Arrival of Israeli troops in the southern border town has choked aid supplies, as hunger deepens in southern Gaza

Fayiz Abu Ataya was born into war and knew nothing else. Over his first and only spring, in a town stalked by hunger, he wasted away to a shadow of a child, skin stretched painfully over jutting bones.

In seven months of life, he had little time to make a mark beyond the family who loved him. But when his death from malnutrition was reported last week, it sounded a warning around the world about a rapidly deepening crisis in central and southern Gaza, triggered by the Israeli military operation in the southern town of Rafah.

Israeli PM says his country’s conditions for ending conflict have not changed after US president presented ceasefire plan

Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated that Hamas must be completely destroyed before Israel will agree to end its war in Gaza, casting doubt on Joe Biden’s announcement of a new Israeli-led ceasefire proposal.

The Israeli prime minister made a rare statement on Saturday, during the Jewish Shabbat, in which he said: “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.

Is the academic component of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement against Israel fair? We ask two scholars

The academic boycott of Israel is part of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction campaign that started in 2005. It does not target Israeli individuals, just institutions. Under the boycott, for example, Israeli scholars can participate in academic conferences. However, one is not permitted to attend events hosted by Israeli universities. The boycott is supported by an increasing number of academic communities, which is a trend that has accelerated in the wake of the brutal Israeli war against Gaza.

Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian, political scientist and former politician. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies

Flora Cassen is an associate professor of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and an associate professor of history at Washington University in St Louis. Her forthcoming book on antisemitism will be published by the New Jewish Press

It comes after Israeli PM’s comments appeared to contradict a ceasefire plan Joe Biden presented as Israeli-endorsed

• See all our Israel-Gaza war coverage here

At least 36,379 Palestinian people have been killed and 82,407 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

An estimated 95 Palestinians were killed and 350 injured in the past 24 hours alone, the ministry said.

Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.

Under the proposal, Israel will continue to insist these conditions are met before a permanent ceasefire is put in place. The notion that Israel will agree to a permanent ceasefire before these conditions are fulfilled is a non-starter.

US president outlines deal that would offer permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal for hostage release and rebuilding effort

Joe Biden has urged Hamas to accept a new peace deal he said Israel has put on the table, offering a permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in return for the release of all hostages and the long-term reconstruction of the shattered coastal strip.

“It’s time for this war to end … for the day after to begin,” Biden said, outlining the framework of a three-phase agreement, which he said had been put on the table by the Israeli government.

Latest three-month period to 24 April includes Israeli strike that killed three workers for British World Central Kitchen

UK government ministers have reviewed a further three months of the IDF’s presence in Gaza and found no reason to suspend arms exports to Israel.

The latest review of evidence examined Israel Defense Forces’ behaviour until 24 April, the Foreign Office said in a statement late on Friday.

War in Gaza, Donald Trump in New York, voting in South Africa and an eruption in Iceland: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

• Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

Tamir Pardo says alleged campaign under his successor ‘sounds like Cosa Nostra-style blackmail’

• Revealed: Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry
• Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the ICC exposed

A former head of the Mossad has described his disbelief and disappointment at allegations that his successor at the Israeli intelligence agency threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC), likening the conduct to mafia-like tactics.

Tamir Pardo, who served as director of the Mossad between 2011 and 2016, was responding to a Guardian investigation published this week about an alleged operation by the Israeli spy service to put pressure on the former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to abandon a war crimes investigation.

Peace activists confronting settlers acknowledge they are ‘a minority within a minority’

• Israel-Gaza war – live updates

At approximately 10.30am on a scorching Monday, a group of five young Israeli settlers arrived at the Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the West Bank, where dozens of aid trucks bound for Gaza were expected.

The settlers had received detailed information about the timing, location, and number of trucks that would pass through the checkpoint that morning. What they had not anticipated was that dozens of peace activists had also gathered in Tarqumiya with a specific mission: to prevent the settlers from blocking the vehicles and ensure that the aid continued its journey to Gaza.

Ex-official Stacy Gilbert says the US overruled the advice of its own experts on Israel aid report

Here are a few images from the news wires, showing some of the support for Palestinian people from across the globe.

Yemen’s Houthis launched a missile attack on the US aircraft carrier Eisenhower in the Red Sea in response to US-UK strikes on the Yemeni provinces of Sana’a, Hodeidah and Taiz, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a televised statement on Friday.

