A tiny contingent of Duke University graduates opposed pro-Israel comedian Jerry Seinfeld speaking at their commencement in North Carolina on May 12, with about 30 of the 7,000 students leaving their seats and chanting “free Palestine” amid a mix of boos and cheers.

Some waved the red, green, black and white Palestinian flag. Mr. Seinfeld, whose namesake sitcom was one of the most popular in U.S. television history, was there to receive an honorary doctorate from the university.

The stand-up comic turned actor, who stars in the new Netflix movie “Unfrosted,” has publicly supported Israel since it invaded Gaza to dismantle Hamas after the organization attacked the country and killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7. The ensuing war has killed nearly 35,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The small student protest on May 12 at Duke’s graduation in Durham, North Carolina, was emblematic of campus events across the U.S. after weeks of student protests resulted in nearly 2,900 arrests at 57 colleges and universities.

Students at campuses across the U.S. responded this spring by setting up encampments and calling for their schools to cut ties with Israel and businesses that support it. Students and others on campuses whom law enforcement authorities have identified as outside agitators have taken part in the protests from Columbia University in New York City to UCLA.

Police escorted graduates’ families past a few dozen pro-Palestinian protesters who tried to block access to May 12 evening’s commencement for Southern California’s Pomona College.

After demonstrators set up an encampment last week on the campus’ ceremony stage, the small liberal arts school moved the event 48 kilometers from Claremont to the Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. Tickets were required to attend the event, which the school said would include additional security measures.

In April, police wearing riot gear arrested 19 protesters who had occupied the president’s office at the college with about 1,700 undergraduates.

Demonstrator Anwar Mohmed, a 21-year-old Pomona senior, said the school has repeatedly ignored calls to consider divesting its endowment funds from corporations tied to Israel in the war in Gaza. , “We’ve been time and time again ignored by the institution,” Mr. Mohmed said outside the Shrine on May 12. “So today we have to say, it’s not business as usual.”

At the University of California, Berkeley, on May 11, a small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators waved flags and chanted during commencement and were escorted to the back of the stadium, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. There were no major counterprotests, but some attendees voiced frustration.

“I feel like they’re ruining it for those of us who paid for tickets and came to show our pride for our graduates,” said Annie Ramos, whose daughter is a student. “There’s a time and a place, and this is not it.”

This weekend’s commencement events remained largely peaceful.

At Emerson College in Boston, some students took off their graduation robes and left them on stage. Others emblazoned “free Palestine” on their mortar boards. One woman, staring at a camera broadcasting a livestream to the public, unzipped her robe to show a kaffiyeh, the black and white checkered scarf commonly worn by Palestinians, and flashed a watermelon painted on her hand. Both are symbols of solidarity with those living in the occupied territories.

Others displayed messages for a camera situated on stage, but the livestream quickly shifted to a different view, preventing them from being seen for long. Chants during some of the speeches were difficult to decipher.

Protests at Columbia University, where student uprisings inspired others at campuses across the country, led the school to cancel its main graduation ceremony in favor of smaller gatherings.

The University of Southern California told its valedictorian, who publicly backed Palestinians, that she could not deliver her keynote speech at its graduation ceremony because of security concerns. It later canceled its main graduation ceremony.

At DePaul University in Chicago, graduation is more than a month away. But as the academic year closes, school leaders said they had reached an “impasse” with the school’s pro-Palestinian protesters, leaving the future of their encampment on the Chicago campus unclear.

The student-led DePaul Divestment Coalition, which is calling on the university to divest from economic interests tied to Israel, set up the encampment nearly two weeks ago. The group alleged university officials walked away from talks and tried to force students into signing an agreement, according to a student statement late on May 11.

Smoke billows after an explosion in northern Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, as seen from Israel, May 12, 2024. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
| Photo Credit: Amir Cohen

Israeli air strikes pound northern, central and southern parts of the enclave during the night and into Sunday morning; UN chief calls for an immediate ceasefire; Biden says truce can be achieved ‘tomorrow’ if Hamas agrees to release hostages

Israel struck Gaza on Sunday and troops were battling militants in several areas of the Hamas-run territory, where the Health Ministry said the death toll in the war had exceeded 35,000 people.

