The UK will carefully review the initial findings of Israel’s investigations into the killing of three British aid workers, but wants a “wholly independent review” to follow, and welcomes the suspension of two IDF officers, Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron said.
UN Secretary General António Guterres has said he hopes Israel quickly boosts aid access to Gaza and has called for a ceasefire. “Children in Gaza today are dying for lack of food and water. This is incomprehensible, and entirely avoidable,” he declared today.
His statement came amid news that two senior officers of the Israel Defence Forces will be removed from their roles, after seven aid workers were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Monday.
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Thank you for following our coverage of the latest developments from the Israel-Gaza conflict. Here’s what has been happening:
- The foreign secretary demanded a “wholly independent review” of the IDF’s actions leading up to a strike that killed seven aid workers on Monday.
- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of “catastrophic hunger” in Gaza while condemning the IDF’s “strategy and procedure” allowing for fatal “mistakes”.
- Mr Guterres was also “deeply troubled” by reports Israel is using secret AI software to create kill lists in Gaza.
- An IDF inquiry found “a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification” led to the strike on NGO staff. It claimed to have mistakenly believed two Hamas gunmen were in a charity convoy.
- The inquiry led to the dismissal of two IDF officers and three others being formally reprimanded.
- The UN Human Rights Office said attacks on aid workers may be a “war crime” after the body adopted a resolution calling countries to “cease the sale” of weapons to Israel.
- The Prime Minister is understood to be considering a suspension of arms sales to Israel if new legal advice suggests the state has broken international law.
- This has led to a split among Tory MPs over how to best deal with the UK’s long-standing ally.
‘Major reform’ of IDF needed, says Cameron
Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron responded to an IDF report, taking responsibility for the death of three British aid workers, urging the inquiry be “followed up with a wholly independent review”.
The foreign secretary added: “Lessons must be learnt from today’s initial findings from the IDF.
“It’s clear major reform of Israel’s deconfliction mechanism is badly needed to ensure the safety of aid workers.
“The deaths of these brave heroes are a tragedy, and this must never happen again.”
Lord Cameron then went on to say the UK government was “carefully reviewing the initial findings of Israel’s investigations into the killing of WCK aid workers” and welcomed the dismissal of two IDF officers as a “first step”.
His post on X/Twitter continued: “These findings must be published in full and followed up with a wholly independent review to ensure the utmost transparency and accountability.
UN chief responds to IDF report and Gazans’ ‘catastrophic hunger’
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres responded to the IDF’s investigation into a military strike that killed seven aid workers on Monday.
“The essential problem is not who made the mistakes,” Antonio Guterres said. “It is the military strategy and procedure in place that allows for those mistakes to multiply, time and time again.
“Fixing those failures requires investigations and meaningful and measurable changes on the ground.”
He went on to speak about the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, where he said more than one million people are facing “catastrophic hunger”.
“When the gates to aid are closed, the doors to starvation are opened,” he said.
Mr Guterres added: “Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
“Children in Gaza today are dying for lack of food and water. This is incomprehensible, and entirely avoidable.”
Earlier in the day, he also renewed calls for an “unconditional release” of hostages being held by Hamas.
Ex-White House aide Bolton concerned over ‘ambiguous’ Trump comments
In an interview with i former national security adviser John Bolton showed surprise over how little former President Donald Trump has spoken about the Israel-Hamas conflict, since it began on 7 October.
On Thursday Mr Trump finally spoke out, saying Israel should get the war “over with”.
He said Israel was “absolutely losing the PR war”, in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. The presidential candidate added: “Get it over with and let’s get back to peace and stop killing people.”
Mr Bolton called statements like these “ambiguous”.
“He’s said basically Israel should ‘finish’ this… That’s ambiguous. ‘Finish it‘ could mean just stop fighting, or it could mean defeat Hamas and get it over with,” Mr Bolton told i.
“He doesn’t like Bibi Netanyahu, I don’t know that Netanyahu will be in power if Trump is elected and inaugurated. But if he’s still there, that’s not necessarily a good sign.”
Read the full story here
Ireland pulls multimillion-euro investment in six Israeli companies
The Irish National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) pulled millions of euros of investment from several Israeli companies that make up its global equity portfolio in the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF).
The divestment decision relates to shareholdings with a total value of 2.95 million euros in the following six companies: Bank Hapoalim BM; Bank Leumi-le Israel BM; Israel Discount Bank; Mizrahi Tefahot Bank Ltd; First International Bank and Rami Levi CN Stores.
