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.

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© Photograph: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu/Ashraf Amra/Anadolu/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu/Ashraf Amra/Anadolu/Getty Images

Roxanne de Bastion is honouring the memory of her brilliant Hungarian ancestor to keep his legacy alive

My family has a piano. Its keys are weathered from touch. It has tiny marks on the top right corner where my dad used to gnaw at the wood with his baby teeth.

I always knew this instrument to be special. It felt out of place in our otherwise modest family home (none of my friends had a battle-scarred baby grand in their living rooms, that’s for sure).

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© Photograph: John Owen Dawson

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© Photograph: John Owen Dawson

The comedian’s remarks on a podcast join his cheerleading of genocidal violence and jokes about suffering children in Gaza

There are few things certain in life except death, taxes and the knowledge that every single goddamn day you can look at the news and find a rich man complaining about how feminism and wokeness have ruined the world.

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© Photograph: David Swanson/Reuters

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© Photograph: David Swanson/Reuters

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.

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© Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

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© Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

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

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© Photograph: Alex Cavendish/Alamy

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© Photograph: Alex Cavendish/Alamy

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.

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© Photograph: Abir Sultan/AP

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© Photograph: Abir Sultan/AP

Thousands of Germans were held in camps in Britain after the war – and local women who ‘fraternised’ with them scandalised the nation. Could one of these illicit relationships explain the puzzle at the heart of my family tree?

In the summer of 1947, it would have taken Gwen Chandler just 15 minutes to cycle home from the textile factory in Bletchley where she worked as a machinist. Her route went east out of town, straight past the county cinema and up the hill into the Buckinghamshire village of Little Brickhill, where she lived at 9 Watling Street with her mum, Lottie, her aunt, uncle and grandparents.

It’s easy to imagine Gwen pausing in the heart of the village and glancing apprehensively to her right down the tree-lined drive to the large manor house there. Requisitioned during the second world war, it was home to 105 German prisoners. Held captive since Hitler’s defeat, these men – along with hundreds of thousands of their compatriots scattered across Britain in dozens of prison camps – were put to work in the fields, brick factories, construction sites and gasworks.

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© Photograph: akg-images

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© Photograph: akg-images

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.

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© Photograph: APAImages/REX/Shutterstock

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© Photograph: APAImages/REX/Shutterstock

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.

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© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

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

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© Photograph: Marco di Marco/AP

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© Photograph: Marco di Marco/AP

RAF says Battle of Britain flight will not take place because of safety concerns arising from death of pilot Sqn Ldr Mark Long

No second world war aircraft will participate in tribute flypasts marking the 80th anniversary of D-day next week after the crash of a Spitfire in Lincolnshire last weekend that killed its pilot.

The RAF said the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF) would continue to be grounded in its entirety because specialist crash investigators had not yet been unable to establish the cause of the accident that killed Sqn Ldr Mark Long.

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© Photograph: Charlotte Graham/REX/Shutterstock

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© Photograph: Charlotte Graham/REX/Shutterstock

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.

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© Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

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.

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© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

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© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

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.

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© Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA

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© Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA

Hesen Jabr says New York University’s Langone hospital fired her after she made remarks while accepting award for her work

A nurse at New York University’s Langone hospital was fired after mentioning what she described as a “genocide” in Gaza during an award ceremony speech.

Hesen Jabr, 34, a labor and delivery nurse who worked at NYU Langone for nearly 10 years, made the remarks while accepting an award earlier this month for providing excellent care to patients suffering perinatal loss.

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© Photograph: courtesy of Hesen Jabr

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© Photograph: courtesy of Hesen Jabr

On the eve of D-day, the wartime British PM drafted a letter that could have ended De Gaulle’s political career

It is a letter that might have changed the course of European history- had it been sent.

In early June 1944, a vast armada was gathering on the south coast of England with the task of liberating France and, despite concerns about leaks from the French camp, the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, had invited Gen Charles de Gaulle to fly to London on his personal plane from Algiers.

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© Photograph: Hulton Getty

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© Photograph: Hulton Getty

Stacy Gilbert, who quit post as senior adviser on Tuesday, says report went against consensus of experts

• Two more US officials resign over Biden administration’s position on Gaza war

The state department falsified a report earlier this month to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, overruling the advice of its own experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week.

Stacy Gilbert left her post as senior civil military adviser in the state department’s bureau of population, refugees and migration, on Tuesday. She had been one of the department’s subject matter experts who drafted the report mandated under national security memorandum 20 (NSM-20) and published on 10 May.

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© Photograph: U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration

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© Photograph: U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration

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.

