Updates: Israel making Gaza City into ‘lifeless wasteland’; attacks Lebanon

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For more context on the conflict, read more about the US’s sixth veto of a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire here.

Watch Fault Lines‘ investigation into the disappearance of Dr Abu Safia here.

Or follow along with our coverage of the Global Sumud Flotilla as it travels to Gaza here.

This live page will soon be closing. Here were today’s top events:

• The UN’s OCHA has warned that the lifelines for civilians in Gaza City are collapsing as Israel escalates its military assault.
• The US has again vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, despite all other 14 members voting in favour.
• Israel launched a series of strikes on southern Lebanon, in a move decried by local officials as another violation of a ceasefire reached in November.
• Two Israeli soldiers were killed in an attack at the Allenby crossing by a man driving an aid truck. The attack led to the closure of the crossing, which connects the occupied West Bank and Jordan.

Palestinian activist Saeed Taji Farouky, of Defend Our Juries, says UK free speech is under threat after dawn raids on activist Paddy Friend and others.

He warns that peaceful campaigners face terror charges over holding Zoom calls.

Game Over Israel, an international coalition of football fan associations, former players and other advocates is launching a new campaign calling on football federations across Europe to boycott the Israeli national team, Israeli clubs and ban Israeli players from participating in domestic competitions over the war in Gaza.

Several Palestinians suffered from tear gas inhalation and one man was detained after Israeli forces raided the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Activist Mohammad Awad told the Palestinian news agency Wafa that soldiers stormed the Ein al-Beida area, firing tear gas canisters at homes, causing multiple suffocation cases that were treated on-site.

Troops arrested Bilal Mahmoud Sabarneh, 32, from inside his shop and assaulted him before taking him away, Wafa said.

In a separate incident, armed settlers released livestock near Palestinian homes in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, Wafa reported. They also vandalised a water pump, cut electricity and water lines, destroyed a grape arbour, and seized a family’s water well, preventing locals from accessing drinking water.

I think you can see the division and the anger in the room.

Normally, in a Security Council meeting, everyone speaks and the meeting ends – but we have a back and forth going on between various council members who are no longer scripted.

The Algerian ambassador asking to speak again, the Israeli ambassador … the Danish ambassador, asking to speak again. They’re all unhappy with what’s been said by the Israeli ambassador.

Algeria is the only Arab member of the group that drafted this resolution.

Israeli ambassador Danny Danon took it out on Algeria, and that is why the Algerian ambassador is so angry and speaking in the council.

This was a resolution to try and stop the war in Gaza … try to get aid into Gaza, to condemn that there is now famine in Gaza, to condemn the expansion of the Israeli operation in Gaza.

All of that has been blocked … the US stopping that resolution from being passed again.

Hamas has condemned Washington’s move to block a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, calling it “blatant complicity in the crime of genocide”.

The group praised the 10 countries that sponsored the resolution and urged them to increase pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to halt its assault.

Germany will reach a decision on whether to back sanctions against Israel before a European Union meeting in Copenhagen in October, Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said.

Speaking during a trip to Madrid, Merz said Israel’s actions in Gaza were not proportional to its stated goals. However, he said Germany did not share the view that the actions amounted to genocide.

That comes after a UN commission earlier this week declared for the first time that Israel was committing genocide.

He added that for Germany, the recognition of Palestinian statehood was not currently up for debate.

Israel’s ambassador Danny Danon has responded to the US veto at the UN Security Council, thanking the close ally for what he called its “moral conviction”.

The US has continued to stand by Israel, including in shielding it from UNSC resolutions, even as it has grown increasingly isolated in the West.

“First, we would like to thank the United States for showing leadership and moral conviction by vetoing this biased resolution,” said Danon, as he accused Security Council members of being influenced by both Algeria, and in turn, Hamas.

He said the war in Gaza needs no justification.

“Israel had even been asked to justify what needs no justification, bringing our hostages home and confronting Hamas to prove that there is no immunity for terrorists,” he said.

Morgan Ortagus, deputy US envoy for the Middle East, has responded to a UN commission report earlier this week that for the first time said that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

Several UN Security Council members have cited the UN Human Rights Council’s findings in condemning the US veto of today’s ceasefire resolution. The commission had previously found that Israel had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, but stopped short of calling the war a genocide.

