Trump backs aid for Palestinians, saying ‘a lot of good things are going to happen over the next month’
Donald Trump on Friday backed aid for the Palestinians, saying people in Gaza are starving and adding that he expected “a lot of good things” in the next month.
According to Reuters, when asked whether he supported Israeli plans to expand the war in Gaza, the US president told reporters:
I think a lot of good things are going to happen over the next month, and we’re going to see. We have to help also out the Palestinians. You know, a lot of people are starving on Gaza, so we have to look at both sides.
Key events
Israel’s military said Friday it struck two ports in Yemen that were controlled by the Houthi militant group.
It claimed that the Hodeida and Salif ports were used by the Houthis to transfer weapons.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Internally displaced Palestinians move along Al Rashid road in the west of Gaza City today.
Freed Israeli-American hostage has left the hospital, parents say
Edan Alexander, the Israeli-American hostage released Monday after backdoor US-Hamas diplomacy, left the hospital Friday, according to a statement released by his parents, who said his recovery is far from over.
Yael and Adi Alexander said their son still needed medical treatment for his injuries suffered during the Hamas attack Oct. 7, 2023, and over his 18 months in captivity. His hands are injured from a tunnel collapsing on him, they said.
Alexander returned to his grandmother’s home in Tel Aviv, where his parents said he will stay for the time being.
“Today we were able to take down Edan’s hostage photos from the wall with a great sigh of relief and an enormous sense of comfort,” they said, calling for the return of 58 hostages still in Gaza.
Hamas urges US to press Israel to lift Gaza blockade after hostage release
A senior Hamas official told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Friday that the group expects the United States to pressure Israel into lifting its aid blockade of Gaza after the group released a US-Israeli hostage this week.
“Hamas is awaiting and expecting the US administration to exert further pressure on the Netanyahu government to open the crossings and allow the immediate entry of humanitarian aid – food, medicine and fuel – to the hospitals in the Gaza Strip,” Taher al-Nunu said, adding that aid entry was part of an understanding with US envoys in exchange for Edan Alexander’s release.
According to Reuters, the Houthi-run Al Masirah TV is reporting that Israel attacked Yemen’s Salif port in Hodeidah along the country’s western coast on Friday.
The Guardian has been unable to independently verify the report.
World Bank announces plans to restart Syria operations
The World Bank on Friday said it would restart operation in Syria after a 14-year pause, after Saudi Arabia and Qatar had paid off the country’s outstanding debts, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The bank’s operation in Syria were halted when the civil war broke out in 2011, preventing the country from gaining access to its development loans, grants, and technical expertise.
After the ousting of former president Bashar al-Assad last year, the United States and other western nations have reengaged with the new government in Damascus, with many countries beginning the process of peeling back the sanctions.
Earlier this week, Saudi Arabia and Qatar paid off Syria’s outstanding debts of about $15.5m to the Washington-based institution, allowing operations to resume, the World Bank announced in a statement.
“After years of conflict, Syria is on a path to recovery and development,” it said, adding that the first project with the new Syrian government would focus on improving access to electricity. The bank said:
The proposed project is the first step in a planned increase in World Bank Group support designed to confront Syria’s urgent needs and invest in long-term development.
This will help to stabilise the country and the region.
Seventeen Palestinian children and their caregivers were recently sent back to Gaza after receiving medical treatment in Jordan, reports the Associated Press (AP).
More than two dozen children and their caregivers were evacuated from Gaza in March as part of a Jordanian initiative to provide medical care. The 17 patients who completed their treatment went home.
The AP reports that a Jordanian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, acknowledged that some Palestinians asked to stay beyond the treatment, but he said the plan was always to return them.
“We are not going to allow the displacement of Palestinians outside Gaza,” he said.
Jordan’s government said the children who left made room for others to come. On Wednesday, four cancer patients arrived from Gaza to start care.
Forcing people to return to a place where they could face serious harm would be a violation of international human rights law, according to rights groups. Under the law, all returns must be safe and voluntary, and the evacuating country should ensure that adequate services are available in their place of origin, reports the AP.
Death toll from Israeli strikes in Gaza on Friday rises to 93
The Associated Press (AP) is reporting the death toll from Israeli strikes in Gaza on Friday has increased to 93.
Heavy strikes were reported on Friday in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya and in the Jabalia refugee camp, where Palestinian emergency services said many bodies were still buried in the rubble.
Israel dropped leaflets on Beit Lahiya ordering all residents to leave, whether they lived in tents, shelters or buildings. “Leave southwards immediately,” the leaflets read, reports Reuters.
Residents said Israeli tanks were advancing towards the southern city of Khan Younis.
Council of Europe denounces ‘deliberate starvation’ in Gaza
The Council of Europe on Friday said Gaza was suffering from a “deliberate starvation”, and warned that Israel was sowing “the seeds for the next Hamas” in the territory.
“The time for a moral reckoning over the treatment of Palestinians has come – and it is long overdue,” said Dora Bakoyannis, rapporteur for the Middle East at the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“No cause, no matter how just or pure, can ever justify every means,” Bakoyannis said in a statement, adding:
The mass killing of children and unarmed civilians, the deliberate starvation, and the relentless pain and humiliation inflicted upon Palestinians in Gaza must end.
Since 2 March, Israeli forces have blocked all humanitarian aid entering Gaza for its 2.4 million inhabitants, now threatened with famine, according to several NGOs.
Bakoyannis said that “it takes a smart and brave nation to recognise when its actions are causing more harm than good. What is unfolding in Gaza helps no one”.