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© Photograph: Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images

This is no ‘tragic mishap’ | Votes and phones for teenagers | D-day and Dunkirk’s domination | On the hunt for Private Eye | One-word slogans

I was transfixed by the look in the eyes of the boy in the centre of the photo of devastation in Gaza (‘Bodies everywhere’: the horrors of Israel’s strike on a Rafah camp, 29 May). This is no “tragic mishap”, but an act of war. Instead of platitudes, the UK should immediately cut off the supply of arms to this out-of-control regime in Israel.
Mike Godridge
Brampton, Cumbria

• I have met numerous under-16s with more common sense than many MPs. If Labour legislates to allow a person to vote the day after their 16th birthday, how can parliament legislate to prevent that same person owning a smartphone the day before their 16th birthday (MPs urge under-16s UK smartphone ban and statutory ban in schools, 25 May).
Kim Thonger
Collyweston, Northamptonshire

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© Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

Festival bows to pressure from authors and activists over investment firm’s links to Israel and fossil fuel companies

The Edinburgh international book festival (EIBF) has announced the end of its 20-year partnership with Baillie Gifford. Last week the Hay literary festival also dropped its sponsorship from the investment management firm after a series of last-minute drop-outs.

The singer Charlotte Church, the comedian Nish Kumar and the politician Dawn Butler were among those due to appear at Hay who decided to boycott the festival because of Baillie Gifford’s links to Israel and fossil fuel companies. By the end of the festival’s second day, Hay’s organisers announced the sponsorship has been “suspended” for 2024.

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© Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images

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.

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© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

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© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

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.

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© Photograph: Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images

The military says it has had gained ‘operational’ control over the 14km-long Philadelpi corridor

• See all our Israel-Gaza coverage

Mostafa Rachwani is a reporter for Guardian Australia.

Hundreds of public servants from across Australia and across state and federal agencies have signed an open letter calling for the federal government to “immediately cease all military exports to Israel”.

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© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

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© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

The officials accuse the administration of not telling the truth about Israel’s obstruction of aid to Palestinians in Gaza

Two more US officials have resigned over the Gaza war, saying that the Biden administration is not telling the truth about Israeli obstruction of humanitarian assistance to more than two million Palestinians trapped and starving in the tiny coastal strip.

Alexander Smith, a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said he was given a choice between resignation and dismissal after preparing a presentation on maternal and child mortality among Palestinians, which was cancelled at the last minute by USAID leadership last week.

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© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Politicians parroted untrue rumors that Hamas had beheaded Israeli babies. When the children are Palestinian, they shrug

Earlier this week, I sat down to write a piece about a campus safety officer at a public college in New York who told pro-Palestinian protesters that he supported genocide. “Yes I do, I support genocide,” the officer said, after a protester accused him of this at a graduation event at the College of Staten Island, part of the public City University of New York (Cuny) system, last Thursday. “I support killing all you guys, how about that?”

It’s possible that you didn’t hear about this incident: while it was covered by a few outlets, including the Associated Press, it didn’t get a huge amount of press. It certainly wasn’t splashed all over the front page of the New York Post the way it would have been if that guard had made the same comment about Israelis. The New York Times, which has written a lot about safety on college campuses – and published a piece on anti-Israel speeches at Cuny just a couple of days before this incident – didn’t seem to deem it newsworthy. And the White House didn’t chime in with a horrified statement about anti-Palestinian bias on campuses. After all, this wasn’t a big deal, right? It was just a security guard saying he supports genocide. Which, it should be clear now, is essentially the same position as the US government.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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© Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

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© Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

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.

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© Photograph: Bashar Taleb/AFP/Getty

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© Photograph: Bashar Taleb/AFP/Getty

Reuniting the stars of Black Narcissus, this movie about a back-room boffin attached to a bomb disposal unit finds the film-makers pushing gloriously against genre conventions

Kathleen Byron and David Farrar were unforgettable presences in the 1947 Powell and Pressburger classic Black Narcissus, playing a hysterical nun and the taciturn colonial agent with whom she is peevishly infatuated. The film-makers reunited these remarkable performers two years later for this intimate, intense wartime drama thriller; brilliant on the emotional misery, low-level dread and petty office politics of wartime government. It takes place mostly in London’s noirish darkness and rain, except for the sensational final sequence in the bright sunlight of Chesil beach in Dorset.

Adapted from an autobiographical novel by military scientist Nigel Balchin, The Small Back Room is a work that shows the film-makers pushing – brilliantly – at the conventions and constraints of a regular wartime period drama. Any number of British directors might have wanted to take on this story. But the Powell and Pressburger authorial flourishes are irresistible.

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© Photograph: Studiocanal, photo by Anthony Hopking

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© Photograph: Studiocanal, photo by Anthony Hopking

The Stasi files offer an astonishingly granular picture of life in a dictatorship—how ordinary people act under suspicious eyes. Nearly three hundred thousand East Germans were working for the Stasi by the time the Wall fell, in 1989, including some two hundred thousand inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, or unofficial collaborators, like Genin. In a population of sixteen million, that was one spy for every fifty to sixty people. In the years since the files were made public, their revelations have derailed political campaigns, tarnished artistic legacies, and exonerated countless citizens who were wrongly accused or imprisoned. Yet some of the files that the Stasi most wanted to hide were never released. In the weeks before the Wall fell, agents destroyed as many documents as they could. Many were pulped, shredded, or burned, and lost forever. But between forty and fifty-five million pages were just torn up, and later stuffed in paper sacks. from Piecing Together the Secrets of the Stasi [The New Yorker; ungated]

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.

