At least 20 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on homes in Rafah, Magazi and Gaza City since Tuesday.
Here's what happened on Wednesday, April 17, 2024:
Combat and humanitarian crisis
- At least 20 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on homes in Rafah, Magazi and Gaza City since Tuesday afternoon.
- Separately, Gaza's Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday that at least seven law enforcement officers and two bystanders tasked with protecting aid were killed in an Israeli military offensive in Gaza City.
- Gaza fighters continue to fire rockets into southern Israel. Two missiles fired from the Palestinian territories on Tuesday landed in open areas but caused no damage or casualties, war monitors reported.
- At least 33,843 Palestinians have been killed and 76,575 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack has reached 1,139, with dozens still being held in Gaza.
Diplomacy and geopolitical tensions
- Iran has threatened Israel with a “painful response” if it takes “slight actions” to retaliate for Tehran's missile and drone attacks, which were in retaliation for Israel's bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria. warned that they would face Israel's military commander said on Monday that his country would respond to the Iranian attack, but was unsure when and how, amid concerns about escalating conflict in the Middle East and world leaders urging against further retaliation. He did not go into detail about that.
- Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant thanked Italy's “bold stand with Israel after the Iranian attack” in a telephone conversation with Italian Defense Minister Guido Crossetto on Tuesday.
- Google employees who were protesting against Project Nimbus surveillance and an AI contract with the Israeli military were arrested Tuesday at the company's California and New York offices.
- The UN Security Council is scheduled to vote on the Palestinian state's application for full UN membership on Thursday, diplomatic sources said. In response to a journalist's question about the release of more Palestinian prisoners, the US ambassador to the United Nations said Hamas was “not in a position to make demands.”
- Four months after a controversial Congressional hearing led to the resignations of two Ivy League presidents, Columbia University's president on Wednesday addressed the university's commitment to on-campus conflict over anti-Semitism and Israel's war in Gaza. He is scheduled to appear before the committee regarding the issue of response.
Violence in the occupied West Bank
- Palestinian rights groups have warned that Israeli military and settler attacks in the occupied West Bank are “increasing in intensity and scale”.
- Mouan Rabbani, co-editor of Jadariya magazine, says violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents in the occupied West Bank is symptomatic of a larger problem: Israel's “expansionism” since 1967. Stated.
- On Tuesday, an Israeli bulldozer was involved in a massive explosion in Tubas as Israeli forces continued their assault in the occupied West Bank.