More than seven months into the Israel-Hamas war, UN chief Antonio Guterres urged “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages and an immediate surge in humanitarian aid” into the besieged Gaza Strip.

“But a ceasefire will only be the start,” Mr. Guterres told a donor conference in Kuwait. “It will be a long road back from the devastation and trauma of this war.”

As Egyptian, Qatari and U.S. mediation efforts towards a truce appeared to stall, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Saturday a ceasefire could be achieved “tomorrow” if Hamas released the hostages held in Gaza since the October 7 attack that sparked the conflict.

Israeli air strikes pounded parts of northern, central and southern Gaza during the night and into Sunday morning.

Latest figures

The Health Ministry in the territory said that at least 63 people had been killed over the last 24 hours, bringing the overall death toll from Israel’s bombardment and offensive in Gaza to at least 35,034 people, mostly women and children.

Months after Israel said it had dismantled Hamas’s command structure in northern Gaza, fighting has resumed in recent days in Jabalia refugee camp and Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood.

‘Hamas rebuilding’

Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said late on Saturday that “in recent weeks we have identified attempts by Hamas to rebuild its military capabilities in Jabalia, and we are acting to destroy these attempts”.

He also said there was an operation in Zeitun.

On Saturday, the Israeli military expanded an evacuation order for eastern Rafah and said 300,000 Palestinians had left the area.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. File
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday defended a decision to pause a delivery to Israel of 3,500 bombs over concerns they could be used in the Gazan city of Rafah, saying Israel lacked a “credible plan” to protect some 1.4 million civilians sheltering there.

Speaking to ABC News’ This Week, Mr. Blinken said that U.S. President Joe Biden remains determined to help Israel defend itself and that the shipment of 3,500 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs was the only U.S. weapons package being withheld.

That could change, he said, if Israel launches a full-scale attack on Rafah.

Mr. Biden has made clear to Israel that if it “launches this major military operation to Rafah, then there are certain systems that we are not going to be supporting and supplying,” Mr. Blinken said.

“We have real concerns about the way they are used,” he said. Israel needs to “have a clear, credible plan to protect civilians, which we have not seen.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday said Israel lacked a “credible plan” to protect some 1.4 million Palestinian civilians in Rafah and warned an Israeli attack could create an insurgency by failing to kill all Hamas fighters in the southern Gazan city.

“Israel is on a trajectory potentially to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas fighters left or if it leaves a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” Blinken said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Hamas fighters, he said, already are returning to areas of northern Gaza that Israel claimed to have cleared.

Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah has helped fuel the deepest tensions in relations between Israel and its main ally in generations.

NBC and CBS News aired interviews with Blinken dominated by President Joe Biden’s decision to pause a shipment to Israel of bombs over fears of massive civilian casualties in Rafah and a State Department report that Israel’s use of US-supplied arms may have broken international law.

The report, which was unrelated to the bomb shipment, found no specific violations justifying withholding US military aid, saying the chaos of war prevented verification of individual alleged breaches.

Hamas’ use of civilian infrastructure and tunnels “makes it very difficult to determine, particularly in the midst of war,” what happened in specific instances, Blinken said, defending the report criticized by some lawmakers of Biden’s Democratic Party and human rights groups.

Defending the pause on the shipment of 3,500 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs, Blinken said Israel lacked a “credible plan” to protect some 1.4 million civilians sheltering in Rafah.

He told CBS that the shipment was the only US weapons package being withheld.

But that could change, he said, if Israel launches a full-scale attack on Rafah, which Israel says it plans to invade to root out entrenched Hamas fighters.

If Israel “launches this major military operation to Rafah, then there are certain systems that we’re not going to be supporting and supplying for that operation,” said Blinken.

Israel needs to “have a clear, credible plan to protect civilians, which we haven’t seen,” he said.

