Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Israel has no ‘credible plan’ for Rafah – US

Thank you for joining us for real-time updates on everything related to Israel’s war on Gaza.

To read more about UN Secretary-General’s latest call for an immediate ceasefire, you can see our story here.

For more news, analysis and opinion on the conflict, click here.

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

• Thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee from across Gaza, including Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Rafah, as Israeli forces reinvade already heavily hit areas.
• Egypt foreign ministry has announced it will formally join the lawsuit filed by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice which accuses Israel of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention in the Gaza Strip.
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has defended a decision to pause a delivery to Israel of 3,500 bombs over concerns they could be used in the southern city of Rafah, saying Israel lacked a “credible plan” to protect 1.4 million civilians sheltering there.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the US and Europe are not doing enough to pressure Israel to agree a ceasefire in Gaza after Hamas accepted a truce proposal last week.
• The Israeli army says its fighter jets have struck two areas from which Hezbollah had launched rockets at northern Israel.

The US Army’s Central Command says it had successfully “destroyed” one uncrewed aerial system allegedly launched by Yemen’s Houthi group.

“There were no injuries or damages reported by U.S., coalition, or merchant vessels,” it said in a post on X.

“It was determined the UAS presented an imminent threat to both coalition forces and merchant vessels in the region.”

Houthi forces have declared war on all vessels linked to Israeli firms or seaports, and say their campaign will end when Israel ends its war on Gaza.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has told a US broadcaster that the US was right to “end [WWII]” by dropping two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Now, he said, Israel must be given “the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose”, during an interview with NBC News that is being widely shared online.

Graham said, “I thought it was okay” when the US dropped the nuclear bombs on Japan.

“To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state.”

This comes after President Joe Biden decided to halt a shipment of thousands of some of the largest bombs in the US military arsenal due to urgent humanitarian concerns after Israel launched its ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza.

The ministry, in response to a social media post by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz criticising President Erdogan, said the Turkish leader was “unwavering” in his condemnation of Israel’s “inexcusable crimes” against the Palestinian people.

“Turkiye continues to work tirelessly to stop the massacre committed by Israel, taking decisive action to isolate Israel internationally,” it said in a post on X.

“Turkiye will continue to shed light on the racist and unjust policies that Israel weaponises against the Palestinian people.”

The armed Lebanese group says in its end-of-day report that it carried out three strikes on Israeli positions on Sunday, the latest of which targeted intelligence-gathering equipment in al-Malkiyya.

Hezbollah also released another video of its attacks carried out on Saturday, which showed fighters using multiple antitank guided missiles to attack the Ramyah site of the Israeli military along the Lebanese border.

Over the years, the US government has been creating special mechanisms to shield Israel from sanctions designed to punish countries for human rights abuses.

Watch the video below:

The Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza says its crews came under fire from Israeli forces after they responded to a call about a house that was bombed in the Brazil camp in the southern Gaza city.

“When the ambulance crews arrived, shooting was fired from drones towards the cars, which posed a danger to the crews’ presence there,” the group said on its Telegram channel.

The United Nations and other agencies have warned for weeks that an Israeli assault on Rafah, which borders Egypt near the main aid entry point, would cripple humanitarian operations and cause a disastrous surge in civilian casualties.

Israeli settlers, who were protected by soldiers, attacked the town of Qusra south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reports citing local sources.

This came hours after settlers attacked the outskirts of the village of Duma, also south of Nablus, setting fire to one house and spraying walls with inflammatory slogans.

Wafa said that south of Bethlehem, a 50-year-old Palestinian woman suffered from fractures in her limbs after an attack by Israeli settlers.

In the town of Azzun east of Qalqilya, a young Palestinian man was reportedly injured after being beaten by Israeli soldiers.

Israeli military authorities say they have allowed in seven tankers carrying 266,000 litres (70,269 gallons)of fuel into Gaza today through the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing, which has remained mostly closed since last week.

This comes as the UN and international organisations are warning of urgently dwindling supplies – especially fuel – across the Gaza Strip as the Israeli military expands attacks in multiple areas of the enclave, including Zeitoun and Jabalia in the north and Rafah to the south.

Trinity College Cambridge has opted to withdraw its investments from all arms manufacturers, the UK-based Middle East Eye (MEE) news outlet is reporting.

