Casualties
- 39,363 + killed* and at least 90,923 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 28,903 Palestinians have been fully identified, and around 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.*
- 592+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank including eastern Jerusalem. These include 138 children.**
- Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
- 690 Israeli soldiers have been recognized as killed, and 4096 as wounded by the Israeli army since October 7.***
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on July 29, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health on July 27, this is the latest figure.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000 including at least 8,000 permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7, as of June 18.
Key Developments
- Israel killed 218 Palestinians and wounded 666 across Gaza since Monday, July 25, raising the death toll since October 7 to 39,363 and the number of wounded to 90,923, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
- Israel kills 30 Palestinians, wounds at least 100, including women and children in bombing of school sheltering civilians in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
- Israel detonates more residential blocks in eastern Khan Younis as it continues offensive for eighth day in a row.
- Naser hospital in Khan Younis warns of spread of skin disease among children in Gaza.
- UNRWA says 200 of its staff in Gaza have been killed, majority with their families, while two thirds of UNRWA premises have been hit by Israeli strikes, some twice.
- UNRWA says eight of its schools were targeted by Israeli strikes while sheltering civilians in the past two weeks alone.
- UNRWA says over 560 displaced Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed while sheltering under the UN flag.
- Israel accuses Hezbollah of killing 12 people after a projectile falls and explodes in a playground in the Syrian town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Hezbollah denies responsibility for the incident, claims projectile was malfunctioning Israeli anti-missile round.
- Israel threatens Hezbollah and Lebanon with harsh response, Israeli army announces new drills.
- Reports of U.S. pressure on Israel to avoid a regional war.
Israel and Lebanon close to war after projectile in Golan Heights kills 12
Tensions between Israel and Lebanon reached a breaking point once again on Sunday, after 12 people were killed by the explosion of a projectile that fell on a playground in the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Israel accused Hezbollah of having launched the projectile, which it claimed to be an Iranian-made “heavy” rocket. Hezbollah denied responsibility and said that the explosion was the result of a malfunction of an Israeli anti-missile round.
Late on Sunday, the Israeli cabinet concluded an emergency meeting in which, according to Israeli reports, ministers voted to delegate Netanyahu and his war minister Yoav Gallant to decide on retaliatory action against Hezbollah. Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the government was seeking harsh action that did not lead to all-out war with the Lebanese group. The Israeli army radio described Israel’s goal as “a more determined action but not a war.”
According to the Israeli daily Israel Hayom, the Israeli army began new combat drills in preparation for a potential operation, which included practices of withdrawing wounded soldiers from the Lebanese battlefield.
Israel’s war minister, Yoav Gallant, said that Hezbollah “will pay the price,” while Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz said that Israel “needs a big response.” Meanwhile, the UN warned that a regional war in the Middle East would lead to “a catastrophe,” calling on all actors to show self-restraint.
On Sunday, the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement that “any adventure by the Zionist regime” would lead to “an expansion of the war to the region.”
For his part, the deputy speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Elias Abu Saab, called for an independent investigation into the Majdal Shams incident on Sunday, saying that international mediators are in constant communication with Lebanon and working to avoid a wider escalation. Abu Saab remarked that Israel is threatening Lebanon in order to distract from what is happening in Lebanon.
Abu Saab added that Lebanon is united and will be more united in the event of a wider Israeli attack and that if Israel targets Beirut or kills Lebanese civilians, then Lebanon would not consider the Israeli attack “limited.”
On Monday, Axios reported that a senior advisor to Biden warned Gallant that the U.S. would support Israel in a limited response, but that it should not risk an all-out war.
Axios also reported that U.S. and Israeli officials fear that a major escalation between Israel and Lebanon might lead to a freeze in Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks.
Netanyahu putting new conditions to talks, say officials
A new round of talks over a Gaza ceasefire concluded in Rome on Sunday, where an Israeli delegation headed by the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, met with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, with no breakthrough reported.
