve Palestinian children”.

Sanders also said that Washington must push all parties to honour the resolution, which calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all captives, and significantly increase humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi says the UNSC resolution on Gaza must be implemented so Israel won’t continue to violate international law with impunity.

He wrote in an X post that the “reaction by the Israeli government reflects the disdain with which it holds international law”.

Safadi had earlier today heavily criticised Israel in a joint news conference with UN Secretary-General Guterres, also calling for sanctions on Israel and for all states to stop sending it arms.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanaani, says in a short statement that after six months of failure to adopt a deterring resolution on Israel’s “war crimes and genocide” against Palestinians, the UN Security Council vote was “a positive but insufficient step”.

“A more important step than adopting this resolution would be [an] effective action to implement it,” he said, adding that Israeli attacks on Gaza and occupied West Bank must halt, the siege of Gaza must end, crossings must open to aid and international funding must come through to rebuild the enclave.

“The reaction of the child-killing Zionist regime to the resolution indicates its clear anger from this irreparable defeat both in the field and in international politics,” Kanaani said.

Washington believes the public display of dissatisfaction with the US by Israel over the UNSC resolution is a manufactured crisis by Netanyahu for domestic purposes, US outlet Axios cites unnamed US officials as saying.

On Sunday evening and Monday morning, White House officials told Netanyahu’s aides in discussions about the UN resolution that the US would likely abstain from voting, a source with direct knowledge was quoted as saying.

But they reportedly told the Israelis that Biden is not changing course on Israel and views the resolution as non-binding – something the US State Department said publicly after the vote as well.

The report says the White House is now “perplexed” by Netanyahu’s cancelling of an Israeli delegation’s trip to Washington, DC, with one official saying this is “self-defeating” behaviour.

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Monday that the international community should put pressure on Israel following the passage of a UNSC resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

In a statement shared by his office, Mikati welcomed the resolution, saying it was “a first step on the path to stopping the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip”.

There’s been a regular exchange of fire between the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and the Israeli army since the war began.

Hussein al-Sheikh, a top aide to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, says: “We call for a permanent cessation to this criminal war and Israel’s immediate withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.”

Today is the 171st day of Israel’s war on Gaza and it also marks 171 members of UN staff killed in the enclave.

“Most recently was Hani, killed in northern Gaza while looking for food,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), in a post on X.

“I hope that the UN Security Council call for an immediate & durable ceasefire will bring to Gaza & the region the peace its people so well deserve.”

Far more UN staff members have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza than in any previous conflict.

In a press statement, the group has said that Israel has not responded to any of the demands it set forth during this round of negotiations over a ceasefire and prisoner swap.

It said that it informed mediators that it “is adhering to its position and vision that it presented on March 14”, which includes four points: “A comprehensive ceasefire, withdrawal [of Israeli forces] from the Gaza Strip, the return of the displaced, and a real exchange of prisoners”.

Hamas also accused Netanyahu and his government of “thwarting all negotiation efforts and obstructing reaching an agreement so far”.

Mediators Egypt, Qatar and the United States spent weeks trying to narrow differences between Israel and Hamas over what a ceasefire would look like before this round of negotiations between Hamas and Israel began.

Talks appear to have stalled in recent days, though US officials said today that “progress” had been achieved over the weekend.

The German government says it is providing 45 million euros ($48m) to the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the occupied West Bank.

“With this sum, we support health and education services as well as cash-for-work programs for Palestinian refugees,” the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development said in a post on X.

This comes days after the US Congress ratified a bill that suspends UNRWA funding until March 2025, which the UN organisation said will lead to more people not having enough to eat in the Gaza Strip.

Turkey called the resolution passed earlier in the UN Security Council, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and the return of all captives held there as well as the prospective return of humanitarian access to Gaza, “a positive step”.

“We hope that Israel will comply with the requirements of this resolution without delay,” Turkish Foreign Affairs spokesman Oncu Keceli says.

“We call on the international community to take a united stand against Israel to end the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and to find a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he adds.