Israeli forces advanced deeper into Gaza City yesterday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu headed to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly, with US President Donald Trump pursuing a deal to end the Gaza war.
Israeli strikes killed at least 19 people across the Palestinian enclave yesterday, local health authorities said. They included 11 people from two families in Zawayda town in the central Gaza Strip, where planes hit a residential building.
Israel’s military said it had struck 170 targets across Gaza in the past 24 hours.
Tanks have entered Gaza City as part of an offensive that has caused extensive destruction, a humanitarian catastrophe and widespread hunger.
Netanyahu says Gaza City is the Palestinian group’s last bastion, but hundreds of thousands of civilians remain there, fearing there is nowhere safe for them to go.
US envoy Steve Witkoff said on Wednesday Washington was confident of securing breakthrough on Gaza in coming days after Trump shared a 21-point Middle East peace plan with leaders of Muslim-majority countries in New York.
Trump also promised Arab leaders he would not allow Israel to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Politico reported. Palestinians want the West Bank for an independent Palestinian state, with Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Arab and Muslim countries made clear to Trump yesterday the dangers of Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said.
“Some countries made very clear to the president the danger of annexation of any type in the West Bank and the risk that poses not just to the potential of peace in Gaza, but also to any sustainable peace at all. And I feel confident that President Trump understood the position of the Arab and Muslim countries,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said at the United Nations.
Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares, meanwhile, said that the Global Sumud Flotilla heading to Gaza protected by a Spanish military vessel poses no threat to anyone, including Israel.
In an interview to Reuters, Albares added that Spain had accepted Belgium’s request to assist Belgian citizens on board the flotilla if needed, and was holding conversations with Ireland on the same subject.
Italy and Spain have deployed naval ships to assist the aid flotilla that has come under drone attack while trying to deliver aid to Gaza
The Global Sumud Flotilla is using about 50 civilian boats to try to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Many lawyers, parliamentarians and activists, including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, are on board.
The Italian defence ministry said a frigate that was dispatched on Wednesday, hours after the flotilla was targeted on its way to Gaza, would be replaced by another vessel, adding that the aim was to protect people.
“It is not an act of war, it is not a provocation: it is an act of humanity, which is a duty of a state towards its citizens,” Defence Minister Guido Crosetto told the upper house of parliament on the decision to send a ship.
Slovenia separately imposed a travel ban on Netanyahu, according to a government statement, after last year officially recognising Palestine and in July banning two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers.
“With this action Slovenia confirms its commitment to international law, the universal values of human rights and a principled and consistent foreign policy,” Neva Grasic, the Secretary of State at the Foreign Ministry, said.
The British government yesterday sought to block the co-founder of pro-Palestinian campaign group Palestine Action from bringing a legal challenge over the banning of the group under anti-terrorism laws.
Palestine Action has increasingly targeted Israel-linked companies in Britain, often spraying red paint, blocking entrances or damaging equipment. It accuses Britain’s government of complicity in what it says are Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
The group was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in July, making it a crime to be a member, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
Huda Ammori, who helped found Palestine Action in 2020, was in July given permission to challenge the group’s proscription, on the grounds it was arguably a disproportionate interference with the right to freedom of expression.
Britain’s Home Office (interior ministry) is asking the Court of Appeal to overturn that decision and rule that any challenge to proscription should be heard by a specialist tribunal, rather than the High Court.
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