Israel’s war on Gaza live: Toll rises amid ‘Israeli hit’ on Iran’s Isfahan

Relatives of captives held in Gaza have blocked a main highway linking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, local media reported.

Dozens of protesters, including the family members and their supporters, gathered and “blocked off Route 1”, the Times of Israel said.

Some have set barrels on fire in an attempt to block traffic in a sign of protest.

Relatives of those taken by Hamas on October 7 have been protesting for months, demanding  that the Israeli government bring back their loved ones.

Translation: Kidnapped families are blocking road 1 at this time – and have burned barrels on the spot

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, says that over the past week, there has been “a significant increase in the amount of aid entering the Gaza Strip”.

However, he said, this increased aid is not nearly enough compared to the “greater needs that everyone [in the Gaza Strip] is facing right now; struggling with the spread of famine and enforced dehydration, starvation, and a huge shortage of medical supplies”.

On Wednesday, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said that Israel’s relentless bombing and “merciless siege have transformed Gaza beyond recognition”, with young children dying of malnutrition and dehydration as “a man-made famine” is tightening its grip across the Strip.

Tehran says the US’s Security Council veto to block Palestine from achieving full UN membership was “irresponsible”.

“Washington’s action exposed the fraudulent nature of US foreign policy and its isolated position,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said.

He described the move as “irresponsible” and “unconstructive.”

During Thursday’s vote, 12 countries on the Security Council backed a resolution recommending full Palestinian membership, but Britain and Switzerland abstained.

The US has argued that while it “strongly” supports a two-state solution, Palestine’s UN membership should come from “direct negotiations between the parties”, meaning Palestine and Israel.

Israeli foreign minister, Israeli Katz, commended the US for casting a veto on Thursday, saying, “The shameful proposal was rejected. Terrorism will not be rewarded”.

Al Jazeera’s History Illustrated is a weekly series of insightful perspectives that uses graphics generated with AI to put news events and current affairs into historical context.

Read our latest story on the war on Gaza and the Israeli lawyer who coined the term “genocide” here.

The US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on two entities that it says helped raise tens of thousands of dollars for two sanctioned settlers in the occupied West Bank.

“Such acts by these organisations undermine the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank. We will continue to use our tools to hold those responsible accountable,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said in a statement.

The Treasury said the Mount Hebron Fund launched an online fundraising campaign that raised $140,000 for settler Yinon Levi after he was sanctioned on February 1 for leading a group of violent settlers who assaulted Palestinian and Bedouin civilians.

The second entity, Shlom Asiraich, raised $31,000 on a crowdfunding website for David Chai Chasdai, who the US said initiated and led a riot in Huwara that resulted in the death of a Palestinian civilian.

Separately, the US also sanctioned Ben-Zion Gopstein, founder and leader of the right-wing group Lehava, which it says has “engaged in violence, including assaults on Palestinian civilians”.

Let’s bring you up to speed on the latest developments.

• Hamas dismisses US Secretary of State Blinken’s claim that it is blocking ceasefire talks, saying it confirmed the United States’ “blatant bias towards Zionist fascism”.
• Blinken reiterated that the US believes Israel can achieve its military objectives in Gaza without an all-out invasion of Rafah, which Washington will not support.
• The European Council issues sanctions on four Israeli settlers for violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
• Foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) bloc have issued a joint statement calling for the release of Israeli captives in Gaza and a sustainable ceasefire in the enclave
• The UN agency for women says nearly one-third of people killed in the war, at least 10,000 people, have been women.

As we’ve been reporting, Israeli forces have been conducting a raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp east of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank.

Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank, says in the last hour, four Palestinian resistance fighters have been killed by Israeli forces.

“One of them was the leader of the Tulkarem resistance brigade – the battalion of about 50 men strong that is based in Tulkarem – a man named Mohammed Jaber,” he said.

He added that the four bodies of the Palestinian fighters were taken into Israeli custody.

Jaber has been targeted in the past, and his brother was killed in December.

“This very dramatic escalation of events in the occupied West Bank in this ongoing raid seemed to have been successful in targeting Mohammed Jaber,” he added.

“Hundreds” of people have arrived in Istanbul, Turkey, to join a Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which aims to deliver “over 5,000 tons of humanitarian aid” to the besieged enclave.

“The Freedom Flotilla Coalition stands here to remind the world that with all the escalation between Israel and Iran, the killing is occurring in Gaza,” the coalition said in a statement.

“While those two countries go back and forth, we cannot let Israel distract the world from what is causing far more death, disease, and destruction: Israel’s policies of starving and continued bombardment of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children.”

In the next three days, those joining the flotilla will undergo “non-violence” training and learn strategies to protect themselves in the event of an attack.

The cargo ship, which will be accompanied by two passenger ships, is expected to depart next week.

Merchant ships and seafarers are increasingly in peril at sea as attacks escalate in the Middle East and the United Nations must do more to protect supply chains, the industry said.

In a letter sent on Thursday to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the world’s leading shipping industry associations said Iran’s seizure on April 13 of the MSC Aries container ship 50 nautical miles (93km) off the United Arab Emirates coast “once again highlighted the intolerable situation where shipping has become a target”.

“Innocent seafarers have been killed, seafarers are being held hostage,” the letter said.

“The world would be outraged if four airliners were seized and held hostage with innocent souls onboard. Regrettably, there does not seem to be the same response or concern [for ships and their crew members].”

UN officials did not immediately respond to a Reuters news agency request for comment.

Irish Member of Parliament Richard Boyd Barrett says the US is “very committed” to defending the Israeli government and showed this last night when it used its veto to block Palestine from becoming a full UN member.

