Israel-Palestine live: Thousands in state of panic as Israel continues to strike hospitals

The American Postal Workers Union, which represents employees at the US Postal Service, has issued a statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

APWU now joins a list of organisations, including other workers unions, to advocate for a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza.

“We call on our government, which is the primary foreign benefactor of the Israeli government, to use all its power to protect innocent lives and to help bring about peace in the region, and not use our tax dollars for more war,” the statement said.

“We join the calls for an immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages, and urgently needed massive humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. The cries of humanity demand nothing less.”

APWU also becomes the first union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to join the call for a ceasefire. AFL-CIO has said in a statement it calls for a swift resolution to the conflict, but has not called for a ceasefire.

Good evening Middle East Eye readers,

As the number of fatalities approaches 11,000, thousands of Palestinians are being forced to flee the northern Gaza Strip on foot.

Today, a senior US official suggested that the Gaza death toll may be even higher than Palestinian health ministry figures.

At least 14 Palestinians were killed in a Jenin raid in the West Bank, and currently, 1,350 Palestinian children in Gaza remain trapped beneath rubble.

In other updates:

• The White House has announced that Israel has agreed to suspend fighting for four hours on a daily basis to allow for Palestinian civilians to flee northern Gaza.
• The heads of Mossad and the CIA met with the Qatari prime minister in Doha to discuss a deal to release captives held in Gaza and a pause in the war.
• Al-Quds Brigades, the military branch of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, has said it will release two captives if conditions on the ground in Gaza permit it to do so.
• Dozens of experts label Israel’s actions against the Palestinians as "genocide".

US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo announced on Thursday that the US and its allies plan to implement additional sanctions soon to cut off financial support to Hamas.

"We're going to see actions taken by our allies and partners," Adeyemo said.

"Some of them will be publicly announced, some of them people will not see in terms of shutting down charities and individuals who may be helping to facilitate payments for Hamas."

He also added that Hamas will grow its use of cryptocurrency to "hide their illicit activities".

Yemen's Houthi movement fired a series of ballistic missiles targeting various locations in Israel, including military sites in Eilat, the Houthi spokesperson announced on Thursday.

The Israeli military confirmed that an unidentified drone hit a civilian building in the southern Israeli port city of Eilat.

In a separate incident, the Israeli military said that in the area of the Red Sea, which Israel has access to via Eilat port, its "Arrow" air defence system successfully intercepted a missile launched towards its territory.

A group of 41 experts on state crime say Israel's "genocide" of Palestinians did not start on 7 October.

In a statement, the group of scholars assert that the response of Israel to incidents on 7 October is indicative of what they term genocide, based on both legal and criminological definitions, and linked to broader historical contexts.

They describe Israel's recent actions, including a total siege of Gaza, as part of a genocidal process that aims to destroy the Palestinian people.

The statement notes that while international law is currently insufficient to address state crimes during their commission, civil society actions and movements like Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) are crucial for holding states accountable.

"Every citizen can play a critical role today in condemning and disrupting Israeli state crime," the statement says.

US forces were targeted in three attacks in Iraq on Thursday but suffered no casualties, security sources told Reuters.

An explosive device near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul targeted a joint patrol of US forces and the Iraqi counterterrorism service, causing damage to a vehicle, according to the sources.

Armed drones also targeted an air base in Erbil and the Ain al-Asad air base west of Baghdad, both of which house American and international forces. The drones were downed by air defences, Reuters reported.

A US official said that in the past 24 hours there had been four attacks against US personnel in Iraq and Syria. Three US troops sustained minor injuries but returned to duty, the official added.

US and coalition troops have been attacked at least 40 times in Iraq and Syria since 7 October. Washington blames the attacks on Iran-backed groups. 

Iran-backed militias in Iraq have stated that American assets would be targeted as long as Washington backs Israel in its war on Gaza.

Earleir on Thursday, the US military said it had struck targets in Syria to destroy weaponry and deter Iranian-backed separatist groups from targeting American personnel. 

At least 18 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the health ministry has announced. 

Fourteen of them were killed by Israeli forces in a sweeping military raid and drone strikes on Jenin city and refugee camp. 