Rafah is hosting some 1.4 million Palestinians, most of them displaced from elsewhere in Gaza by fighting and Israeli bombardments that have devastated the seaside enclave.

Israel also has not developed a post-war plan for the security, governance and reconstruction of Gaza, Blinken said, adding on CBS that the United States is working with Arab governments and others on such a plan.

“We have the same objectives as Israel,” he said. “We want to make sure that Hamas cannot govern Gaza again.”

The death count in Israel’s military operation in Gaza has passed at least 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The war was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 people taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel says 620 soldiers have been killed in the fighting.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Israel struck Gaza on Sunday and troops were battling militants in several areas of the Hamas-run territory, where the health ministry said the death count in the war had exceeded 35,000 people.

More than seven months into the Israel-Hamas war, UN chief Antonio Guterres urged “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages and an immediate surge in humanitarian aid” into the besieged Gaza Strip.

“But a ceasefire will only be the start,” Guterres told a donor conference in Kuwait. “It will be a long road back from the devastation and trauma of this war.”

As Egyptian, Qatari and US mediation efforts towards a truce appeared to stall, US President Joe Biden said on Saturday a ceasefire could be achieved “tomorrow” if Hamas released the hostages held in Gaza since the October 7 attack that sparked the conflict.

AFP correspondents, witnesses and medics said Israeli air strikes pounded parts of northern, central and southern Gaza during the night and into Sunday morning.

The Israeli military said its jets had hit “over 150 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip” over the past day.

In Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city which sits on the border with Egypt, the Kuwaiti hospital said Sunday it had received the bodies of “18 martyrs” killed in Israeli strikes over the past 24 hours.

The health ministry in the territory said that at least 63 people had been killed over the last 24 hours, bringing the overall death count from Israel’s bombardment and offensive in Gaza to at least 35,034 people, mostly women and children.

The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized hostages, of whom scores were freed during a one-week truce in November. Israel estimates 128 captives remain in Gaza, including 36 who the military says are dead.

Fighting in northern Gaza

Months after Israel said it had dismantled Hamas’s command structure in northern Gaza, fighting has resumed in recent days in Jabalia refugee camp and Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood.

Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said late on Saturday that “in recent weeks we have identified attempts by Hamas to rebuild its military capabilities in Jabalia, and we are acting to destroy these attempts”. He also said there was an operation in Zeitun.

The military said on Sunday its troops were operating in Jabalia after launching an operation overnight.

AFP correspondents reported intense clashes and heavy gunfire from Israeli helicopters in the Zeitun area early Sunday, with medics and witnesses saying troops were fighting in Zeitun as well as Jabalia.

Israel defied international opposition this week and sent tanks and troops into eastern Rafah, effectively shutting a key aid crossing.

On Saturday, the Israeli military expanded an evacuation order for eastern Rafah and said 300,000 Palestinians had left the area.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, gave a similar estimate of “around 300,000 people” who have fled Rafah over the past week, decrying in a post on X the “forced and inhumane displacement of Palestinians” who have “nowhere safe to go” in Gaza.

And the UN’s human rights chief Volker Turk on Sunday warned that the evacuation orders, “much less a full assault”, could not be “reconciled with the binding requirements of international law” or two recent rulings by the International Court of Justice on Israel’s conduct of the war.

‘No safe place’

Palestinians in Rafah, many of them displaced by the fighting elsewhere in the territory, piled water tanks, mattresses and other belongings onto vehicles and prepared to flee again.

“The artillery shelling didn’t stop at all” for several days, said Mohammed Hamad, 24, who has left eastern Rafah for the city’s west.

“We will not move until we feel that the danger is advancing to the west,” he told AFP.

“There is no safe place in Gaza where we can take refuge.”

Residents were told to go to the “humanitarian zone” of Al-Mawasi on the coast northwest of Rafah, though aid groups have warned it was not ready for an influx of people.

EU chief Charles Michel said on social media that Rafah civilians were being ordered to “unsafe zones”, denouncing it as “unacceptable”.