Rebel group says strikes, aimed at underground facilities and missile launchers, killed and wounded civilians

• Israel-Gaza war – live updates

A joint US and UK air raid on Houthi missile launchers in Yemen has killed 16 people and injured more than 40, according to the Houthi health ministry.

There is no independent way of confirming the death toll, but if accurate it would represent the single largest loss of life since the US and UK started their campaign to degrade the Houthi military in January.

Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham report on how Israeli intelligence agencies tried to derail an ICC war crimes investigation

This week, an investigation by the Guardian and the Israeli-based magazines +972 and Local Call revealed how Israel has run a nine-year “war” against the international criminal court (ICC).

Investigative reporters Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham tell Michael Safi about the findings. The investigation found that Israeli intelligence spied on the communications of numerous ICC officials, including the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, and his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, intercepting phone calls, messages, emails and documents.

Cairo seeks to keep lid on public anger and avoid escalation as IDF moves into Philadelphi corridor in breach of 1979 peace accord

Egypt has reacted with a wall of silence to the Israeli takeover of a buffer zone in southern Gaza, in apparent defiance of a decades-old peace agreement, as Cairo sought to keep a lid on simmering public anger while also avoiding an escalation in tensions with Israel.

Israel said on Wednesday that its forces had gained “operational” control over the Philadelphi corridor – the Israeli military’s code name for the 9-mile-long (14km) strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border. Under the terms of the 1979 peace accord between Egypt and Israel, each side is allowed to deploy only a small number of troops or border guards in a demilitarised zone that stretches along the entire Israel-Egypt border and encompasses the corridor.

Haaretz journalist was warned of ‘consequences’ if he reported on attempts by Mossad chief to intimidate ex-prosecutor

An investigative reporter with Israel’s leading leftwing newspaper, Haaretz, has said unnamed senior security officials threatened actions against him if he reported on attempts by the former head of the Mossad to intimidate the ex-prosecutor of the international criminal court.

Amid growing concern over Israel’s censorship regime, enforced by the military censor’s office and by gag orders issued by the courts, Haaretz published an article on Wednesday with blacked out words and sentences to demonstrate the scale of redactions.

Celebrity posts of graphic following IDF strike help make it among most-shared content of Israel-Gaza war

An image depicting refugee tents spelling out the phrase “all eyes on Rafah” has become one of the most-shared pieces of content relating to the Israel-Gaza war, spreading rapidly on social media this week. The graphic, which was generated using artificial intelligence, had been shared on Instagram more than 45m times by Wednesday.

The image and reactions to it have also gained traction outside Instagram. On TikTok, one creator’s video commenting on the image amassed 10m plays within 24 hours of being posted. After the image was shared on a pro-Palestinian account on X on Monday, the post gained 8m views and 188,000 retweets within days.

Ahmed Herzallah, his wife and three children have been catapulted into the unknown after fleeing their destroyed home

In the darkened backroom of an Istanbul hotel packed with refugees from Gaza, the light from Ahmed Herzallah’s phone screen illuminates a picture of his destroyed home in Gaza City. The building, with its curved black-and-white striped exterior that wrapped around a street corner, used to be a place for celebration, where the family gathered together for birthday parties, graduation ceremonies or when his sisters visited home at the beginning of each summer.

The apartment building where Ahmed lived with his wife, children, parents, two brothers and their families was often filled with members of their extended family, the sound of singing, and the smell of homemade pastries and maftoul, a stew made of chicken and couscous. But the picture that he displayed on his phone was spliced with another, showing the entire block reduced to rubble. His extended family is now scattered around Gaza or exiled across the globe.

The IDF says that it is in ‘operational’ control of the buffer zone on Egypt’s border, a move which risks complicating relations with Cairo, amid Rafah offensive

• See all our Middle East coverage

Israel is in effective control of Gaza’s entire land border after taking control of a buffer zone along the border with Egypt, Israel’s military has said, a move that risks complicating its relationship with Egypt.

In a televised briefing on Wednesday, chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces had gained “operational” control over the Philadelphi Corridor, using the Israeli military’s code name for the 14km-long corridor along the Gaza Strip’s only border with Egypt.

I was shocked to learn of the brazenness of Israel’s intimidation effort. It is to the credit of the ICC prosecutors that it has failed

I should not be surprised at the lawlessness of a government that bombs and starves Palestinian civilians in Gaza, but I was still shocked by the shamelessness of Israel’s efforts to subvert the international criminal court’s investigation of its war crimes. As exposed by the Guardian along with the Israeli media outlets +972 and Local Call, the Israeli government over the course of nine years “deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries”.

