Tens of thousands protest in Israel over plan to escalate war on Gaza
Date: 2025-08-10T08:18:40.000Z
Title: Tens of thousands protest in Israel over plan to escalate war on Gaza
Content: Welcome to our live coverage of Israel's war on Gaza.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday night to oppose Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to escalate his war on Gaza.
The plan lists five so-called 'principles' for ending the war: disarming Hamas, returning all hostages, demilitarising the Gaza Strip, taking security control of Gaza, and setting up 'an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority'.
The demonstration against the plan, estimated to have attracted more than 100,000 protesters by organisers, saw calls for an immediate end to the military assault and for the release of hostages.
Authorities did not provide an official estimate for the size of the crowd, though it dwarfed other recent anti-war rallies.
Public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Israelis favour an immediate end to the war to secure the release of the remaining 50 hostages held by militants in Gaza. Israeli officials believe about 20 hostages are still alive.
In other developments:
The Israeli government has faced sharp criticism at home and abroad, including from some of its closest European allies, over the announcement that the military would expand the war to seize Gaza City. The full cabinet is expected to give its approval as soon as Sunday.
The Palestinian Authority on Saturday lambasted the Israeli government's decision to expand its assault in Gaza, as it called on the international community to push for the entry of aid into the strip. According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the PA's presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the Israeli government's moves were 'an unprecedented challenge and provocation to the international will to achieve peace and stability'.
Several Arab and Muslim countries on Saturday condemned as a 'dangerous escalation' Israel's plan to take control of Gaza City. About 20 countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, said the plan constituted 'a flagrant violation of international law, and an attempt to entrench the illegal occupation and impose a fait accompli... in contravention of international legitimacy'. Muslim nations must work in total unison and work to mobilise the international community against Israel's plan to take control of Gaza City, Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan said on Saturday after talks in Egypt. Speaking at a joint press conference in El Alamein with his Egyptian counterpart after meeting Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Fidan also said the Organisation of Islamic cooperation had been called to an emergency meeting.
More than 450 people were arrested in central London on Saturday at the largest demonstration relating to Palestine Action since the group was proscribed as a terrorist organisation. On Saturday night, police said that as of 9pm, 466 people had been arrested for showing support for Palestine Action. There were a further eight arrests for other offences including five assaults on officers. Police said the total of 474 was the most arrests it had made related to a single operation in at least the past decade.
The UK announced another £8.5m for UN aid to Gaza after Israel unveiled plans to expand its military operations in the territory. Development minister Baroness Jenny Chapman said the money would 'help address urgent need' in Gaza, but only if Israel allowed the region to be 'flooded with aid'.
Five Lebanese soldiers were killed in a blast on Saturday while removing munitions from a Hezbollah military facility in south Lebanon, a military source told AFP.
Iran's judiciary said Saturday it was investigating the cases of 20 people arrested over their suspected links with Israel after the 12-day war between the two arch-foes.
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Reuters
9 minutes ago
- Reuters
Israel says Gazans free to exit while Hamas attends Cairo ceasefire talks
CAIRO/JERUSALEM, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Militant group Hamas' chief negotiator held talks with Egyptian mediators over a potential ceasefire in the Gaza war on Wednesday while Israel struck the territory's main city prior to a planned takeover and again invited Palestinians to leave. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated an idea - also enthusiastically floated by U.S. President Donald Trump - that Palestinians should simply leave the enclave housing more than 2 million people after nearly two years of conflict. "They're not being pushed out, they'll be allowed to exit," he told Israeli television channel i24NEWS. "All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their gates and stop lecturing us." Arabs and many world leaders are aghast at the idea of displacing the Gaza population, which Palestinians say would be like another "Nakba" (catastrophe) when hundreds of thousands fled or were forced out during a 1948 war. Israel's planned re-seizure of Gaza City - which it took in the early days of the war before withdrawing - is probably weeks away, officials say. That means a ceasefire is still possible though talks have been floundering and conflict still rages. Israeli planes and tanks bombed eastern areas of Gaza City heavily, residents said, with many homes destroyed in the Zeitoun and Shejaia neighbourhoods overnight. Al-Ahli hospital said 12 people were killed in an airstrike on a home in Zeitoun. Tanks also destroyed several houses in the east of Khan Younis in south Gaza too, while in the centre Israeli gunfire killed nine aid-seekers in two separate incidents, Palestinian medics said. Israel's military did not comment. Hamas chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya's meetings with Egyptian officials in Cairo on Wednesday were to focus on stopping the war, delivering aid and "ending the suffering of our people in Gaza," Hamas official Taher al-Nono said in a statement. Egyptian security sources said the talks would also discuss the possibility of a comprehensive ceasefire that would see Hamas relinquish governance in Gaza and concede its weapons. A Hamas official told Reuters the group was open to all ideas if Israel pulls out. However, "Laying down arms before the occupation is dismissed is impossible," the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. Netanyahu's plan to expand military control over Gaza, which Israeli sources said could be launched in October, has heightened global outcry over the widespread devastation, displacement and hunger in the enclave. About half of Gaza's residents live in the Gaza City area. Foreign ministers of 24 countries, including Britain, Canada, Australia, France and Japan, said this week the humanitarian crisis in Gaza had reached "unimaginable levels" and urged Israel to allow unrestricted aid. Israel denies responsibility for hunger, accusing Hamas of stealing aid. It says it has taken steps to increase deliveries, including daily combat pauses in some areas and protected routes for aid convoys. The Israeli military on Wednesday said that nearly 320 trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings and that a further nearly 320 trucks were collected and distributed by the U.N. and international organizations in the past 24 hours along with three tankers of fuel and 97 pallets of air-dropped aid. The United Nations and Palestinians say aid entering Gaza remains far from sufficient. The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures. Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza since then has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
The Guardian
39 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Recognising Palestinian state must not distract from ending Gaza mass deaths, UN expert says
The United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied territories has warned that moves to recognise a Palestinian state should not distract member states from stopping mass death and starvation in Gaza. 'Of course it's important to recognize the state of Palestine,' Francesca Albanese told the Guardian after several more countries responded to the mounting starvation in Gaza by announcing plans to recognize an independent Palestine. 'It's incoherent that they've not done it already.' But she argued that the prolonged debate around Palestinian statehood has so far yielded no political progress, and instead enabled the spread of illegal Israeli settlements in occupied territory which have all but precluded the possibility of a Palestinian state. 'The territory has been literally eaten out by the advancement of the annexation and colonization,' she said. This week, Australia joined the United Kingdom, Canada, France and other countries in pledging to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations general assembly next month. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, (no relation) described the two-state solution as 'humanity's best hope to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East'. But the special rapporteur cautioned that the renewed push for Palestinian statehood should not 'distract the attention from where it should be: the genocide'. She called for an embargo on all arms sales to Israel and a cessation of trade agreements – as well as accountability for the war crimes and crimes against humanity with which the international criminal court has charged top Israeli officials. She also called for a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory by the 17 September deadline set by the UN general assembly. 'Ending the question of Palestine in line with international law is possible and necessary: end the genocide today, end the permanent occupation this year, and end apartheid,' she said. 'This is what's going to guarantee freedom and equal rights for everyone, regardless of the way they want to live – in two states or one state, they will have to decide.' In her three years as rapporteur, but especially since the beginning of Israel's war in Gaza following the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks, Albanese has become one of the most outspoken and recognizable advocates for Palestinian rights. Her technical reports accusing Israel of operating an 'apartheid regime' and committing 'acts of genocide' have often anticipated major international and Israeli rights groups reaching the same conclusions. Last month, the Trump administration sanctioned Albanese over her outspoken support for Palestinian rights and what US officials called her 'shameful promotion' of ICC action against Israeli officials. While Albanese has described herself as a reluctant 'chronicler of genocide', and others have called her 'the voice of the global conscience', she has also drawn condemnation and attacks – including accusations of antisemitism so persistent that she at one point sat down for a TV interview in which the first question posed to her was: 'Are you an antisemite?' 'Antisemitism and discrimination against Jews as Jews is gross,' Albanese told the Guardian in an earlier interview in December. 'But frankly I couldn't care less if Israel were run by Jews, Muslims, Christians or atheists… All I want is for Israel to conduct itself in line with international law.' Albanese described the growing global split over Israel's actions in Gaza as 'the ultimate struggle' and a matter of 'light and darkness'. She characterized the US's sanctions against her as a sign not of strength 'but of guilt'. 'The US is a country of contradictions, full of ideals and principles and still, plotting against democratic values,' she said. 'Those in power – Democrats or Republicans – have always been led by this kind of supremacist logic toward others, and this strategy is openly betraying the US values of democracy, of fundamental freedoms, and really leveling everything that they have been preaching.' She also criticized the UN secretary general, António Guterres, for failing to more forcefully condemn the 'unprecedented violation' of the privileges and immunities traditionally afforded to UN representatives. A spokesperson for Guterres said earlier that the sanctions against her set a dangerous precedent, but noted that Albanese does not report to him. The rapporteur's mandate is entrusted by the UN Human Rights Council. Albanese described the recent gathering of The Hague Group – a 30-nation conference held in Colombia to set out practical steps for UN member states to take measures in support of Israel ending the occupation, as 'an ethical force inside the system', which she said was 'premised upon a basic respect of international law and the honoring of multilateralism, which seems to me the basic ingredient to have a functioning international community'. That stands in contrast to a UN that Albanese believes is living a 'moment of existential crisis'. '[The UN] needs to decide whether to be a real, multilateral platform,' she said. 'We are no longer in the settler-colonial bloc kind of mentality that conceived the birth of the UN. Now there are 193 member states, and all of them have agency and all of them must be respected. Now is the time to cut the umbilical cord from the veto-power mentality and put the emphasis on the general assembly.' Albanese noted that Israel's 21-month war in Gaza had prompted a 'profound shift' in global views of the conflict, as well as 'brutal repression'. 'We see millions of people taking to the streets and asking for an end to the genocide, and they're being beaten and arrested and held on counts of terrorism, while those who are wanted by the ICC for war crimes are being received and allowed to fly over European and western space,' she said. 'This is absurd. This is the end of the rule of law.' International law, she added, 'is not a prophecy … It is a tool that must be used in order to fix things. And in fact, when people use it in court, they generally win.' But she sounded a note of optimism about the shifting discourse around Israel's actions. 'An entire new generation now speaks the language of human rights,' she said. 'For me, this is a success in and of itself.' The widening gap between those in power and millions of people that have taken to the streets worldwide in support of Palestinians is in part why her most recent report focused not on Israeli actions but on the global corporations that she says are 'profiting from genocide'. 'The occupation is profitable, and so is the genocide, and this is shocking, but it is to be known in order to be seen and to be stopped,' she noted. 'The power is not just with the prime ministers or with the governments. The power is with us, and we can start choosing through our wallet.' As for Palestinians, despite their monumental suffering and the ever-mounting death toll, 'they have already won the legitimacy battle,' Albanese said. 'Everyone knows what Israel has done to them for the past 77 years,' she said. 'They've already made history – and not through violence as some try to portray them – but with their perseverance and principles and trust in the justice system, which has not been their ally.'
Belfast Telegraph
40 minutes ago
- Belfast Telegraph
We must do everything to get them out, plead mothers of hostages
Israel plans a much-criticised new Gaza offensive to take control of Gaza City in the almost two-year-old war against Palestinian militant group Hamas. Bombardment of the city is underway but the timing of the full offensive is uncertain and efforts to salvage a ceasefire continue. 'When I heard that our government intends to extend the war in Gaza, I as a mother am afraid, because we know that Hamas gives kill the hostages whenever [our military] is getting close to them,' said Viki Cohen, the mother of Nimrod Cohen, an Israeli soldier who was captured by Hamas during the deadly October 7, 2023 cross-border attacks. Ms Cohen, who is in Geneva alongside other hostages' mothers to appeal to the International Committee of the Red Cross to help them, called instead for a deal for their release. 'We must do everything to take them out from there,' she said, holding up a photo of her now 21-year-old son, with his two previous ages since his captivity crossed out. Galia David, the mother of Evyatar David who appeared skeleton-like in a Hamas video this month where he was seen digging what he described as his own grave, said she was 'really afraid' ahead of the offensive. 'We know from hostages who were released that there are hard stories, that they are even more evil with them when there is fighting,' she told reporters. She said she also worries that her son could die of starvation within days – a fear shared by Cohen's mother. Malnutrition rates and hunger-related deaths are rising in Gaza, humanitarian groups say, amid Israeli restrictions on aid. Israel denies responsibility for spreading hunger in Gaza, accusing Hamas of stealing aid, which Hamas denies. Of the original 251 hostages captured by Hamas, around 50 hostages remain in Gaza, of whom about 20 are thought to still be alive. Hamas has repeatedly denied abuse of the hostages and said Israel is starving the whole population in Gaza, including the hostages and their captors.