Hisham Adwan, spokesman for the Gaza crossings authority, told AFP on Sunday that the Rafah crossing has remained closed since Israeli troops seized its Palestinian side on Tuesday, “preventing the entry of humanitarian aid” and the departure of patients needing medical care.

He said Israeli forces “have advanced from the eastern border” about 2.5 kilometres (1.6 miles) into Rafah.

At the Kerem Shalom crossing, site of multiple clashes, the army said it had intercepted two launches fired at the crossing from Rafah.

Protests

Israel began what it termed a “limited” operation in Rafah this week, while the international community has repeatedly condemned the possibility, long-threatened by the Israeli government, of a full-scale ground invasion of the city.

Israel’s close ally the United States paused the delivery of 3,500 bombs as it appeared ready to invade Rafah.

Protests against the war spread to Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden, where thousands rallied outside the Malmo Arena condemning Israel’s participation.

Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv on Saturday, Israeli protesters again took to the streets to pressure their government to do more to reach a truce and hostage release deal.

The rally came hours after Hamas’s armed wing said a hostage, Israeli-British man Nadav Popplewell, had died in captivity. The Israeli military did not offer any comment on the Hamas video statement.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Israel launched strikes on Gaza on May 12 after it expanded an evacuation order for Rafah, with the United Nations warning an outright invasion of the crowded southern city risked an “epic” disaster.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said two doctors were killed Sunday in the central town of Deir al-Balah, while AFP correspondents reported intense clashes and heavy gunfire from Israeli helicopters near Gaza City.

Also read: Rafah | Opening the gates of hell

Witnesses said Israel had carried out strikes in Rafah near the crossing with Egypt on Saturday, and AFP images showed smoke rising over the city.

Israeli troops defied international opposition this week and entered eastern areas of the city, effectively shutting a key aid crossing and suspending traffic through another.

Israel expanded an evacuation order for eastern Rafah, after saying 3,00,000 people had fled the city since the army urged people to leave earlier in the week.

Residents piled water tanks, mattresses and other belongings onto vehicles and prepared to flee again.

“We don’t know where to go,” said Farid Abu Eida, who was preparing to leave Rafah, having already been displaced there from Gaza City.

“There is no place left in Gaza that is safe or not overcrowded… There’s nowhere we can go.”

Residents were told to go to the “humanitarian zone” of Al-Mawasi, on the coast northwest of Rafah.

Hamas accused Israel of “expanding the incursion into Rafah to include new areas in the centre and the west of the city”.

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said “we have eliminated dozens of terrorists in eastern Rafah” and the army said troops were fighting “armed terrorists” at the crossing and had found “numerous underground tunnel shafts”.

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres said on Friday that Gaza risked an “epic humanitarian disaster” if Israel launched a full-scale ground operation in Rafah.

Protests against Israel’s war in Gaza spread to the Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden, where crowds gathered outside.

In Tel Aviv, fans watched the music show on big screens, but as it became clear that Israel’s contestant Eden Golan would not win, spirits fell.

“Eden was amazing… But there are people who hate us,” said Guy, a 20-year-old who declined to give his last name.

‘Unsafe zones’

International outrage mounted at Israel’s operations in Rafah.

EU chief Charles Michel said on social media that Rafah civilians were being ordered to “unsafe zones”, denouncing it as “unacceptable”.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had started transferring 22 patients from a field hospital in Rafah, saying Israel’s operations in the city were “making it impossible to provide lifesaving medical assistance”.

The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

During their attack, militants also seized hostages. Israel estimates 128 of them remain in Gaza including 36 who the military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,971 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Truce hopes fade

While mediation efforts towards a truce and hostage release appeared to stall, Hamas’s armed wing said a hostage who appeared in a video it released on Saturday had died from wounds suffered in an Israeli strike.

The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said Nadav Popplewell, a British-Israeli man, had been wounded in a strike a month ago and died “because he did not receive intensive medical care because the enemy has destroyed the Gaza Strip’s hospitals”.

The Israeli military did not offer any comment on the video and AFP was unable to independently verify its authenticity.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Saturday a ceasefire would be achieved “tomorrow” if Hamas released the hostages.