The effort was brazen. Mysterious men visited the former chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, outside her private home and handed her an envelope of cash, which the ICC believed “was likely [Israel] signalling to the prosecutor that it knew where she lived”, the Guardian has reported. They allegedly threatened her and her family, saying: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.” They mounted an apparent sting operation against her husband and a “smear campaign” against her. They also extensively monitored her and her staff’s communications with Palestinians, according to this reporting.

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs

Sheltering displaced Palestinians describe the fear and grief caused by Sunday’s airstrike that killed 35 people

It took nearly half an hour for the first ambulances and firefighters to reach the stretch of blazing tents in the Kuwait peace camp in Rafah on Sunday night. The crowding and rubble that slowed the passage of emergency vehicles fuelled the spread of flames through the temporary homes of the displaced.

Zuhair, a 36-year-old lawyer, had been sitting on a road near his own tent, watching the news with friends as the last glimmers of twilight faded from the sky, when an explosion shook the area at about 8.45pm.

International lawyers believe conduct of Israeli intelligence service should be investigated by prosecutor in The Hague

• Revealed: Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry
• Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the ICC exposed

Efforts by Israel’s intelligence agencies to undermine and influence the international criminal court (ICC) could amount to “offences against the administration of justice” and should be investigated by its chief prosecutor, legal experts have said.

Responding to revelations about Israeli surveillance and espionage operations against the ICC, multiple leading international law experts said the conduct of Israeli intelligence services could amount to criminal offences.

Only once Israel and Palestine recognize each other’s right to exist can they start thinking about what comes next

Israel reacted with predictable outrage to the move last week by three European countries to formally recognize the state of Palestine. The foreign minister accused Ireland, Norway and Spain of “being complicit in inciting genocide against Jews”, recalled Israel’s ambassadors from Dublin, Oslo and Madrid, and reprimanded their representatives in Tel Aviv.

Yet only a decade ago, Israel itself was insisting on recognition – from the Palestinians.

This is the ninth time we have been displaced. In this ‘humanitarian zone’, we can hear bombing and shooting all around us

• Mohammed Al Khatib is a senior programme manager for Medical Aid for Palestinians in Gaza

I am an aid worker, and my work involves supporting the local healthcare system and providing aid to communities around me. But like everyone in Gaza, I am also simply trying to survive. Until recently, I was sheltering and working in Rafah. I was forced to flee there from Khan Younis with my family, after the area was designated as a “humanitarian safe zone”. Yet it was not long until the Israeli military began its invasion of Rafah, and we were forced to move again after Israel’s evacuation orders.

The situation in Rafah is now utterly chaotic. People do not know where to move to, and are terrified of going somewhere else that will get bombed. Just days after the international court of justice ordered Israel to halt its military offensive there, the Israeli army fired missiles at a tent encampment in a “safe zone” of west Rafah, killing at least 45 Palestinians and injuring dozens more. This news was followed by shocking and abhorrent images showing burned and dismembered bodies, including those of children. On Tuesday, more Israeli army airstrikes reportedly killed 21 displaced Palestinians in al-Mawasi, another so-called safe zone, where Israeli authorities had apparently told Palestinians to flee.

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Benjamin Netanyahu and his associates are already doubling down against these allegations. They must be made to answer them

Israel’s international isolation, triggered by revulsion over the large-scale illegal killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, will only deepen following new, detailed and credible allegations that leading politicians and intelligence agencies conspired – with help from Donald Trump’s administration – to spy on, undermine, “improperly influence” and threaten the work and officials of the international criminal court (ICC).

Those allegedly targeted include the court’s former chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and the present incumbent, Karim Khan, possibly still the subject of covert operations. If so, this must cease immediately. Once again, the world is confronted by dismaying evidence that the state of Israel under the destructive leadership of its rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has gone rogue.

Washington says it is also monitoring Israel’s inquiry into attack on Sunday that killed at least 45 people in Gaza camp

• Israel-Gaza war – live updates

The Biden administration has said recent Israeli operations and attacks in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah do not constitute a major ground operation that crosses any US red lines, adding that it is also closely monitoring an investigation into Sunday’s deadly strike on a tent camp.

Speaking after Israeli tanks were seen near al-Awda mosque, a landmark in central Rafah, the national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters the US was not turning a “blind eye” to the plight of Palestinian civilians.