This development comes after MEE revealed in February that Cambridge’s wealthiest college had more than 61,735 pounds ($78,089) invested in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturing entity that produces a significant number of drones for the Israeli military.

According to three sources who spoke to MEE, Trinity’s student union made the decision to divest from arms companies in early March.

College campuses around the world have exploded in recent weeks in protests by pro-Palestine students and faculty members against Israel’s war on Gaza, in which more than 34,000 people have been killed.

In university after university, protesters are demanding their schools sever any direct or indirect financial and academic links with Israel, including by divesting from companies with ties to Israel.

Former US President Donald Trump says he will be more confrontational in dealing with students demonstrating on university campuses against Israel’s war in Gaza and for their schools to divest from Israel.

“When I’m president, we will not allow our colleges to be taken over by violent radicals,” Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in New Jersey. He is running again in November’s presidential election.

“And if you come here from another country, trying to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or anti-Semitism to our campuses, we will immediately deport you. You will be out of that soon.”

Translation: Trump threatens to deport students protesting at universities.

The army says its fighter jets have struck two areas from which Hezbollah had launched rockets at northern Israel. The sites in southern Lebanon’s Halta and Kfar Hamam have been hit in the past few hours, it says.

The Israeli military added that two more sites were hit in the Kherbe area and launches coming from Lebanon inflicted no casualties.

American University of Beirut Faculty United, an independent association of faculty members, has released a statement calling for the revocation of Nemat “Minouche” Shafik’s 2018 honorary doctorate over “egregious dereliction of her duties as a scholar and a university servant”.

The association said Shafik took the unilateral decision to “violate the academic freedom of students, staff and faculty by declaring their peaceful protests against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza a ‘clear and present danger’ and calling in the New York police to violently suppress their protests”.

The embattled president has faced an outcry from many students, faculty and outside observers for summoning New York police to dismantle a tent encampment set up on campus by students protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza.

More than 200 faculty signed the letter addressed to the AUB administration and called her actions “brutal and cowardly”.

“President Shafik has displayed craven absence of moral integrity and blatantly contradicted AUB’s mission, values, and ideals that are the basis for granting an honorary doctorate,” the letter said.

Top Iranian foreign policy officials have told an Iranian-Arab dialogue forum in Tehran that the only way to a Middle East without nuclear weapons is to disarm Israel.

“We want a region with no nuclear weapons,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said.

Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, presented Iran’s solution towards that vision and warned of consequences of not realising it.

“This is the solution: Israel is the only country [in the region] to possess nuclear arms, so it must be disarmed. If it is not, a region without nuclear weapons will not be realised and there will be a nuclear race,” said Kharrazi, who said this week that Iran may change its policy of refraining from pursuing a weapon if existentially threatened.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), is making another plea to stop the killing of Palestinians as the Israeli military continues its ground offensives in Gaza’s cities and its bombing of civilians from the air.

“No words are left that can do any justice to the people of Gaza,” he wrote in a post on X.

“They are people, like you and I. They used to have dreams, they were part of a vibrant and diverse community. … Now, it’s only broken lives and broken futures.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the US and Europe are not doing enough to pressure Israel to agree a ceasefire in Gaza after Hamas accepted a truce proposal last week.

Speaking to Muslim scholars in Istanbul, Erdogan said Hamas had accepted a proposal from Qatar and Egypt in a “step on the path towards a lasting ceasefire” but Netanyahu’s government did not want the war to end.

“The response of the Netanyahu government was to attack the innocent people in Rafah,” he said. “It has become clear who sides with peace and dialogue and who wants clashes continuing and more bloodshed.

“And did Netanyahu see any serious reaction for his spoiled behaviour? No. Neither Europe nor America showed a reaction that would force Israel into a ceasefire.”

Within the past 20 minutes, we heard a loud explosion. And just as we started this report, people with injuries started to pour into [Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital].

One of the cars that came in was a pickup truck carrying displaced families that were on their way to Deir el-Balah city.

They were very close to a site that was targeted by what looked like drone missiles fired by the Israeli military.

What we are hearing was that the target was a medical center in the eastern part of the city. As these people were passing by, they were injured by shrapnel.