More than 20 others were wounded in the military operation in the city, which lasted around 12 hours. 

Elsewhere in the West Bank, four people, including a 15-year-old boy, were killed during raids in Bethlehem, Nablus, Hebron and Ramallah.

At least 178 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since 7 October. 

"The bloody aggression of the Israeli occupation on Jenin governorate is a deliberate escalation to detonate the situation in the West Bank," the Palestinian foreign affairs ministry said in a statement.

The Israeli military said on Thursday that an unidentified drone hit a civilian building in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, causing light damage and no injuries.

"The identity of the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] and the details of the incident are under review," the military said in a statement.

In another incident, the military said that the Red Sea, which Israel accesses via Eilat port, its "Arrow" air defence system intercepted a missile launched towards Israeli territory.

Scores of civilians were killed and wounded on Thursday night after an Israeli bombardment targeted the vicinity of the Indonesian Hopsital in the northern Gaza Strip, according to Wafa news agency. 

Footage broadcast by Al Jazeera showed panicked scenes at the hospital, as air strikes landed nearby. The bombings reportedly caused severe damage to hospital facilities. 

In a column for Middle East Eye, author Geo Maher and editor and writer Nicki Kattoura argue that Palestinians are "condemned to hell on earth" and must not expected to condemn Hamas. 

They write: "In the street, on campus, or in those rare moments when a Palestinian, or a supporter of Palestinian liberation, is interviewed by a mainstream media outlet, the question inevitably comes. On one level, we know why: by holding all Palestinians responsible for Hamas, Palestinian resistance as a whole can be discredited by proxy.

When Israeli military and political officials, literal agents of military violence against Palestinians, are paraded on CNN, they are not asked to condemn carpet bombing, collective punishment, or the targeting of civilians as a precondition to beginning a conversation.

The Palestinian interviewee faces a different reality, however. When they rightly shift focus to denounce a brutal, military occupation, they are quickly rebuffed, forced to recalibrate to the mandatory initial task: condemnation."

You can read the full column by clicking the link below. 

Opinion: Why must Palestinians condemn themselves for daring to fight back?

Any pause in hostilities for humanitarian purposes would need to be coordinated with the United Nations and agreed to by all parties to the conflict "to be truly effective", UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric has said.

Earlier on Thursday, the White House said Israel would begin four-hour pauses in northern Gaza to allow civilians to flee to the south. 

Taher al-Nono, a Hamas official and aide to leader Ismail Haniyeh, has said that negotiations were ongoing with Israel but no deal had been reached so far.

He gave no further detail in a statement posted on Telegram on Thursday.

When Israel ordered more than a million residents to evacuate northern Gaza to the south, Alaa’s family decided not to leave their house, as they were terrified that it would be a second Nakba and they would never be allowed to return.

But relentless bombing eventually forced their hand and they left the area, seeking somewhere safer.

The family first went to the home of Alaa’s grandmother in the middle of Gaza City, but only stayed there for two nights, then left after an adjoining house was destroyed in an attack.

After hours wandering the empty streets of central Gaza, they found a taxi willing to take them to the south, as Israeli warplanes circled above, looking for their next target.

“We waited for many hours. The street was bombed. We were surrounded by massive destruction, dry blood, and relentless bursts of bullets,” said Alaa, who is 28.

Read more: Displaced, hungry and abandoned - one woman's Gaza odyssey

Barbara Leaf, US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, has told a House panel that the Gaza death toll may be higher than the near-11,000 figure reported by the Palestinian health ministry, as first reported by The Hill. 

“In this period of conflict and conditions of war, it is very difficult for any of us to assess what the rate of casualties are,” Leaf told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We think they’re very high, frankly, and it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited.

“We’ll know only after the guns fall silent. We take in sourcing from a variety of folks who are on the ground,” she added. “I can’t stipulate to one figure or another, it’s very possible they’re even higher than is being reported."

A senior Israeli security source disclosed earlier this week that an estimated 20,000 people were killed in air strikes in the Gaza Strip, according to the diplomatic correspondent of Yedioth Ahronoth.

Two weeks ago, the Palestinian health ministry published the names, ages, genders, and ID numbers of all those killed by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip, a day after US President Joe Biden questioned its figures.