“The United States has been key to providing Israelis with the means and the impunity to continue its crimes in Gaza over the last six months, but also for many decades. So I don’t think anybody could be surprised, and in many ways, Israel is a creature of US foreign policy,” Barrett told Al Jazeera.

He added that European countries were currently discussing recognising the state of Palestine due to the growing awareness of the treatment of Palestinians during the war.

“But we do want it to be a substitute for the sanctions that need to be imposed on Israel. And I fear sometimes there’s a tendency, my own government, other governments in Europe, to give symbolic support for Palestine but not follow it up with what’s really necessary,” he added.

“It is a confirmation of the American administration’s blatant bias towards Zionist fascism and a falsification of reality that confirms that whoever obstructs the course of negotiations for [Netanyahu’s] personal political calculations,” Hamas said in a statement.

“The Hamas movement’s negotiating behaviour was based on the interest of our Palestinian people and the priority of stopping the brutal aggression against them, the withdrawal of the occupation, the return of the displaced, and ending their human suffering created by the American-funded killing machine,” Hamas said.

The group added that if the US was sincere in wanting to stop the war in Gaza, it must pressure Israel “and stop the American political and military cover for the crimes of genocide and starvation practiced by the Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians in the Gaza Strip”.

As we previously reported, Hebrew University Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was released from custody after being arrested on Thursday for calling Israelis “criminals”.

Offer Cassif, an Israeli Knesset member, said that alongside the continuous “assault on Gaza and the ethnic cleansing” in the occupied West Bank is the “political persecution within Israel of anyone who raises a voice different from the mainstream”.

“Too many within the Israeli academia began to collaborate with this hegemonic attitude, and the prosecution of my friend Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is part of it,” Cassif told Al Jazeera.

Cassif added that while the biggest target for the police is Palestinian citizens of Israel, some Jewish citizens are also being persecuted.

The sanctioned individuals “are responsible for serious human rights abuses against Palestinians,” the council said in a press release, with two of the individuals taking part in deadly attacks on Palestinians.

It named the sanctioned settlers as Meir Ettinger, Elisha Yered, Neria Ben Pazi, and Yinon Levi.

In addition, the council announced sanctions on two entities – Jewish supremacist group Lehava and radical youth group Hilltop Youth, whose members it said are known for violence in the occupied West Bank.

“With today’s listings, restrictive measures under the EU’s Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime now apply to 108 natural and legal persons and 28 entities from a range of countries,” said the council.

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court has ruled that there are no grounds to keep Hebrew University Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian in custody and she must be released, the Times of Israel reports.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a vocal anti-Zionist, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of incitement after raising doubts about allegations of sexual assault during the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on October 7 and allegedly calling Israelis “criminals”.

The Israeli Law Professors’ Forum for Democracy and other rights groups spoke out in her defence, saying she had committed no crime.

The forum said Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s statements, “even if some find them outrageous, constitute neither incitement to racism or terrorism nor any other criminal offence”.

“The decision to open a criminal investigation and arrest her seriously harms free speech and academic freedom.”

Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, has said it is time to “expand the scale of the engagement” against Israel in response to its “war of genocide in Gaza and the escalation in the region”.

Speaking to Reuters news agency, Abu Zuhri slammed Israel’s “aggression” towards Iran, characterising it as a hostile act against the region.

Hamas for weeks has engaged in indirect ceasefire talks with Israel, but the negotiations have stalled, according to mediator Qatar, as concern mounts in Gaza that Israel will push ahead with a bloody invasion of Rafah.

The raid has been going on for about 15 or 16 hours now and there seems to be no letup in sight.

We know that at least three Palestinian residents of the camp have been injured, and at least one person has been killed by an Israeli sniper’s bullets.

We’ve been hearing the sound of drones overhead for hours – and multiple large, loud explosions.

Sustained small-arms fire, indicative of active firefights, is ongoing. The Israeli military has at least 40 military vehicles, with potentially dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting against Palestinian armed resistance fighters who are using small arms as well as explosives.

We also know that the Israelis have taken in new military bulldozers that are capable of driving directly through houses – and that’s what they’ve been doing.

Dozens of homes are destroyed and demolished. Israeli soldiers have been carrying out raids in homes, carrying out on-site interrogations.

This is likely to carry on for several hours. The situation remains very dangerous inside the camp.

The United Arab Emirates says granting Palestinians full membership in the United Nations would be “an important step to boost peace efforts in the region”, the state news agency (WAM) reported after the UN Security Council rejected a resolution to that effect.

The United States believes that Israel can achieve its military objectives in Gaza without an all-out invasion of Rafah, which the US will not support, said Blinken.

“We believe that a major military operation with a large presence of civilian population would have terrible consequences for that population,” he said.

He added that the US had engaged in discussions about Rafah with senior Israeli officials as recently as this week and that such discussions would continue.

Israeli aircraft have struck a Hezbollah military structure with fighters inside it in the town of Ayta ash Shab in southern Lebanon, according to the Israeli military.

In a post on Telegram, Israel’s military shared footage of what it said was the strike, which apparently left the targeted facility engulfed in a cloud of smoke and debris.

Nearly one-third of people killed in the Gaza war – at least 10,000 people – have been women, according to the agency, UN Women.

Out of these women, 6,000 are mothers, whose deaths have left 19,000 orphans, according to UN Women.

“Women who have survived Israeli bombardment and ground operations have been displaced, widowed, and facing starvation,” said the UN agency. “This devastating differentiated impact continues to make the war on Gaza also a war on women.”