A U.S. State Department report on Friday said it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel had violated norms on international law in its use of weapons from the United States, but did not find enough evidence to block shipments.

The State Department submitted its report two days after Biden publicly threatened to withhold certain bombs and artillery shells if Israel went ahead with an all-out assault on Rafah, where the UN says 1.4 million have been sheltering.

The Biden administration already paused delivery of 3,500 bombs as Israel appeared ready to invade Rafah.

Hamas says Israel’s “continued control” and closure of the Rafah crossing exacerbates the “humanitarian catastrophe” in the besieged territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to “eliminate” Hamas battalions in Rafah after the army in January said it had dismantled the militant group’s command structure in northern Gaza.

The Israeli army said it had reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing near Rafah on Wednesday, but aid agencies cautioned that getting assistance through the militarised area remained extremely difficult.

The army said Saturday that rockets had been fired at the crossing, but reported no injuries.

Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News on Saturday cited a high-level source as saying that Egypt had refused to coordinate with Israel on the entry of aid into Gaza from the Rafah crossing.

According to the source, Egypt had “warned Israel of the repercussions of its continued control over the Rafah crossing, and held it fully responsible for the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip”.

Palestinians prepare to evacuate, after Israeli forces launched a ground and air operation in the eastern part of Rafah, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 11, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel ordered new evacuations in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah on May 11 as it prepared to expand its operation, saying it was also moving into an area in northern Gaza where Hamas has regrouped.

Fighting is escalating across the enclave with heavy clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants on the outskirts of Rafah, leaving the crucial nearby aid crossings inaccessible and forcing more than 110,000 people to flee north.

Israel’s move into Rafah has so far been short of the full-scale invasion that it has planned.

The United Nations and other agencies have warned for weeks that an Israeli assault on Rafah, which borders Egypt near the main aid entry points, would cripple humanitarian operations and cause a disastrous surge in civilian casualties. More than 1.4 million Palestinians — half of Gaza’s population — have been sheltering in Rafah, most after fleeing Israel’s offensives elsewhere.

Army spokesman, Avichay Adraee, told Palestinians in Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya cities and the surrounding areas to leave their homes and head to shelters in the west of Gaza City, warning that people were in “a dangerous combat zone” and that Israel was going to strike with “great force”.

Heavy fighting is underway in northern Gaza, where Hamas appeared to have once again regrouped in an area where Israel has already launched punishing assaults. Battles erupted this week in the Zeitoun area on the outskirts of Gaza City, in the northern part of the territory. Northern Gaza was the first target of the ground offensive. Israel said late last year that it had mostly dismantled Hamas in the area.

At least 19 people, including eight women and eight children, were killed overnight in Central Gaza in three different strikes that hit the towns of Zawaida, Maghazi and Deir al Balah, according to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah and an Associated Press journalist who counted the bodies.

Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 34,800 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures.

Much of Gaza has been destroyed and some 80% of Gaza’s population has been driven from their homes.

Palestinian Territories:

Palestinian group Hamas said early Friday that its delegation attending Gaza ceasefire negotiations in Cairo had left the city for Qatar, adding the “ball is now completely” in Israel’s hands.

“The negotiating delegation left Cairo heading to Doha. In practice, the occupation (Israel) rejected the proposal submitted by the mediators and raised objections to it on several central issues,” the group said in a message to other Palestinian factions, adding it stood by the proposal.

“Accordingly, the ball is now completely in the hands of the occupation.”

State-linked Egyptian outlet Al-Qahera News reported Thursday that representatives of both camps left Cairo after two days of negotiations aimed at finalising a ceasefire deal in the seven-month war in the Gaza Strip.

Efforts by Egypt and other mediators, namely Qatar and the United States, “continue to bring the points of view of the two parties closer together”, the outlet added, citing a high-level Egyptian source.

Hamas said Monday that it had accepted a ceasefire proposal put forward by mediators.