Irish finance minister Michael McGrath said it was the “correct decision”, adding, “ISIF has determined that the risk profile of these investments is no longer within its investment parameters and that the commercial objectives of these investments can be achieved via other investments.
“The decision will be implemented as soon as possible over the coming weeks.”
UN chief ‘deeply troubled’ by Israel reportedly using AI to identify targets
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he was “deeply troubled” by reports Israel is using secret AI software to create kill lists in Gaza.
An investigation by Israeli outlet +972 Magazine and Local Call found a program named “Lavender” used broad parameters to identify potential targets, designating about 37,000 people for potential air strikes.
The program, subjected to minimal oversight, uses machine learning to assign people a threat score of 1-100, according to military sources. Commanders accepted an “error” rate of about 10 per cent, sources said, while the software’s decisions were typically approved in about 20 seconds.
“[I am] deeply troubled by reports that the Israeli military’s bombing campaign includes Artificial Intelligence as a tool in the identification of targets,” Mr Guterres said, “particularly in densely populated residential areas, resulting in a high level of civilian casualties.
“No part of life and death decisions which impact entire families should be delegated to the cold calculation of algorithms,” he said.
The IDF has denied it used AI to identify potential targets.
Meanwhile, the United States is looking into the claims with national security spokesperson John Kirby warning CNN the US had not yet verified the reports.
Read more about Lavender AI software here.
Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside Home Office
Pro-Palestinian protesters have started assembling outside the Home Office ahead of the Al Quds Day demonstration, which will see participants march towards Downing Street and past Parliament Square, where a pro-Israel counter-protest is to be held.
Dozens of protestors waving Palestinian flags held signs calling for “freedom for Palestine” and an end to alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.
One large banner was unfurled to encourage young people to “carry the struggle forward”, while another encouraged people to “boycott Israel”.
The annual march, organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, takes place on the last Friday of Ramadan.
The Met police had said they planned to deploy more than 500 officers in Central London to police the demonstrations, including taking action if protesters fly the flag of proscribed groups or use hate speech.
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem’s Old City in Israel, some 3,600 police officers were guarding the area around al Aqsa Mosque as as tense scenes led to minor clashes between protestors and officers.
White House to ‘reserve judgement’ on IDF report
US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Friday that the White House would “reserve judgement” on the IDF report on the recent drone strike that killed aid workers until they “have a chance to go through those findings”.
He added: “We’re going to work our way through that investigation ourselves and take a look and see what we think of their findings and their conclusions before we make any kind of judgement going forward.”
Speaking about President Joe Biden’s Thursday night call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where the US leader reportedly called for an “immediate ceasefire”, Mr Kirby said: “Nothing’s changed about the president’s desire – an immediate ceasefire in exchange for getting those hostages out and for getting all that extra aid in. That’s what negotiators are meeting this weekend to talk about in Cairo.”
IDF strike on aid workers not a mistake, Foreign Affairs Select Committee chair says
The chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and Conservative MP Alicia Kearns rejected Israeli claims the air strikes on aid workers were a mistake, arguing that the NGO’s convoy was clearly marked and their movements obviously communicated to the Israeli military beforehand.
“It is one thing to strike one car, and then you might say: ‘Well let’s look at exactly what this vehicle is’,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “But they then went on to triple tap, car by car by car.”
She added: “This is something that is happening on a daily basis, in terms of the attacks on humanitarians, and we are not seeing this outcry about Palestinian volunteers.”
Ms Kearnes went on to say she believed the Government had “no choice but to suspend arms sales” to Israel. “And it’s important the public understands this isn’t a political decision as some seem to want to present it as.
“Legal advice is advisory, so the Government can choose to reject it, but UK arms export licences require a recipient to comply with international humanitarian law and that’s why emergency handbrakes for example exist in a change of circumstances.”
IDF admits killing Israeli hostage Efrat Katz
The IDF has admitted to accidentally killing an Israeli hostage as an air force helicopter fired on Hamas militants during their attack on Israel on 7 October.
In a statement released by the army on Friday, the IDF said it appeared that “during the battles and the air strikes”, Efrat Katz, 68, was killed by “combat helicopters that took part in the fighting [on 7 October and] fired at a vehicle that had terrorists”.
