Israel-Gaza latest: Netanyahu issues defiant 'fingernails' comments after Biden warning; who are Israel's main weapons suppliers?

Israeli tanks have encircled the entire eastern side of Rafah after troops captured the main road dividing the eastern and western parts of the city. 

By taking control of the Salahuddin road, Israel has completed the encirclement of the "red zone" where they have ordered residents to evacuate - bringing a potential ground invasion one step closer.

The Israeli miltiary already sealed off eastern Rafah from the south, and also ncontrol the only crossing between the enclave and Egypt.

It claims its forces in eastern Rafah located several tunnels and killed several Hamas troops "during close-quarters combat and with an aerial strike".

The prospect of an assault on Rafah this week has caused a divide between Israel and its closest ally the US, which has blocked shipments of weapons to Israel for the first time since the war began.

A paramedic and an employee of a telecommunications company have been killed in a drone strike on a southern Lebanese village, state-run media has reported.

It comes amid an increase in military activities along the frontier in recent days.

State-run National News said the paramedic and the technician died in the drone strike on Teir Harafa, about two miles from the border with Israel.

The Islamic Risala Scout Association paramedic group said one of its members, Ghaleb Hussein al Haj, was killed while performing his duties in south Lebanon.

The reported strike came a day after a similar attack on a car in a southern Lebanese village killed four members of the militant Hezbollah group.

Hezbollah started attacking Israeli army posts along the Lebanon-Israel border a day after the Israel-Hamas war broke out on 7 October.

Since then, more than 350 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 275 Hezbollah members and more than 70 civilians and non-combatants. In Israel, 15 soldiers and 10 civilians have died.

Foreign officials have been visiting Lebanon over the past month in attempts to bring calm to the border, but Hezbollah has repeatedly said it will not stop fighting until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

A selection of the images emerging from Rafah offers a glimpse into the plight of Palestinians in the Gazan city.

Photographs show a child and women weeping as they mourned the loss of his father, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

A separate image shows a child arriving in hospital in Rafah after being wounded in the bombardment of the city.

Despite Benjamin Netanyahu's defiant rhetoric since Joe Biden threatened the US would pause arms supplies to Israel (see 6.51 post), the planned full-scale offensive on Rafah that prompted the move does appear to have been placed on hold for now.

However, Axios is now reporting that Israel's war cabinet has approved an "expansion of the area of ​​operation" by the IDF in Rafah.

The news outlet cited two sources as saying this was a "measured expansion" that did not cross the US president's red line - although a third source said the approved action includes actions that "could be interpreted by the US as crossing Biden's red line".

All three of the sources suggested the cabinet also instructed the Israeli negotiating team to continue talks in an effort to reach a deal for the release of the Israeli hostages' release - while reporting that far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich voted against the decision.

As detailed here earlier (see 12.16 post), the decision by Eurovision organisers to allow the participation of Israel despite calls for the nation to be removed has prompted a series of protests.

The Israeli contestant was booed by some in the audience during rehearsals in Malmo on Wednesday - while a large protest yesterday is due to be followed by another demonstration in the Swedish city before the final on Saturday night.

It has now been reported that the Belgian broadcaster interrupted its coverage of the Eurovision semi-finals last night to display a message strongly criticising Israel.

"We condemn the violations of human rights by the state of Israel. Moreover, Israel is destroying press freedom," said the broadcast message.

"This is why we are interrupting the broadcast for a moment. Ceasefire now. Stop genocide."

Officials at the al Aqsa hospital, in central Gaza, say they will run out of fuel in the next 48 hours.

Israel has closed two key border crossings, limiting aid entering the enclave.

And the Government Media Office in Gaza warned that a refusal to open the crossings and allow fuel to be delivered to the health facility would result in the deaths of patients and children, especially the sick and wounded sleeping in intensive care and paediatric departments.

"We call on all UN organisations and international institutions to urgently supply fuel to the al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital before it is too late, and we call for immediate and urgent intervention to supply fuel to all hospitals and rehabilitate and restore them before a humanitarian disaster kills thousands of people," it said in a statement.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said around 110,000 people had now fled Rafah looking for safety as the Israeli forces' bombardment intensifies.

"But nowhere is safe in the Gaza Strip and living conditions are atrocious. The only hope is an immediate ceasefire," the agency said.

As detailed here earlier, UN aid agencies have warned with increasing urgency that the humanitarian operation across the enclave has been crippled.

UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) senior emergency coordinator in the Gaza Strip, Hamish Young, said: "Impossibly, again, it will worsen if humanitarian operations are not revived in the next 48 hours."

Most of those displaced are said to be seeking safety in Khan Younis and Deir al Balah - but these areas lack the basic services required to support civilians who need food, shelter and healthcare, aid teams say.

'As he was telling me where he was going, he started sobbing. Then his children starting crying and then started asking me what to do'

Mr Young described desperate scenes as families were uprooted once again, with "many hundreds of trucks, buses, cars and donkey carts loaded with people and possessions" continuing to stream out of the southern city - with roads to the coastal zone of al Mawasi, where Gazans have been instructed to move to, "jammed".

"People I speak with tell me they are exhausted, terrified and know life in al Mawasi will, again, impossibly, be harder," Mr Young said.

"Families lack proper sanitation facilities, drinking water and shelter. People are making improvised toilets by digging holes in the ground around groups of tents. Open defecation is on the rise.

"One of the fathers told me he had nothing other than bad options to choose from.

"And as he was telling me where he was going, he started sobbing. Then his children starting crying and then started asking me what to do. It's just a tragic situation and there's just nowhere safe in Gaza for children."

A total of 97% of campus demonstrations at US universities over the war in Gaza since mid-April have been peaceful, research has found.

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED) said data from analysis of 553 demonstrations across the US between 18 April and 3 May showed fewer than 20 resulted in any serious interpersonal violence or property damage

The independent non-profit organisation, which tracks political violence and political protests globally, said that there had been at least 70 instances of forceful police intervention against the protests over the same period.

These included the arrest of demonstrators and the use of chemical agents, batons and other kinds of physical force to disperse protesters.

ACLED said its data indicated nearly half of the campus protests it categorised as violent involved protesters fighting with law enforcement during a police intervention.

Students involved in the protests have issued a range of demands, including calls for their institutions to publicly support a ceasefire in Gaza, divest from Israeli companies and companies that supply Israel's military, and end ties with Israeli universities. 

Police have descended on dozens of campuses to sweep up students in mass arrests.

Police in New York arrested nearly 300 people at Columbia University and City College of New York on 30 April, setting off flash bangs to stun and disorient demonstrators. Two nights later, in Los Angeles, police detained more than 200 people at UCLA.

At schools in Connecticut, Georgia, Texas, New Hampshire and elsewhere, dozens of protesters have been arrested.

Experts on policing caution against drawing conclusions about each police intervention, telling Reuters it was too soon to determine where police may have acted precipitously.

But an early examination of the approach to campus protests suggests police, in many cases, have yet to shed outdated ways of handling large demonstrations, they said.

Despite calls to exclude Israel from this year's Eurovision Song Contest due to the country's deadly war in Gaza, organisers of the event opted to allow the country's participation.

As a result, Eden Golan has become a focus for protests, with demonstrators saying they stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The 20-year-old Israeli singer was surrounded by security as she travelled between the hotel and the contest venue in the Swedish city of Malmo on Thursday.

Footage on social media showed her being loudly booed while she performed during rehearsals earlier this week, amid shouts of "free Palestine". There was also some applause.

Police estimated more than 10,000 people marched through the southern Swedish city yesterday to chants of "Free Palestine" and "Israel is a terror state."

Banners accused Eurovision of being complicit in genocide and called for a boycott of the competition.

Another protest march is planned for Saturday, hours before Golan competes in the Eurovision final against acts from 25 other countries.

Bookmakers say she is likely to finish in the top half of the final competition, decided by a mix of public votes and national music-industry juries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Golan for performing despite "contending with an ugly wave of antisemitism."

"So be blessed, and know that when they boo you, we are cheering you on," he said.

Dwindling food and fuel stocks could force aid operations to grind to a halt within days in Gaza because vital crossings remain shut, forcing hospitals to close down and leading to more malnutrition, United Nations aid agencies have warned today.

Humanitarian workers have sounded the alarm this week after Israel closed the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings for aid and people as part of its military operation in Rafah, where more than one million people have been sheltering after fleeing bombardment in other parts of Gaza.

"For five days, no fuel and virtually no humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip, and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel," said the UNICEF senior emergency coordinator in the Gaza Strip, Hamish Young.

"This is already a huge issue for the population and for all humanitarian actors, but in a matter of days, if not corrected, the lack of fuel could grind humanitarian operations to a halt."