The deal, the group said, involved a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, the return of Palestinians displaced by the war, and the exchange of hostages held by militants for Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel, with the aim of a “permanent ceasefire”.

Netanyahu’s office at the time called the proposal “far from Israel’s essential demands”, but said the government would still send negotiators to Cairo.

Israel has long been resistant to the idea of a permanent ceasefire, insisting it must finish the job of dismantling Hamas.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Palestinians inspect the destruction following overnight Israeli strikes on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 6, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement.
| Photo Credit: AFP

As well as killing more than 34,000 people and causing catastrophic levels of hunger and injury, the seven-month war between Israel and Hamas has also caused massive material destruction in Gaza.

“The rate of damage being registered is unlike anything we have studied before. It is much faster and more extensive than anything we have mapped,” said Corey Scher, a Ph.D. candidate at the City University of New York, who has been researching satellite imagery of Gaza.

As Israel launches an offensive on Rafah, the last population centre in Gaza yet to be entered by its ground troops, AFP looks at the territory’s shattered landscape seven months into the war sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack.

Three-quarters of Gaza City destroyed

Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, where before the war 2.3 million people had been living on a 365-square-kilometre (140-square-mile) strip of land.

According to satellite analyses by Mr. Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek, an associate professor of geography at Oregon State University, 56.9 % of Gaza buildings were damaged or destroyed as of April 21, making a total of 160,000.

“The fastest rates of destruction were in the first two to three months of the bombardment”, Mr. Scher told AFP.

In Gaza City, home to some 6,00,000 people before the war, the situation is dire: almost three-quarters (74.3%) of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. 

Five hospitals now rubble

During the war, Gaza’s hospitals have been repeatedly attacked by Israel, which accuses Hamas of using them for military purposes, a charge the militant group denies.

In the first six weeks of the war sparked by the Hamas attack, which killed more than 1,170 people according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures, “60% of healthcare facilities… were indicated as damaged or destroyed”, Mr. Scher said.

The territory’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa in Gaza City, was targeted in two offensives by the Israeli army, the first in November, the second in March.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the second operation reduced the hospital to an “empty shell” strewn with human remains. 

Five hospitals have been completely destroyed, according to figures compiled by AFP from the OpenStreetMap project, the Hamas health ministry and the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT). Fewer than one in three hospitals — 28% — are partially functioning, according to the UN.

Over 70% of schools damaged

The territory’s largely U.N.-run schools, where many civilians have sought refuge from the fighting, have also paid a heavy price.

As of April 25, UNICEF counted 408 schools damaged, representing at least 72.5% of its count of 563 facilities.

Of those, 53 school buildings have been completely destroyed and 274 others have been damaged by direct fire.

The U.N. estimates that two-thirds of the schools will need total or major reconstruction to be functional again.

Regarding places of worship, combined data from UNOSAT and OpenStreetMap show 61.5% of mosques have been damaged or destroyed. 

More bombed-out than Dresden

The level of destruction in northern Gaza has surpassed that of the German city of Dresden, which was firebombed by Allied forces in 1945 in one of the most controversial Allied acts of World War II.

According to a U.S. military study from 1954, quoted by the Financial Times, the bombing campaign at the end of World War II damaged 59% of Dresden’s buildings.

In late April, the head of the U.N. mine clearance programme in the Palestinian territories, Mungo Birch, said there was more rubble to clear in Gaza than in Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia more than two years ago. 

The U.N. estimated that as of the start of May, the post-war reconstruction of Gaza would cost between 30 billion and 40 billion dollars.

A view of New Rafah in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where local residents displaced during security operations in recent years will be housed, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in the nearby Gaza Strip, in Rafah, Egypt
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Hamas said on May 2 that it was sending a delegation to Egypt for further ceasefire talks, in a new sign of progress in attempts by international mediators to hammer out an agreement between Israel and the militant group to end the war in Gaza.

After months of stop-and-start negotiations, the ceasefire efforts appear to have reached a critical stage, with Egyptian and American mediators reporting signs of compromise in recent days. But chances for the deal remain entangled with the key question of whether Israel will accept an end to the war without reaching its stated goal of destroying Hamas.