Israeli media reported that talks centered around the possible Israeli withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor, the strip of land bordering Gaza and Egypt. The Israeli negotiators reportedly held that Israel could withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor if surveillance equipment and underground obstacles were installed in order to prevent the smuggling of weapons to Gaza.
On Sunday, The New York Times, quoting from officials close to the talks, reported that in the last meeting in Rome, Israel rejected the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza. Israel had already accepted the return of displaced Palestinians in previous rounds of talks.
According to the unnamed officials, Netanyahu is the main reason behind Israel’s hardened position at the Rome talks, and Israeli security officials are pressuring him to show more flexibility to conclude a deal.
A bit of breaking news that captures how much the Israeli far right has taken over: some military reservists suspected of abusing Palestinian prisoners were being held for questioning at the Sde Teiman military base. In response, flag waving civilians broke into the base in support of the reservists.
Israeli military police detained at least nine military reservists on Monday at an Israeli army base where thousands of Palestinians from Gaza have been held, taking them in for questioning as part of an investigation into “suspected substantial abuse of a detainee” there, the military said….The reservists’ detentions soon sparked a crisis at the base, called Sde Teiman… a crowd of flag-waving civilian protesters broke into the base through its metal gates in support of the detained reservists...The confrontation underscored how emboldened Israel’s far right has become. Among the protesters at Sde Teiman was at least one far-right lawmaker, Zvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionist Party, who could be seen in one video squeezing into the base through a gate as a uniformed man tried to push him back. And Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionist Party, said soldiers must not be arrested like “criminals.”….Soldiers at the base “were acting outside any law — first in their treatment of detainees, and now toward military law enforcement agents,” the Public Committee Against Torture, an Israeli human rights group, said in a statement. Far-right leaders’ support for the detained reservists, they added, is “emblematic of the root causes that enable such abuse to happen in the first place.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/world/middleeast/prisoner-abuse-israeli-troops-questioned.html
More BBC ‘News’ Channelling Israeli Propaganda
July 30, 2024
Forget the genocide of Palestinians, writes Jonathan Cook. Only when Israel exploits the deaths of Syrians living under its military occupation are there “consequences”to worry about.
By Jonathan Cook
“BBC coverage of the attack on a football field in the Golan Heights on Saturday has been intentionally misleading.The BBC’s evening news entirely ignored the fact that those killed by the blast are a dozen Syrians, not Israeli citizens, and that for decades the surviving Syrian population in the Golan, most of them Druze, has been forced to live unwillingly under an Israeli military occupation.
I suppose mention of this context might complicate the story Israel and the BBC wish to tell — and risk reminding viewers that Israel is a belligerent state occupying not just Palestinian territory but Syrian territory too (not to mention nearby Lebanese territory).
It might suggest to audiences that these various permanent Israeli occupations have been contributing not only to large-scale human rights abuses but to regional tensions as well. That Israel’s acts of aggression against its neighbours might be the cause of “conflict,” rather than, as Israel and the BBC would have us believe, some kind of unusual, pre-emptive form of self-defence.
The BBC, of course, chose to uncritically air comments from a military spokesman for Israel, who blamed Hezbollah for the blast in the Golan.
Daniel Hagari tried to milk the incident for maximum propaganda value, arguing: “This attack shows the true face of Hizbullah, a terrorist organisation that targets and murders children playing soccer.”
Except, as the BBC failed to mention in its report, Israel infamously targeted and murdered four young children from the Bakr family playing football on a beach in Gaza in 2014.
Much more recently, video footage showed Israel striking yet more children playing football at a school in Gaza that was serving as a shelter for families whose homes were destroyed by earlier Israeli bombs.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/30/more-bbc-news-channelling-israeli-propaganda/
See the caption: “12 Syrian residents of the Golan Heights were killed by a strike”.
Alternative caption : 12 Druze children were massacred by Hizbullah.