Journalists in the southern Gaza city report new strikes early Wednesday as NYT says US-made munitions seen in debris after fire in which 45 died

See all of our Israel-Gaza war coverage

Bethan McKernan is Jerusalem correspondent for the Guardian.

The US state department has said that it opposes “threats or intimidation” against members of the international criminal court (ICC) in the wake of the Guardian’s reporting on Israel’s secret “war” of surveillance, hacking and threats aimed at sabotaging The Hague’s Israel and Palestine investigation.

Singer calls for 88 million followers to ‘show your solidarity with Gaza’ following Israeli attack on Rafah

Pop singer Dua Lipa has condemned the military operations in Gaza, describing them as “Israeli genocide” in an Instagram post to her 88 million followers.

Reposting a graphic from the group Artists4Ceasefire, along with the hashtag #AllEyesOnRafah that has trended in the days following Israel’s bombing of the Palestinian city, she wrote: “Burning children alive can never be justified. The whole world is mobilising to stop the Israeli genocide. Please show your solidarity with Gaza.”

Crucial supply line for aid deliveries to starving Palestinians cut off and will take at least a week to repair, Pentagon says

US aid efforts for Gaza have suffered an embarrassing setback after the temporary pier built by the military broke apart in heavy seas, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

The $320m pier was intended to provide a crucial supply line for aid deliveries by sea to reach starving Palestinians and alleviate a humanitarian catastrophe. Now the effort is on hold for at least a week.

Three countries recognise Palestinian state and UN calls emergency meeting amid international horror at Israel’s offensive

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Tanks reached the middle of Rafah on Tuesday as Israel’s global isolation deepened, with three European countries formally recognising a Palestinian state and the UN security council calling an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Gaza.

Overnight Israeli forces again attacked the Tel al-Sultan area, where at least 45 people were killed on Sunday by an airstrike and huge fire in an area crowded with refugee tents.

Deaths of 45 people in densely populated camp have caused widespread outrage

Medical workers in Gaza ‘exhausted’ and their message is not getting through, the MSF chief has said.

When asked about the types and extent of injuries arising out of an Israeli airstrike in Rafah that left at least 45 people dead, Dr Christos Christou, the Médecins Sans Frontières International president, says his organisation’s medical facility received more than 128 patients, some of whom, after being stabilised, have nowhere to turn for further surgical treatment.

Exclusive: Investigation reveals how intelligence agencies tried to derail war crimes prosecution, with Netanyahu ‘obsessed’ with intercepts

• Revealed: Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry

When the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders, he issued a cryptic warning: “I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence the officials of this court must cease immediately.”

Karim Khan did not provide specific details of attempts to interfere in the ICC’s work, but he noted a clause in the court’s foundational treaty that made any such interference a criminal offence. If the conduct continued, he added, “my office will not hesitate to act”.

The president has weaponized the idea of Jewish safety to justify the atrocity in Gaza. I could no longer stand by

Until last week, President Biden was my boss.

Last week, I resigned from my post at the United States Department of the Interior, becoming the first Jewish politically appointed administration official to publicly resign in protest – and in mourning – of President Biden’s endorsement of genocide in Gaza, where more than 35,000 Palestinians have been murdered. This was an incredibly difficult decision, but one that was necessary – and one that felt even more urgent, as the president of the United States has persistently corrupted the idea of Jewish safety, weaponizing my community as a shield to dodge accountability for his role in this atrocity.

Lily Greenberg Call was a special assistant to the chief of staff at the US Department of the Interior

Mossad director Yossi Cohen personally involved in secret plot to pressure Fatou Bensouda to drop Palestine investigation, sources say

• Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the ICC exposed

The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, the Guardian can reveal.

Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories.

At least 45 people, including many women and children, killed in assault that prompts international outcry

An Israeli airstrike that caused a huge blaze at a tented area for displaced people in Rafah has killed 45 people, medics have said, with images of charred and dismembered children prompting an outcry from global leaders and putting ceasefire talks in jeopardy.

Bombing overnight that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said targeted senior Hamas militants in a precision strike appears to have ignited fires that spread quickly through tents and makeshift accommodation, overwhelming a nearby field hospital operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross and overstretched local hospitals.