“As a result of the fire, most of the terrorists manning the vehicle were killed, and most likely, Efrat Katz was killed as well,” the statement added.
The IDF said a probe found that the military’s surveillance systems could not distinguish Israeli hostages from Hamas terrorists while in moving vehicles, and therefore the shooting was “defined as shooting at a vehicle with terrorists”.
The chief of the Israel air force, Major-General Tomer Bar, said that he “did not find fault in the operation by the helicopter crew, who operated in compliance with the orders in a complex reality of war”.
Katz’s body was later recovered, and she was buried on 25 October in Kibbutz Revadim.
IDF reportedly mistook bag for weapon before attack on aid workers
The IDF operatives that killed seven aid workers in Gaza on Monday had mistaken a bag for a weapon, according to a report released by the Israeli military today.
In what the inquest calls a “misclassification”, the IDF officers saw “a rifle but at the end of the day it was a bag”.
This led to the army believing a gunman entered a charity vehicle, leading to the authorisation of a series of deadly strikes on the aid convoy.
“[The IDF] misidentified something slung over one of the passenger’s shoulders as a weapon. Israeli military officials now assess it was likely a bag,” a spokesperson told CNN.
He added: “The IDF is considering distributing thermal stickers for aid vehicles to prevent this in the future,” he added.
The spokesperson also confirmed that some of the aid workers in the vehicle first struck by a missile “survived and fled to the next vehicle in the convoy”. The “next vehicle” was the subsequently hit by a further Israeli missile.
Full findings from IDF inquiry, explained
The IDF have said that they had mistakenly believed two Hamas gunmen were in a charity convoy, and that it had not identified the vehicles as belonging to World Central Kitchen (WCK) food charity.
“Forces identified a gunman on one of the aid trucks, following which they identified an additional gunman,” the report said.
A map of the attack, provided by the IDF, claimed that an armed suspect had “boarded the convoy” at 10.28pm, but did not give any more detail about who the alleged Hamas operative was or how they had entered the convoy.
The report and an accompanying map confirms that the convoy was hit three times. The first strike was at 11.09pm, the second two minutes later, and the third at 11.13pm.
The distance between the vehicles, the damage sustained to each of them and the position in which they were stopped suggests each car was struck separately.
The report doesn’t identify the individuals which gave the green light for the air strikes or detail the chain of command the order went through.
However, it reveals that two officers in the IDF will be sacked over the event and three others will be admonished for their part in the incident.
Read our full explainer here
Heads of CIA and Israel intelligence to reportedly meet in Egypt for ceasefire talks
This weekend, CIA Director William Burns, Israel’s Mossad Director David Barnea and Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar will meet in Egypt to continue ceasefire talks, according to reports by CNN.
“A deal is not close and gaps still remain,” a diplomatic source told the American news outlet.
Ceasefire talks have been ongoing for several months, with Hamas and Israel unable to agree on a three-phased framework that would see the remaining hostages held by Hamas freed in exchange for a six-week ceasefire, the release of Palestinian prisoners and an increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Last month President Joe Biden had said he hoped for a deal to be in place by the beginning of Ramadan. The Muslim holy month, which began on 10 March, will come to a close on Tuesday.
US officials purportedly called the negotiations “complex and slow”.
IDF response is ‘cold comfort’, says charity WCK
The chief executive of World Central Kitchen (WCK) – the NGO operating in Gaza that had employed the seven aid workers killed on Monday – said the IDF’s response was “cold comfort for the victims’ families and WCK’s global family”.
Erin Gore said in a statement: “Their apologies for the outrageous killing of our colleagues represent cold comfort.”
“Israel needs to take concrete steps to assure the safety of humanitarian aid workers. Our operations remain suspended,” she added.
The charity acknowledged IDF’s interim report, which accepted responsibility for the killings and led to the dismissal of two officers, were “important steps”.
“However,” WCK said, “it is also clear from their preliminary investigation that the IDF has deployed deadly force without regard to its own protocols, chain of command and rules of engagement.
“The IDF has acknowledged that our teams followed all proper communications procedures.
“The IDF’s own video fails to show any cause to fire on our personnel convoy, which carried no weapons and posed no threat.”
The NGO called for “systemic change” within the Israeli military and the creation of “an independent commission to investigate the killings”, adding, “the IDF cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza”.
