IDF ‘divides Gaza into two’ as besieged area sees third communication blackout

Israeli jets struck a house near a school at the crowded Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip yesterday. At least 13 people were killed, hospital workers said.

Dozens of residents scrambled to remove the wounded and dead trapped under the rubble. Young men rushed carrying the wounded to ambulances near the school, which took them to Al-Aqsa Hospital. Hospital workers told AP that at least 13 people died.

The Bureij refugee camp is home to an estimated 46,000 people. Many Palestinians fleeing northern Gaza have stayed in refugee camps and schools as temporary shelters.

Supporters of an Islamist group marched to the US Embassy in Ankara yesterday, hours ahead of secretary of state Antony Blinken’s expected arrival in the Turkish capital.

Several hundred protesters chanted “God is great” and held their index fingers skywards as they approached the compound in the city’s Cukurambar neighborhood. Riot police lined up in front of the US complex as the crowd, many carrying black and white flags with Arabic script, called for Turkish soldiers to be sent to Gaza.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu snubbed blunt warnings from Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, on Friday that Israel risks losing any hope of an eventual peace deal with the Palestinians unless it eases the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The Israeli military said Sunday that it discovered an extensive stash of weapons in a home in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip as it searched the area.

It found rifles, grenades, explosives, suicide drones and missiles in the residence, bringing some of the weapons back to Israel to inspect them. The military said that forces had also destroyed a nearby explosives lab.

Israel’s president received the diplomatic credentials of the newly minted US ambassador to Israel yesterday, with both men expressing the strong bond between the two countries during wartime.

Ambassador Jacob Lew said he had met with the families of those held hostage in Gaza during his visit, and that the release of the hostages was a top priority for the US. He reiterated US support for Israel in the war effort.

“As President Biden has said so passionately, Israel has a right and indeed a responsibility to defend this nation and its people in a manner that reflects the values that we share,” Mr Lew said.

President Isaac Herzog thanked Lew and said he was “speaking for all Israelis when I say: never has American friendship been more evident or more valued than it is right now.”

The Rafah crossing did not reopen on Sunday despite UK hopes that the situation could be resolved to allow more Britons to escape from Gaza.

The impasse in delicate diplomatic relations between Egypt, Israel and Hamas means UK nationals waiting by the border checkpoint have been stranded for a second day.

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said during a Sunday media round that the UK government was “hopeful that the crossing will reopen again today” and that additional British citizens would be able to leave Gaza.

But the Foreign Office confirmed that the key border post remained closed to foreign nationals on Sunday, having been shut on Saturday following an apparent row between Israel and the Palestinians over evacuating injured patients.

Former president Barack Obama says “nobody’s hands are clean” in the Israel-Hamas war and acknowledged that he’s questioned in recent days whether his administration could have done more to push for a durable peace when he was in power.

“If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth,” Mr Obama said in an interview on “Pod Save America.” “And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean. That all of us are complicit to some degree.”

The former president did make an attempt at peace between Israel and Palestinians during his second term, but months of talks collapsed in 2014 amid disagreements on Israeli settlements, the release of Palestinian prisoners and other issues.

“I look at this and I think back what could I have done during my presidency to move this forward — as hard as I tried, I’ve got the scars to prove it,” Mr Obama said in an excerpt released on X.

The entire interview is scheduled to be released on today.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency says the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The date of the meeting was not disclosed in the report yesterday.

According to IRNA, Mr Khamenei praised the patience and endurance of the people of Gaza and emphasised Iran’s policy in supporting the Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas.

Mr Khamenei urged Islamic countries and international organisations to take serious actions in support of Gaza’s people.

Israel’s military last week accused Haniyeh, who lives in exile, of flying to Iran on a “private jet” as the people of Gaza suffer in a devastating Israeli offensive against Hamas.

Israel accuses Iran of destabilising the region by supporting proxies like Hamas and the Hezbollah group in Lebanon.

Speaking at a briefing in Kyiv on Saturday alongside European commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Mr Zelensky said Russia wanted the focus on Ukraine to be “weakened” but added that “everything is [still] in our power”.

Mr Zelensky has offered to visit Israel, though he has admitted it is “difficult” because it depends on “what’s happening on the battlefield” in Ukraine, which he said remains “hot”.

My colleague Tom Watling reports:

Republican Florida Representative Cory Mills claimed that “paid actors” are pretending to be killed in Gaza under the bombardment from Israel following the 7 October attack by Hamas.

“What the mainstream media is saying about the indiscriminate fire and the actors — I mean you literally have paid actors who are pretending to be killed, pretending to be treated,” he said in Kissimmee outside Orlando on Saturday, where the Florida Freedom Summit was being hosted.

“So what I ask every individual as we already do here in America, educate yourself and find good, positive outsources and stop trusting mainstream media that corrupts the minds of every single American at home,” he added.