British doctors Mohammed Tahir and Omar El-Taji thought they were mentally prepared to help treat people in Rafah. But what they and other foreign volunteers faced was beyond anything they could have imagined

Just a few days after arriving at a hospital outside Rafah in the Gaza Strip, Dr Omar El-Taji – a urologist who usually works in Manchester – was woken up at 2am to operate on an urgent case. “A man in his 30s was brought in after his entire building was bombed,” he says. “He had an open wound to his abdomen, his hand was falling off, and his ankles were completely mangled.”

The man was quickly taken into the operating room. “The shrapnel had completely sliced through him – I had never seen anything like it,” says El-Taji.

An arts centre in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, has given some of Sudan’s best known creatives a chance to work in peace – and find inspiration again

Among the paintings that Nusreldin Eldouma left behind when he fled Sudan is a watercolour portrait showing a Sufi sage, a popular figure from Sudanese folklore. Painted last year – just before Sudan was dragged into war after a power struggle between two factions of the country’s military – it shows the 17th-century sheikh Farah wad Taktook, an icon of peace, says Eldouma. Now he only has photographs to show, the canvases that are his life’s work left behind in the ruins of the city of Khartoum.

Photographs of Nusreldin Eldouma’s work displayed at 32° East (above) and his watercolour of a Sufi man, entitled Inner Peace (below; image courtesy of the artist)

US urges Israel to ‘take every precaution’ to protect civilians after ‘devastating’ airstrike that killed at least 45 people

• See our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war

Lisa O’Carroll is the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent

Germany’s foreign minister has said Germany supports the revival of a former EU security border security mission for border protection in Rafah.

We are all experiencing how terrible the situation is. This suffering cannot go on for another day. This has once again prompted the international court of justice to make urgent decisions, to initiate provisional measures to achieve a humanitarian ceasefire. For this humanitarian ceasefire is what we as Europeans, the German federal government [are calling for].

We will do everything we can to achieve this, however difficult the situation is at the moment. That also means thinking again about how humanitarian aid and the worsening situation in Gaza can come in. We now have the situation where Rafah is closed again.

Morale is dropping as talks to free hostages collapse and more believe ‘total victory’ over Hamas is impossible

In what appears to be a burnt-out building in Gaza, with Hebrew graffiti on the walls reading “Kach” and “Kahane”, references to an infamous Jewish supremacist and his outlawed political party, a masked soldier addresses Israel’s defence minister.

“Yoav Gallant, you can’t win the war. Quit. You can’t command us,” the man says in a long clip posted to social media on Saturday, in which he pledges loyalty to the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Another 100,000 reservists would mutiny, he warned, if wavering elements of the government such as Gallant scuppered Netanyahu’s goal of “complete victory” over Hamas.

Holding actors like Putin to account relies on international law. If Israel’s allies flout it, how can they convince others to respect their rules?

Since its inception, the international criminal court (ICC) has charged 50 people, 47 of whom were African. Its investigations have also been overwhelmingly focused on war crimes and crimes against humanity in African nations. What has long been understood but never stated is that the court and its processes, to put it bluntly, target a certain type of political leadership that is easier to go after. “The court is built for Africans and thugs like Putin,” is what one appalled elected senior leader reportedly told the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, when his team made a recent application for arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, its defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders.

Again, blunt, but not revelatory. At least not to the parts of the world that are more familiar with the court and its investigations. The lineup of suspects and defendants has long solidified the impression below the equator that the ICC is a court for Africans, and lately maybe Russians. How can that not be the takeaway when, in the years since the court was founded, the US – often with British support – has calamitously invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, established an extrajudicial prison for terror suspects, and created a CIA torture and detention network? African conflicts are seen as intimate, tribal and intentional in a way that those in other places are not. The underlying suggestion is that civilians in western wars are killed and illegally detained by accident, while other countries do this on purpose.

IDF says strike on tents housing displaced people hit Hamas installation after militants launch first salvo at Israel in months

At least 35 people have been killed after an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza city of Rafah hit tents housing displaced people, Palestinian medics have said, hours after Hamas launched a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv for the first time in months.

Footage from the scene of Sunday’s airstrike in Rafah showed heavy destruction. The Israeli military said its air force struck a Hamas compound and that the strike was carried out with “precise ammunition and on the basis of precise intelligence.”

As official mourning for Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi ends, here are some of the names of his potential successors

The end of official mourning for Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi has unleashed a battle for succession in which as many as 20 credible names have been proposed.

All candidates have to be cleared by the 12-strong elite body known as the Guardian Council, and the regime is torn between ensuring continuity on the one hand and on the other, allowing an open competition that stimulates turnout and gives the victor legitimacy.