The stakes in the ceasefire negotiations were made clear in a new U.N. report that said if the Israel-Hamas war stops today, it will still take until 2040 to rebuild all the homes that have been destroyed by nearly seven months of Israeli bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza. It warned that the impact of the damage to the economy will set back development for generations and will only get worse with every month fighting continues.

The proposal that U.S. and Egyptian mediators have put to Hamas — apparently with Israel’s acceptance — sets out a three-stage process that would bring an immediate six-week cease-fire and partial release of Israeli hostages, but also negotiations over a “permanent calm” that includes some sort of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, according to an Egyptian official. Hamas is seeking guarantees for a full Israeli withdrawal and complete end to the war.

Hamas officials have sent mixed signals about the proposal in recent days. But on May 2, its supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said in a statement that he had spoken to Egypt’s intelligence chief and “stressed the positive spirit of the movement in studying the cease-fire proposal.”

The statement said that Hamas negotiators would travel to Cairo “to complete the ongoing discussions with the aim of working forward for an agreement.” Mr. Haniyeh said he had also spoken to the prime minister of Qatar, another key mediator in the process.

The brokers are hopeful that the deal will bring an end to a conflict that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, caused widespread destruction and plunged the territory into a humanitarian crisis. They also hope a deal will avert an Israeli attack on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought shelter after fleeing battle zones elsewhere in the territory.

If Israel does agree to end the war in return for a full hostage release, it would be a major turnaround. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack stunned Israel, its leaders have vowed not to stop their bombardment and ground offensives until the militant group is destroyed. They also say Israel must keep a military presence in Gaza and security control after the war to ensure Hamas doesn’t rebuild.

Publicly at least, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist that is the only acceptable endgame.

He has vowed that even if a cease-fire is reached, Israel will eventually attack Rafah, which he says is Hamas’ last stronghold in Gaza. He repeated his determination to do so in talks on May 1 with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in Israel on a regional tour to push the deal through.

The agreement’s immediate fate hinges on whether Hamas will accept uncertainty over the final phases to bring the initial six-week pause in fighting — and at least postpone what it is feared would be a devastating assault on Rafah.

Egypt has been privately assuring Hamas that the deal will mean a total end to the war. But the Egyptian official said Hamas says the text’s language is too vague and wants it to specify a complete Israeli pullout from all of Gaza. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about the internal deliberations.

On May 1 evening, however, the news looked less positive as Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas official, expressed skepticism, saying the group’s initial position was “negative.” Speaking to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV, he said that talks were still ongoing but would stop if Israel invades Rafah.

Mr. Blinken hiked up pressure on Hamas to accept, saying Israel had made “very important” compromises.

“There’s no time for further haggling. The deal is there,” Mr. Blinken said on May 1 before leaving for the U.S.

An Israeli airstrike, meanwhile, killed at least five people, including a child, in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. The bodies were seen and counted by Associated Press journalists at a hospital.

The war broke out on Oct. 7. when Hamas militants broke into southern Israel and killed over 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, taking around 250 others hostage, some released during a cease-fire on November.

The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Hamas is believed to still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.

Since then, Israel’s campaign in Gaza has wreaked vast destruction and brought a humanitarian disaster, with several hundred thousand Palestinians in northern Gaza facing imminent famine, according to the U.N. More than 80% of the population has been driven from their homes.

The “productive basis of the economy has been destroyed” and poverty is rising sharply among Palestinians, according to the report released on May 2 by the United Nations Development Program and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.

It said that in 2024, the entire Palestinian economy — including both Gaza and the West Bank — has so far contracted 25.8%. If the war continues, the loss will reach a “staggering” 29% by July, it said. The West Bank economy has been hit by Israel’s decision to cancel the work permits for tens of thousands of laborers who depended on jobs inside Israel.

“These new figures warn that the suffering in Gaza will not end when the war does,” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said. He warned of a “serious development crisis that jeopardizes the future of generations to come.”