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UN security council to vote on Thursday on Palestinian UN membership, say diplomats
The UN security council is due to vote on Thursday on a Palestinian bid for full UN membership, diplomats said, a move that Israel ally the US is expected to block because it would effectively recognise a Palestinian state, reports Reuters.
The 15-member council had initially been scheduled to vote on the measure on Friday. It will now vote at 5pm EDT (9pm GMT/10pm BST) on Thursday, the diplomats said.
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The UK sanctions Iranian military entities including IRGC Navy
The UK has placed sanctions on Iranian military entities, including the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy, an official notice showed on Thursday, reports Reuters.
The measures follow Iran’s missile and drone attack on Israel last weekend.
The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak had said on Monday that the G7 nations was working on a package of coordinated measures against Iran.
The British sanctions target 13 entities or individuals in total, the notice showed.
US announces new sanctions on Iran after missile and drone strike on Israel
The US on Thursday announced new sanctions on Iran targeting its unarmed aerial vehicle (UAV) production after its missile and drone strike on Israel last weekend, reports Reuters.
A US Department of the Treasury statement said the measures targeted 16 individuals and two entities enabling Iran’s UAV production, including engine types that power Iran’s Shahed variant UAVs, which were used in the 13 April attack.
According to Reuter’s report, the US Treasury said it was also designating five companies in multiple jurisdictions providing component materials for steel production to Iran’s Khuzestan Steel Company (KSC), one of Iran’s largest steel producers, or purchasing KSC’s finished steel products.
Three subsidiaries of Iranian automaker Bahman Group, which it said had materially supported Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, have also been targeted.
The statement said that concurrent with the US Treasury action, the UK was imposing sanctions targeting several Iranian military organisations, individuals and entities involved in Iran’s UAV and ballistic missile industries.
Reuters reports that the US statement came after finance ministers and central bank governors of the G7 industrial democracies said, after a meeting on Wednesday, that they would “ensure close coordination of any future measure to diminish Iran’s ability to acquire, produce, or transfer weapons to support destabilizing regional activities.”
EU leaders also decided on Wednesday to step up sanctions against Iran after Tehran’s missile and drone attack on Israel left world powers scrambling to prevent a wider conflict in the Middle East.
Tehran says it launched the 13 April attack in retaliation for Israel’s suspected 1 April strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Israel has said it will retaliate, while a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on Thursday Iran could review its “nuclear doctrine” after Israeli threats.
UN security council to vote on Thursday on Palestinian UN membership, say diplomats
The UN security council is due to vote on Thursday on a Palestinian bid for full UN membership, diplomats said, a move that Israel ally the US is expected to block because it would effectively recognise a Palestinian state, reports Reuters.
The 15-member council had initially been scheduled to vote on the measure on Friday. It will now vote at 5pm EDT (9pm GMT/10pm BST) on Thursday, the diplomats said.
The UN security council is to vote on the Palestinian request for full UN membership at 5pm EDT (9pm GMT/10pm BST) on Thursday, say diplomats, according to a breaking news report by Reuters.
More details soon …
US and Israel to hold virtual meeting about Rafah on Thursday
Senior US and Israeli officials will hold a virtual meeting on Thursday about Israel’s plans for the southern Gaza city of Rafah as Washington seeks alternatives to an Israeli offensive, a US official said, according to a report by Reuters.
The meeting is a follow-up to a similar meeting held on 1 April.
US president Joe Biden has urged Israel not to conduct a large-scale offensive in Rafah to avoid more Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza, where Palestinian health authorities say more than 32,000 people have been killed in Israel’s assault.
Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi will visit Pakistan as scheduled next week despite increasing tension in the Middle East in the wake of Tehran’s aerial attack on Israel, Reuters reports citing Pakistan’s foreign minister.
Ishaq Dar said Raisi will arrive in the capital, Islamabad, on 22 April on an official three-day visit.
According to Reuters, Dar provided no further details, but the visit seems to be part of efforts by the two sides to mend ties which had briefly been strained in January, when Tehran and Islamabad carried out tit-for-tat strikes targeting militants accused of attacking each other’s security forces.
But the two sides soon agreed to work together to improve security cooperation.
Pakistan is among the countries that has no diplomatic relations with Israel because of the lingering issue of Palestinian statehood. Dar said Pakistan wants the issue to be settled according to UN resolutions.
Here are some of the latest images from the newswires:
Ashifa Kassam
Ashifa Kassam is the Guardian’s European community affairs correspondent.
The former mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau has announced that she will be joining hundreds of people from around the world on a Gaza-bound flotilla, expected to set sail from the Mediterranean in the coming days, that will carry at least 5,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid.
