Turkey’s trade ban with Israel will remain until a permanent ceasefire and humanitarian aid flows are secured, says minister
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis targeted two ships, the MSC DEGO and the MSC GINA, in the Gulf of Aden using a number of ballistic missiles and drones, the group’s military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said in a televised speech on Thursday.
According to Reuters, Sarea said the group also targeted the MSC VITTORIA in the Indian Ocean and again in the Gulf of Aden.
Israel’s United Nations ambassador Gilad Erdan said on Thursday the US’ decision to pause weapons transfers to Israel will significantly impair the country’s ability to neutralise Hamas’s power, reports Reuters citing Israeli public radio.
Israeli protesters are blocking aid trucks headed from Jordan to Gaza, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz is reporting.
Hundreds of residents of Israel’s southern-most city, Eilat, joined the protest blocking the convoy at the border crossing with Jordan, the newspaper reported. It cited the Tsav 9 group which organises the protests as saying it had also set up other road blocks along the way.
Convoys carrying aid to Gaza, where Israel has been accused of causing a man-made famine, have recently had to change their route due to Israeli protesters blocking shipments, Haaretz wrote.
Iran will have to change its nuclear doctrine if its existence is threatened by Israel, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Kamal Kharrazi has said, according to Reuters, raising concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapon.
“We have no decision to build a nuclear bomb, but should Iran’s existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine,” Kharrazi said, as reported by Iran’s Student News Network on Thursday, adding that Tehran has already signalled it has the potential to build such weapons.
Reuters reports further:
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei banned the development of nuclear weapons in a fatwa in the early 2000s, reiterating his stance in 2019 by saying: “Building and stockpiling nuclear bombs is wrong and using it is haram (religiously forbidden) ... Although we have nuclear technology, Iran has firmly avoided it.”
However, Iran’s then-intelligence minister said in 2021 that western pressure could push Tehran to seek nuclear weapons.
“In the case of an attack on our nuclear facilities by the Zionist regime (Israel), our deterrence will change,” Kharrazi added.
In April, Iran and Israel reached their highest level of tensions, with Tehran directly launching about 300 missiles and drones against Israel as retaliation for a suspected deadly Israeli strike on its embassy compound in Damascus.
Students at Trinity College Dublin have ended a five-day encampment after the university pledged to cut ties with Israeli companies.
Student leaders claimed victory on Wednesday night for a US-style campaign that had disrupted the campus and blocked access to the Book of Kells.
Senior management made a deal with protesters, the university said in a statement. “Trinity will complete a divestment from investments in Israeli companies that have activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and appear on the UN blacklist,” it said. “Trinity will endeavour to divest from investments in other Israeli companies.”
Trinity’s supplier list contains just one Israeli company, which will remain until March 2025 for contractual reasons, said the statement.
The encampment began on 3 May when pro-Palestinian protesters set up dozens of tents in Fellows’ Square, similar to actions in the US, Europe and India in response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
In contrast to confrontations in the US where police forcibly evicted demonstrators at several universities, there was no attempt to remove the protest. Eoin O’Sullivan, a senior dean who led talks with the students, thanked them for their “engagement”.
Republicans have been criticising Biden’s threat to halt more weapons shipments to Israel. Senator Mitt Romney said the president’s “dithering … is bad policy and a terrible message to Israel”.
We stand by allies, we don’t second guess them. Biden’s dithering on Israel weapons is bad policy and a terrible message to Israel, our allies, and the world.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) May 8, 2024
After an earlier Biden administration announcement that it had paused a shipment of thousands of bombs to Israel, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson questioned the president’s “ironclad” commitment to Israeli security. In a letter to the president they wrote:
Daylight between the United States and Israel at this dangerous time risks emboldening Israel’s enemies and undermining the trust that other allies and partners have in the United States.
Syrian air defences have shot down Israeli missiles fired from the Golan Heights towards Damascus’ outskirts targeting a building in the countryside, Syria’s defence ministry has said, according to Reuters. The news agency writes:
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since the 7 October attack by Palestinian armed group Hamas on Israeli territory.
