al jazeera

By Alastair Mccready
   Fierce gun battles rage in northern Gaza’s Jabalia and southern Rafah as Israeli military incursions intensify against Palestinian armed groups. Hamas and Israel’s army both claim significant enemy casualties.

    At least 82 Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours, the highest death toll in a single day in many weeks, during relentless Israeli air attacks.

    More than 450,000 Palestinians have now fled Rafah city with another 100,000 evacuating the north as Israel’s military launches new attacks.

    Far-right Israeli ministers call for the reoccupation of Gaza and “voluntary migration” as Israel marks the 76th anniversary of its founding, and which Palestinians refer to as the “Nakba” – Arabic for “catastrophe” – when 750,000 people were forcibly evicted from their homes or fled rampaging Jewish militias.

    At least 35,173 people have been killed and 79,061 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attacks stands at 1,139, with dozens of people still held captive.

    Gaza European Hospital ‘out of service’ due to fuel shortages

    The electricity generators at the European Hospital near Rafah have stopped working due to fuel shortages, putting the hospital “out of service”, the Wafa news agency reports, citing medical sources.

    It said the fuel shortages were “threatening the lives of hundreds of wounded and sick people inside” the medical complex in southern Gaza.

    Yesterday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society warned of the “deterioration of humanitarian conditions” in Gaza amid Israel’s closure of border crossings, blocking aid and fuel from entering the besieged enclave.

    Hospitals across Gaza, already working at reduced capacity and badly damaged by months of Israeli bombardment, have warned of acute fuel shortages now putting patients’ lives at risk.

    Australia state parliament bans MPs from wearing Palestinian keffiyeh

    Parliament in Australia’s state of Victoria has voted to ban members from wearing the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh and other symbols representing Palestine in the legislative chamber, members of the Australian Greens party said.

    Members of Parliament for the Greens took to social media to protest the ruling, which one MP said was designed to “silence us”.

    Greens party leader in Victoria Ellen Sandell said the ban “makes us one of the only parliaments in the world to ban the keffiyeh – on Nakba day, a day that marks the displacement of Palestinian people”.

    “Victorians have watched in horror at the atrocities unfolding in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military. Yet Labor has signed a secretive MoU with Israeli Ministry of Defence & given $ to Israeli weapons companies,” Sandell said on social media.

    Sandell said the Greens will move in parliament to make the memorandum of understanding with the Israeli military public.

    UNRWA headquarters faces ‘another arson attempt’ by Israelis

    Israeli arsonists once again attacked the headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in occupied East Jerusalem last night, according to the agency’s chief Philippe Lazzarini.

    “Another arson attempt by Israeli children and young people on @UNRWA in #Jerusalem last night. This has got to stop,” he said in a post.

    On May 9, Lazzarini announced the agency would temporarily close its headquarters after several arson attacks in recent weeks and growing threats of violence against UN staff.

    Gaza solidarity encampment dismantled at University of California, Berkeley

    Pro-Palestinian demonstrators were seen dismantling their Gaza solidarity encampment at Berkeley amid reports that administrations had agreed to meet with the protesters, though no other details about the conditions of the meeting were known, the Reuters news agency reports.

    While university and college management across the US had called in police to clear students calling for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza and for educational establishments to divest from Israeli entities involved in the conflict, Berkeley had allowed the pro-Palestinian camp so long as it did not disrupt campus operations and there was no threat of violence.

    Except for a scuffle that broke out at Berkeley on May 1 between the co-founder of a Zionist group – Students Supporting Israel – and a student antiwar protester, the demonstrations at the northern California university have been peaceful.