The flotilla, coined ‘Break the Siege’ is expected to include at least three vessels and is being organised by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
In announcing her participation on social media, Colau thanked organisers for inviting her to be a part of it. “Because there are many of us who do not want to continue to feel powerless,” she wrote.
The coalition has organised similar initiatives since 2010. One of its initial efforts to bring aid to Gaza made global headlines after Israeli troops intercepted the convoy, setting off a violent encounter that resulted in the death of nine activists. The deadly raid sparked international outcry and jolted the relationship between Israel and Turkey.
This latest mission will see “civilians bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza,” the coalition noted on its website. “We are doing what is just, humane and necessary.”
An AFP correspondent in Gaza said Israeli artillery shelling and aircraft strikes again hit Gaza City overnight.
The Israeli military said it struck dozens of militant targets over the past day.
Gaza’s civil defence said on Thursday it had recovered 11 more bodies in the southern city of Khan Younis during the night.
Israel had also bombed the far-southern city of Rafah. Gaza rescue crews recovered the corpses of eight family members, including five children and two women, from a house in Rafah’s al-Salam neighbourhood, the civil defence service said.
At least 33,970 Palestinians have been killed and 76,770 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry has said.
Reuters reports the Hamas-led ministry figure has increased by 71 deaths since yesterday.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
Here is a video clip of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warning that the Middle East is on the brink of “a regional war”.
Google fires 28 employees for protest of Israeli cloud contract
Google said on Thursday it had terminated 28 employees after some staff participated in protests against the company’s cloud contract with the Israeli government, reports Reuters.
The Alphabet unit said a small number of protesting employees entered and disrupted work at a few unspecified office locations.
“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior,” the company said in a statement.
According to Reuters, Google said it had concluded individual investigations, resulting in the termination of 28 employees, and would continue to investigate and take action as needed.
The news agency also reported that in a statement on Medium, Google workers affiliated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign called it a “flagrant act of retaliation” and claimed that some employees who did not directly participate in Tuesday’s protests were also among those Google fired.
“Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor,” the statement added.
The protesting faction says that Project Nimbus, a $1.2bn contract awarded to Google and Amazon.com in 2021 to supply the Israeli government with cloud services, supports the development of military tools by the Israeli government.
In its statement, Google maintained that the Nimbus contract “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”
A Palestinian boy who survived an Israeli airstrike that destroyed his family’s home in November has died during a food aid drop.
Zein Oroq was pinned under rubble after the airstrike last year that killed 17 members of his extended family. Although he was injured, he survived.
Last week, during an airdrop of aid, 13-year-old Zein was struck by one of the packages as he rushed to try to get a can of fava beans, some rice or flour.
“The first time, when the house was hit by a strike, he came out from under the rubble with wounds in his head, hand and leg. God saved him,” said Zein’s grandfather, Ali Oroq.
“While parachutes were falling, an aid box hit his head. Also, the stampede of people who were heading towards the box did not pay attention to the boy – they were also hungry,” said his father, Mahmoud.
“So, his head was cut and wounded, he got fractures in the pelvis, skull and abdomen, and with the flow of people, the pressure increased on him.”
Zein was taken to hospital, where he died on Sunday.
You can read the full report from staff and agencies in Gaza here:
With no centralised relief effort in Egypt, Palestinians are relying on grassroots charities for food, rent and clothing, writes Edmund Bower.
Bower, a Middle East reporter based in Beirut, has written about Gaza refugees in Cairo finding little help in this piece for the Guardian:
EU foreign policy chief warns 'we are on the edge' of 'a regional war in the Middle East'
According to a report by the Associated Press (AP), the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said the existing EU sanctions regime on Iran would be strengthened and expanded to punish Tehran for its attack and help prevent future ones on Israel. At the same time, he said, Israel needed to exercise restraint.
“I don’t want to exaggerate but we are on the edge of a war, a regional war in the Middle East, which will be sending shock waves to the rest of the world, and in particular to Europe,” he warned. “So stop it.”
On Wednesday, EU leaders meeting in Brussels vowed to ramp up sanctions on Iran to target its drone and missile deliveries to proxies in Gaza, Yemen and Lebanon.
Here are some of the latest images from Rafah on the newswires:
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Rafah, has told the news outlet that an overnight attack on Gaza killed 11 people, including five children.
The attack on southern Rafah was “one of the bloodiest” in “wide-ranging attacks on Gaza” overnight by the Israeli military, he said.
Abu Azzoum added that airstrikes were also recorded in the al-Mughraqa and Deir el-Balah areas.
He also said that “the Israeli army, meanwhile, withdrew from Nuseirat refugee camp, leaving behind a trail of destruction” and that “civil defence crews are working to recover victims buried in the debris”.