“To be clear, we consider this a slanderous report that lacks any credibility. This report presents lies and distortions to the benefit of Hamas,” Ortagus told the Security Council.

She claimed, without providing evidence, that investigators had “bias that are in violation of the United Nations’s own rules of impartiality”.

“This is a clear example of the Human Rights Council’s moral bankruptcy and why the United States ended its participation in this body. It is long overdue that the Commission of Inquiry be eliminated and that its anti-Semitic witch hunt be put to an end,” she said.

The Palestinian Telecommunications Company (Paltel) says its crews have restored internet and landline services in Gaza and North Gaza governorates despite “dangerous field conditions”.

The restoration follows a full outage reported yesterday by the telecom regulator after Israeli attacks damaged key network routes.

This has been confirmed by connectivity watchdog NetBlocks, which, after a 35-hour blackout, said “overall service remains far below pre-war levels”.

Members of the UNSC have been condemning the US’s veto of today’s ceasefire resolution, which all 14 other members voted in favour of. Here are some more reactions:

Somalia’s Abukar Osman: 

“Time and again, this council has been blocked from action, invoking, sometimes explicit, more often unspoken, dangerous language and dangerous logic that the suffering of some is more tolerable than the suffering of others and that the lives of certain people matter less. It’s a notion that has stained our history before and is one we must reject.”

Pakistan’s Asim Iftikhar Ahmad: 

“Today’s failure sends a dangerous message that the lives of 2 million besieged Palestinians are deemed expendable and can be subordinated to political considerations. Every hour of obstruction deepens the wound and aggravates the suffering of the people of Gaza.”

UK’s Barbara Woodward: 

“We need a ceasefire more than ever, and yet Israel’s reckless expansion of its military operation takes us further away from a deal which could bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza.”

Yemen’s Houthis say they carried out a “qualitative military operation” firing a hypersonic ballistic missile at a military site in the Tel Aviv area, forcing Israelis into shelters and briefly closing airspace.

Spokesperson Yahya Saree said their drone forces also struck “various targets” in Eilat with three drones and hit a “sensitive target” in Beersheba with another. He said both operations “successfully achieved their objectives”.

Saree warned that Eilat would “remain under continuous targeting” and accused Israel of endangering the entire region, pledging to keep supporting the Palestinian people “until the aggression on Gaza stops and the siege is lifted”.

The US veto certainly does not serve the people of Gaza. This is the sixth time the US have used their veto now in nearly two years at the Security Council, blocking what is vital for the people of Gaza – most notably a ceasefire, which was one of the very first things listed in this draft resolution.

It was a resolution drawn up by 10 out of 15 Security Council members; the 10 who are the non-permanent members but also supported by all of the permanent members – apart from one, the US.

So 14 against one, yet again, is the way it has has stacked up at the Security Council.

Morgan Ortagus, the deputy US envoy for the Middle East, was saying the US does not believe the international community on famine in Gaza. She says the IPC – the international body that is so cautious about its decisions and recommendations, but said that famine was occurring in Gaza – was “biased” and used faulty methodology.

And she says that a ceasefire and this resolution would actually help Hamas and lead to another October 7.

That’s her view and the view of the US administration, not the view that is shared by any of the rest of these ambassadors.

But the way the system works and the UNSC was set up … was with the [five] powerful victors of World War II all given a veto.

That is what is stopping action on Palestine, that is what is stopping action on Gaza, and that is what is stopping any ceasefire for what the Danish representative described as this “abhorrent” war.

Amar Bendjama has been responding to the US vetoing the latest resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“Forgive us, in particular in Gaza, where fire consumes, where rubber suffocates, forgive us, because this council could not save your children,” Bendjama said.

“Because Israel is shielded, because it is immune. Immune, not by international law, but by the bias of this international system,” he said.

“Israel kills every day and nothing happens. Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters and nothing happens. Israel attacks a mediator and steps on diplomacy, and nothing happened.

“And with every act, every act unpunished, humanity itself is diminished.”