On 1 April, an Israeli strike targeted the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, killing a senior commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps as well as other military officers, triggering Iran’s first direct attack onto Israeli territory.
Israel has also been trading fire across its northern border with Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
Welcome back to our live coverage of the crisis in the Middle East. Here’s a rundown of the latest developments:
Joe Biden has said he will halt more shipments of US weapons to Israel if its military launches a major offensive on Rafah, the only city in Gaza that has not yet been razed by Israel. The US president said he had made it clear to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if the Israeli military goes into Rafah “I’m not supplying the weapons”.
An Israeli official told Reuters that Israel sees no sign of a breakthrough in Egyptian-mediated talks on a truce with Hamas that would free some Gaza hostages, but is keeping its delegation of what it describes as “mid-level” negotiators in Cairo for now.
Israel will not agree to end the war and leave Hamas in power, an Israeli government spokesperson reiterated on Wednesday.
Hamas said on Wednesday it was unwilling to make more concessions to Israel in the ceasefire negotiations. “Israel isn’t serious about reaching an agreement and it is using the negotiation as a cover to invade Rafah and occupy the [Rafah] crossing,” Izzat El-Reshiq, a member of Hamas’ political office in Qatar, said in a statement.
Hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip have only three days of fuel left, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, due to closed border crossings. “The closure of the border crossing continues to prevent the UN from bringing fuel. Without fuel all humanitarian operations will stop. Border closures are also impeding delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.
Tedros also said al-Najjar, one of the three hospitals in Rafah, was no longer functioning due to the ongoing hostilities in the vicinity and the military operation in Rafah.
Qatar called on the international community on Wednesday to prevent a “genocide” in Rafah after Israel’s seizure of the Gaza city’s crossing with Egypt and threats of a wider assault. In a statement the Gulf state appealed “for urgent international action to prevent the city from being invaded and a crime of genocide being committed”.
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat), the Israeli military body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs, said the Kerem Shalom crossing reopened early on Wednesday. But Juliette Touma, the director of communications for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), said no aid had entered as of midday Wednesday and that the UN agency had been forced to ration fuel, which is imported through Rafah.
CIA director William Burns was reported to be holding talks with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israeli officials on Wednesday. A source familiar with his travel shared the report with Reuters as Burns was headed to Israel from Cairo, where ceasefire negotiations had been taking place.
Aid for Gaza was being loaded on to a ship in Cyprus on Wednesday in what was expected to be the first cargo to be delivered using a US pier built to expedite supplies to Gaza. Konstantinos Letymbiotis, a Cyprus government spokesperson, said a US jetty built to handle aid shipments to Gaza had been completed. It was unclear when the vessel would depart.
António Guterres, the UN secretary general has said that a full-scale assault on Rafah “would be a human catastrophe”. Posting on X on Wednesday, Guterres wrote: “Countless more civilian casualties. Countless more families forced to flee yet again – with nowhere safe to go.”
The United Arab Emirates said on Wednesday it strongly condemns Israel’s takeover of the Rafah border crossing on the Palestinian side and warned of the consequences of military escalation.
We’re pausing our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war here but you can read our full report on the main developments today below:
Police have used pepper spray to clear a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at George Washington University and arrested dozens of demonstrators just as city officials were set to appear before hostile lawmakers in Congress to account for their handling of the two-week-old protest. The Associated Press reports:
The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability canceled the hearing after the crackdown, with its chairman and other Republicans welcoming the police action. House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “it should not require threatening to haul D.C.’s mayor before Congress to keep Jewish students at George Washington University safe.”
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said she and Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith decided to clear the camp because of signs that “the protest was becoming more volatile and less stable.” Among them were indications that protesters had “gathered improvised weapons” and were “casing” university buildings with the possible intention of occupying them, police said.
But Moataz Salim, a Palestinian student at George Washington who has family in Gaza, said the authorities merely “destroyed a beautiful community space that was all about love.”
“Less than 10 hours ago, I was pepper sprayed and assaulted by police,” he told a news conference held by organizers. “And why? Because we decided to pitch some tents, hold community activities and learn from each other. We built something incredible. We built something game-changing.”