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© Photograph: Ahmed Herzallah

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© Photograph: Ahmed Herzallah

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.

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© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

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© Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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.

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© Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty

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© Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty

Cryptanalyst played by Keira Knightley on screen, and who was briefly engaged to Alan Turing, commemorated in London

Joan Clarke, the second world war codebreaker who was played by Keira Knightley in the 2014 film The Imitation Game, has been honoured with a commemorative blue plaque ahead of the 80th anniversary of D-day.

The plaque was unveiled on Wednesday at Clarke’s childhood home in south London, English Heritage said.

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© Photograph: Snap Stills/REX

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© Photograph: Snap Stills/REX

Confronting Another Axis? History, Humility, and Wishful Thinking . A long historical essay by Philip Zelikow, describing the perspectives of past and present US adversaries. "Zelikow warns that the United States faces an exceptionally volatile time in global politics and that the period of maximum danger might be in the next one to three years. Adversaries can miscalculate and recalculate, and it can be difficult to fully understand internal divisions within an adversary's government, how rival states draw their own lessons from different interpretations of history, and how they might quickly react to a new event that appears to shift power dynamics." Via Noah Smith.

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.

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© Photograph: Natalia Campos/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Natalia Campos/Getty Images

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.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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© Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

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.

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© Photograph: Gil Cohen-Magen/AP

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© Photograph: Gil Cohen-Magen/AP

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.

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© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

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.

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© Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

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© Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

Manfred Goldberg, 94, urges authorities to preserve fragments of thousands of shoes left to rot at Stutthof concentration camp site

One of the last remaining survivors of the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp has appealed to authorities to salvage fragments of tens of thousands of shoes belonging to murdered Holocaust victims that were recently discovered in a forest at the site.

Manfred Goldberg, who was imprisoned as a teenager at Stutthof, 24 miles (38km) east of Gdańsk, said he was “shocked and dismayed” to hear of the existence of the remnants, eight decades after the shoes’ owners were forced to remove them before being gassed and cremated.

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© Photograph: Manfred Goldberg MBE/AJR

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© Photograph: Manfred Goldberg MBE/AJR

We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2021: During the second world war, Chinese merchant seamen helped keep Britain fed, fuelled and safe – and many gave their lives doing so. But from late 1945, hundreds of them who had settled in Liverpool suddenly disappeared. Now their children are piecing together the truth. By Dan Hancox

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© Illustration: Valerie Chiang

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© Illustration: Valerie Chiang

One officer has serious facial injury from thrown bottle, says Scotland Yard, after about 500 people refused to leave Whitehall

Three police officers were injured and 40 people arrested during a protest in Westminster on Tuesday night, Scotland Yard said.

One officer was left with a serious facial injury after she was hit by a bottle thrown from the crowd, while two officers had minor injuries.

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© Photograph: Benjamin Cremel/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Benjamin Cremel/AFP/Getty Images

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.

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© Photograph: US Army Central/Reuters

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© Photograph: US Army Central/Reuters

Joe Biden should back a UN security council resolution to end the fighting in Gaza rather than shielding Israel from criticism

The Israeli strike that killed at least 45 displaced Palestinians, many of them women and children, at a tent camp in Rafah this weekend clearly crossed Joe Biden’s “red line” over the need to protect civilians in the Gaza conflict. France’s Emmanuel Macron did not doubt what should happen next. “These operations must stop,” he posted on X. “There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians. I call for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire.”

Those in Israel who believe that they still need to make an appearance of deference towards US sentiments pleaded that the whole episode was a “mishap” rather than a deliberate political insult. Mr Biden is inclined to give Israel’s forces the benefit of the doubt, and give himself wriggle room to say his line hadn’t been crossed. Despite the international outcry over Sunday’s deadly blast, Israel stepped up its military offensive on Tuesday, sending tanks into Rafah and leaving a score more civilians dead when it apparently struck a tented area.

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© Photograph: Diane Krauthamer/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

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© Photograph: Diane Krauthamer/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

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.

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© Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi/AP

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© Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi/AP

The use of intense force in Gaza has failed to achieve Netanyahu’s objectives. The mood in Israel is starting to shift

• Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University

The killing of at least 45 Palestinians in a humanitarian zone near Rafah has caused anger that reaches far beyond the Middle East. And yet Israel’s offensive is expected to continue, with several Israeli tanks spotted in the centre of Rafah on Tuesday, witnesses told Reuters news agency.

It comes after the international criminal court sought arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant, along with three senior Hamas leaders – all for alleged war crimes.

Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University

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© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

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.

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© Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

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© Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

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”.

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© Composite: Guardian Design / Getty

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© Composite: Guardian Design / Getty

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

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© Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

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© Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters