Trump met with Israeli strategic affairs minister in charge of hostage negotiations
13:52 Beirut Time
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 11 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes targeting the Gaza Strip since Friday morning.
A fisherman was killed by Israeli army fire on his boat northwest of Gaza City, according to the local correspondent for the Qatari outlet.
The Trump administration is reportedly pressuring Israel to reach an agreement with Hamas before the U.S. president's planned visit to the region on May 13, according to Haaretz. A source cited in the Israeli media outlet emphasized that Washington considers this move crucial and warned that if it refuses, Israel could find itself isolated on the international stage.
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, with whom Donald Trump spoke on Thursday, has not officially commented on this pressure.
Meanwhile, Steve Witkoff, a senior U.S. official, reportedly met with hostage families this week, saying that military pressure on Gaza is jeopardizing any release. He also reportedly warned that Israel risks missing strategic agreements, such as the one with Saudi Arabia, if it does not cooperate. His office, contacted by Haaretz, denied any official pressure on Israel.
12:48 Beirut Time
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least eight people have been killed by continued Israeli bombardments across the Gaza Strip since this morning.
Among the victims were a couple of parents from the Hamdan family and their child who died following a raid on a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, while another person was killed in a drone strike targeting the al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City, in the center of the enclave, which also injured several others, Al Jazeera's local correspondents reported.
Local sources also reported that Israeli military vehicles fired heavily on the eastern areas of Gaza City.
12:48 Beirut Time
Two Israeli soldiers, members of a civil engineering unit of the Golani Brigade, were killed yesterday in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, an Israeli army spokesperson announced. They added that an officer and another soldier from the same unit were "severely wounded."
The day before, the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, announced in a statement that it "killed two occupation soldiers and wounded 19 others in the al-Tanour neighborhood," east of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, as part of a series of operations called "Gates of Hell."
12:15 Beirut Time
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Thank you for joining us for our live coverage today.
12:15 Beirut Time
U.S. President Trump met with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a trusted aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Axios reported. The confidential meeting took place on Thursday at the White House, the U.S. media outlet said, citing two sources briefed on the meeting, who indicated that the discussions addressed ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran and Israel's new plans for its offensive against the Gaza Strip.
The meeting took place days before the fourth round of Iranian nuclear talks between U.S. and Iranian officials on Sunday in Oman, and ahead of Donald Trump's Middle East tour beginning next Monday.
"We were shocked that the Trump administration didn't tell us anything and that we learned about it on television," an Israeli official told Axios. Regarding the cease-fire agreement Washington reached this week with Houthi rebels, shortly after major Israeli strikes on a major Yemeni port and Sana'a airport in response to Houthi missile attacks on Ben Gurion Airport.
12:15 Beirut Time
The United States announced Thursday that a new foundation would soon be tasked with managing humanitarian aid in the Israeli-blockaded, war-torn Gaza Strip.
"While we have nothing specific to announce today, and I will not speak on behalf of the Foundation, which will do the work, we welcome initiatives to quickly deliver urgently needed food aid to Gaza so that food aid actually reaches those for whom it is intended," State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters. "We are one step closer to that solution, to being able to deliver aid and food" to Gaza, she added, stressing that the foundation would make an announcement "soon," without providing further details.
Since March 2 and the resumption of the Israeli offensive, no humanitarian aid has been allowed to enter the Palestinian territory where 2.4 million people live.
Find the details here.
12:15 Beirut Time
A new documentary was recently released online, claiming to have identified the Israeli soldier suspected of being responsible for the death of al-Jazeera correspondent in the occupied West Bank, Shireen Abu Akleh, in May 2022.
Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American woman who had worked for al-Jazeera since 1997, was killed while covering a story in Jenin. Human rights organizations and news agencies documented after her death that Palestinian fighters initially accused by Israel of firing the gun that killed the journalist were far from the scene, and in September, Israel acknowledged there was a "high probability" that its forces had "accidentally" killed the journalist.
Contributors to the documentary "Who Killed Shireen?," released Thursday by Zeteo, suggested that Abu Akleh's assassination reinforced a sense of impunity among Israeli soldiers, contributing to the deaths of more than 200 journalists killed by the Israeli army and settlers in the West Bank. According to the book, the identified soldier has since been killed in Jenin.
12:15 Beirut Time
In south Lebanon, after a violent Thursday marked by a series of Israeli strikes on the Nabatieh region, which killed two Hezbollah members, the morning was relatively calm. In Kfar Kila (Marjeyoun), a drone dropped a sound bomb on an industrial building, with no injuries reported so far.
12:15 Beirut Time
A Hamas delegation held talks on a Gaza truce in Doha on Wednesday and Thursday with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, but the talks failed to produce any breakthrough, two sources close to the Palestinian movement told AFP.
"Egyptian officials involved in the negotiations met twice with a high-level Hamas delegation led by [chief negotiator] Khalil Hayyeh [and] Qatari officials for the negotiations, on Wednesday and Thursday in Doha," one of these sources said. The negotiations were "serious" but did not lead to "any tangible progress," the second said.
12:15 Beirut Time
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is scheduled to travel to Saudi Arabia and Qatar tomorrow, Saturday, ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's trip to the Middle East scheduled for next week, Iranian diplomats announced. Araghchi will first travel to Riyadh to "meet and discuss with senior Saudi officials" and then to Doha "to participate in the Iran-Arab World Dialogue Conference," according to a statement published on the Iranian Foreign Ministry's website.
Trump is expected to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates from May 13 to 16. This trip would have been the U.S. president's first foreign trip since returning to office in January, had it not been for his brief trip to Rome for Pope Francis's funeral. On Wednesday, Trump said that he would "make a decision" on how the United States refers to the Gulf, after several American media outlets attributed his intention to call it the "Arabian Gulf" or "Arabian Gulf" rather than the "Persian Gulf." This decision would offend Iran at a time when Washington is holding nuclear talks with Tehran.
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