Mashallah Karami sentenced to six years after pleading for his son’s life to be spared

Iranian authorities have jailed a father who campaigned unsuccessfully for clemency for his 22-year-old son after he was sentenced to death in connection with 2022 protests, his lawyer said Saturday.

Mashallah Karami was sentenced to six years in prison by a Revolutionary court in the Tehran satellite city of Karaj on charges of illegally organising gatherings and collecting donations, his lawyer, Ali Sharifzadeh Ardakani, said on X, adding that the verdict had “flaws” and would be appealed.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig, the film for which Rasoulof was given an eight-year prison sentence by the Iranian regime, receives standing ovation on the Côte d’Azur

The newly exiled Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, who fled his home country last month ahead of taking his new film to the Cannes festival, has spoken of drawing from his real life encounters with the repressive justice system in the Islamic Republic.

Rasoulof, who fled Iran after receiving an eight-year prison sentence for making the film The Seed of the Sacred Fig, also made an impassioned call for resistance directed at the film-makers and artists he left behind.

Demonstrations stretch into evening, and include calling for resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu and an early election

Al Jazeera are reporting that an Israeli military strike has targeted a family home in Gaza City’s Sabra neighbourhood, killing a woman and injuring other people. It attributes the information to “colleagues on the ground”.

The publication, citing the Palestinian news agency Wafa, reports that “numerous other neighbourhoods of Gaza City have come under heavy artillery shelling … including Sheikh Ajlin, Tal al-Hawa and Zeitoun”.

Having initially vowed to oppose any offensive, Washington and London are showing signs of having backed down

• UN’s top court orders Israel to immediately halt Rafah offensive

The US and the UK will reject the international court of justice order directing Israel to end its offensive on Rafah after slowly blurring their red lines that once stated that they could not support a military offensive in Rafah.

The line was first adapted by saying they could not support a major ground offensive without a credible plan to protect civilians, but since then the definition of what constitutes a major offensive has become more flexible.

The international court of justice has ordered Israel to halt its attack on Rafah. The US has a last chance to stop this bloodshed

The international court of justice (ICJ) on Friday ordered Israel to halt its military assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where about half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have taken refuge in recent months. The ruling is the closest that the UN’s top court has come to ordering a ceasefire, and it further exposes Israel and its closest supporters, especially the US and the UK, for their disregard of international law and institutions.

For much of the world, Israel is now a pariah state that has repeatedly ignored pressure from international bodies to end its brutal war in Gaza, stop using starvation as a weapon of war, and allow more aid into the besieged territory. On Monday, the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC), a separate tribunalalso based in The Hague, announced he was seeking arrest warrants for senior Hamas and Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 7 October attack by Hamas and the ensuing war in Gaza. The prosecutor is seeking warrants against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as three top Hamas leaders.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University

Members of Assad regime sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment on Friday after landmark trial in Paris

A French court has found three Syrian officials of the regime of Bashar al-Assad guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes, sentencing them in absentia to life imprisonment on Friday after a landmark trial in Paris.

The verdicts against Ali Mamlouk, head of the Syrian secret services and security adviser to Assad, Jamil Hassan, who was head of the Syrian air force intelligence unit until 2019 and a member of Assad’s entourage, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, intelligence director at the notorious Mezzeh detention centre, send a strong message about the long arm of international justice.

War in Gaza, the Russian offensive in Kharkiv, Rishi Sunak in the rain and Cate Blanchett in Cannes: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

ICJ president says humanitarian situation in Gaza’s southernmost city is now classified as ‘disastrous’

• ICJ ruling underlines risks for Israel as its isolation grows

The UN’s top court has ordered Israel to halt its assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah in a ruling that will ratchet up the pressure on the increasingly isolated country.

The president of the international court of justice, Nawaf Salam, said the humanitarian situation in Rafah had deteriorated further and was now classified as “disastrous”, meaning the ICJ’s previously issued provisional measures were insufficient.

Canadian university gives protesters one day to close up protest camp on downtown campus or potentially face police action

The University of Toronto (UofT) has warned pro-Palestinian activists that they have 24 hours to accept a proposal to end a three-week protest camp on the schools’ downtown campus – or risk being treated as trespassers and potentially face police action.

In a statement Meric Gertler, the university president, cited harassment, discrimination and lack of inclusion as reasons the encampment needs to be removed.