Two Israeli officers sacked after attack on aid workers
An internal inquest by the Israeli military has led to the dismissal of two officials after a report found those who approved the strike on aid workers committed a “a grave mistake”.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said Friday that “those who approved the strike were convinced that they were targeting armed Hamas operatives”, calling the attack “a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification”.
“The investigation’s findings indicate that the incident should not have occurred,” they added.
The comments appear in an interim report, published after a 72-hour investigation, which also prompted the IDF to reprimand two commanders and the senior commander responsible.
Seven aid workers, including three Britons, working for the NGO World Central Kitchen (WCK) were killed in the strike.
The IDF said of the investigation: “[We] found that the forces identified a gunman on one of the aid trucks, following which they identified an additional gunman. After the vehicles left the warehouse where the aid had been unloaded, one of the commanders mistakenly assumed that the gunmen were located inside the accompanying vehicles and that these were Hamas terrorists.
“The forces did not identify the vehicles in question as being associated with WCK. Following a misidentification by the forces, the forces targeted the three WCK vehicles based on the misclassification of the event and misidentification of the vehicles as having Hamas operatives inside them.”
Majority of UK thinks arms sales to Israel should be banned
A poll by YouGov showed 58 per cent of Britons would support the ban of UK-made weapons sales to Israel for the durtion of the conflict in Gaza, with only 18 per cent saying they would oppose the ban.
The survey, published today, revealed two in five Britons “strongly support” the arms ban while 1 in 10 would “strongly oppose” it.
Meanwhile, 8 per cent of the British public would “somewhat” oppose the ban, with 18 per cent “somewhat” supporting it.
‘The proof is in the results,’ Blinken says on Israeli aid routes
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reacted to Israel’s approval of two humanitarian routes into Gaza, theoretically allowing more humanitarian assistance to enter from Jordan.
“Really the proof is in the results,” Mr Blinken said on Friday, on a planned trip to Belgium to visit EU leaders.
“We will see those [results] unfold in the coming days, in the coming weeks,” he added.
Mr Blinken said Washington would be “closely looking” at the number of trucks making their way into the Gaza Strip and the evolution of famine risks to judge whether Israel was doing enough.
He stressed the need for Israel to make sure Gazans were protected from its strikes by “maximising every effort to protect civilians”, adding: “We just can’t have so many people caught in the crossfire killed, injured going forward.”
His comments come among increasingly stern comments from President Joe Biden, as he threatened to condition support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza on it taking concrete steps to protect aid workers and civilians in a reportedly testy phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.
The phone call marked the first time America leveraged aid to its long-standing ally on Israeli military conduct.
Attacks on humanitarian aid workers may be ‘war crime’, says UN
The UN Human Rights Office said attacking “people or objects involved in humanitarian assistance may amount to a war crime”.
Jeremy Laurence, the body’s spokesperson, made the comments on Friday, adding: “As the High Commissioner [for Human Rights] has repeatedly stated, impunity must end.”
The remarks were an apparent reference to seven aid workers – including three Britons – from the NGO World Central Kitchen being killed in an IDF attack on Monday.
Civil servants threaten to halt work on Israel arms sales
Civil servants overseeing the export of arms to Israel are threatening legal action against the Government amid concerns they may be found to be in breach of international law over the war in Gaza.
Officials within the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) have raised concerns with senior civil servants that they may be personally liable if it is deemed that Israel has broken international humanitarian law over its conduct in the Gaza Strip.
The matter has been taken up by the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), which represents civil servants, which is exploring whether it can bring a legal challenge against the Government to prevent its members carrying out work that could be deemed “illegal” in international law.
The action has been taken on behalf of officials who oversee the licensing agreements for arms exports to Israel, which have come under significant political scrutiny in recent days.
Representatives for PCS have refused to rule out taking industrial action in opposition against the arms exports, but said it would be pursuing legal options via the High Court in the first instance.
Read the full story here
UN adopts resolution calling countries to ‘cease the sale’ of weapons to Israel
The UN’s Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza Strip.
Twenty-eight countries voted in favour, 13 abstained and six voted against the resolution.
The agreed text urges countries, including the UK, to “cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel”.
The sweeping measure takes aim at an array of Israeli actions such as impeding access to water and limiting shipments of humanitarian aid into Palestinian areas.
It also calls on UN-backed independent investigators to report on shipments of weapons, munitions and “dual use” items, for both civilian and military purposes, that could be used by Israel against Palestinians.
It is not binding.