An Israeli official said the strikes in Gaza on Friday were preparatory actions in the lead-up to a larger operation and to send a message to Hamas that it will begin soon if there is not an agreement to release hostages. The official was not authorised to brief media and spoke on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press (AP).
The same official said that cabinet members were meeting on Friday to assess the negotiations in Qatar, where ceasefire talks are taking place, and to decide on next steps.
Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer told the AP on Friday that Israel’s military is intensifying its operations as it has done since Hamas stopped releasing hostages. “Our objective is to get them home and get Hamas to relinquish power,” he said. He said Israel will continue pressuring Hamas while negotiating, saying that it’s getting results.
Israel said on Friday it was continuing its operations against militants in Gaza and that it struck 150 targets in the past day, including anti-tank missile posts and military structures. In northern Gaza, it eliminated several militants who were operating in an observation compound, it said.
The strikes lasted for hours into Friday morning and sent people fleeing from the Jabaliya refugee camp and the town of Beit Lahiya. They followed days of similar attacks that killed more than 130 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
After the strikes, dark smoke was seen rising over Jabaliya as people grabbed what they could of their belongings and fled on donkey carts, by car and foot, reports the Associated Press (AP).
“The army entered upon us, bombing, killing. . … We got out of the house with difficulty, killing and death, we did not take anything,” Feisal Al-Attar, who was displaced from Beit Lahiya, told the AP.
Dozens of Israelis have protested in support of a soldier imprisoned for refusing to fight in Gaza, AP reports.
The protesters expressed support for Daniel Yahalom, a reserve soldier who is serving five days in prison for refusing to participate in what he called an unjust fight.
He is part of a small but growing number of Israelis who are refusing to show up for service as the war drags on and Israel intensifies its operations in Gaza.
The Israeli military confirmed Yahalom was going to prison and said he was not the first to receive a prison sentence for refusing to serve during the current Israel-Hamas war.
“This boy always cares about others even before himself … He cares about the suffering of our brothers who are dying underground, and he is willing to pay the price,” said his mother, Haya Yahalom.
Here is an interesting take from Reuters, who have spoken to a man living in a camp in the Gaza Strip.
He talks about the reality of the situation on the ground for ordinary Palestinians and highlights the lack of help forthcoming from US president Donald Trump.
Reuters reports:
In Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip, men picked through a sea of rubble following the night’s strikes, pulling out sheets of metal as small children clambered through the debris.
Around 10 bodies draped in white sheets were lined up on the ground before being taken to hospital. Women sat crying nearby and one lifted a corner of a sheet to gaze at the dead person’s face.
Ismail, a man from Gaza City who gave only his first name, described a night of horror. “The non-stop explosions resulting from the airstrikes and tank shelling reminded us of the early days of the war. The ground didn’t stop shaking underneath our feet,” Ismail told Reuters via a chat app.
“We thought Trump arrived to save us, but it seems Netanyahu doesn’t care, neither does Trump,” he added.
US president Donald Trump said on Friday that American journalist Austin Tice, captured in Syria more than 12 years ago, has not been seen in years, reports Reuters.
Trump was asked if he brought up Tice when he met Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, during a visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.
“I always talk about Austin Tice. Now you know Austin Tice hasn’t been seen in many, many years,” Trump replied. “He’s got a great mother who’s just working so hard to find her boy. So I understand it, but Austin has not been seen in many, many years.”
Tice, a former US Marine and a freelance journalist, was 31 when he was abducted in August 2012 while reporting in Damascus on the uprising against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted by Syrian rebels who seized the capital Damascus in December. Syria had denied he was being held.
US officials pressed for Tice’s release after the government fell. Former US president Joe Biden said at the time he believed Tice was alive.
Gaza rescuers say toll from Israeli strikes Friday rises to 74
Gaza rescuers said Israeli strikes and shelling on Friday killed 74 people in the war-battered Palestinian territory, updating a previous toll.
Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Basal reported “74 martyrs as a result of the ongoing Israeli bombardment across the entire Gaza Strip since last night until this moment,” most of them in the north of the Palestinian territory, after the agency earlier reported more than 50 dead, while hospitals placed it at 64 (see 10.32am BST).
Mark Townsend
It is the sixth consecutive year that the number of people facing “high levels of acute food insecurity” has risen, reaching 295.3 million according to the latest Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC).
The figure represents almost a quarter – 22.6% – of the population of 53 countries analysed by GRFC experts.
“Intensifying conflict, increasing geopolitical tensions, global economic uncertainty and profound funding cuts are deepening acute food insecurity,” the report said.
People facing the most chronic lack of food – as categorised by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – more than doubled last year.
More than 95% of them lived in the Gaza Strip or Sudan, although Haiti, Mali and South Sudan had significant populations suffering similar food shortages.
The category – described as “catastrophe” by the IPC – is characterised by starvation, death, destitution and high rates of acute malnutrition.
In Sudan, the worsening civil war led to famine being officially declared with more than 24 million facing acute food insecurity.
Conditions also deteriorated within the Gaza Strip, with experts last year stating that half the population was projected to be suffering the IPC’s “catastrophe” scenario.
“Following the closure of all crossings into the Gaza Strip in early March, and the collapse of the two-month ceasefire, food access has been severely restricted,” the report said.
The warnings were corroborated on Monday when the latest report by the IPC said Gaza’s population of about 2.1 million Palestinians was at “critical risk” of famine as the Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid continued.