Live updates: Israeli military seizes the Gaza side of the Rafah border | AP News

An Israeli tank brigade has seized control of the Gaza Strip side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, authorities say, as Israel threatens to launch a wider offensive in the southern city even as cease-fire negotiations with Hamas remain on a knife’s edge.

The move comes after hours of whiplash in the Israel-Hamas war, with the militant group on Monday saying it accepted an Egyptian-Qatari mediated cease-fire proposal. Israel, meanwhile, insisted the deal did not meet its core demands.

CHICAGO (AP) — Police cleared a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at the University of Chicago on Tuesday as tension ratcheted up in standoffs with demonstrators at other college campuses around the U.S. — and increasingly, in Europe.

Nearly three weeks into a movement launched by a protest at Columbia University, the Rhode Island School of Design held talks with protesters occupying a building, and MIT dealt with a new encampment on a site that was cleared but immediately retaken by demonstrators.

The confrontations come as campuses try a range of strategies, from appeasement to threats of disciplinary action, to resolve the protests against the Israel-Hamas war and clear the way for commencements.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here

BEIRUT— A Hezbollah-claimed drone attack targeted northern Israel on Tuesday, sparking a fire at one location, authorities said.

The Lebanese militant group said its attack targeted “enemy officers and soldiers” around Yiftah, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Jerusalem.

The Israeli military said its air defenses intercepted one target around Yiftah, while another fell and “a fire broke out at the scene.” Two other objects fell in an open area, while the rest “fell and caused light damage,” the Israeli military said.

The military acknowledged no casualties and declined to identify the objects as drones.

Hezbollah has been supplied with Iranian bomb-carrying drones and has previously used them to attack Israel.

By MIKE CORDER, BARBARA SURK

AMSTERDAM (AP) — Berlin police on Tuesday broke up a protest by several hundred pro-Palestinian activists who had occupied a courtyard on Berlin’s Free University earlier in the day. The protesters had put up about 20 tents and formed a human chain around the tents.

Police called on the students via loudspeakers to leave the campus.

Most protesters had covered their faces with medical masks and had draped kufiyahs around their heads, shouting slogans like “viva, viva Palestina.”

In recent days, students have held protests or set up encampments in Finland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, France and Britain, following earlier protests that have roiled U.S. campuses.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here

By MIKE CORDER, BARBARA SURK

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Police arrested about 125 activists as they broke up a pro-Palestinian demonstration camp at the University of Amsterdam early Tuesday, as protests that have roiled campuses in the United States spread into Europe.

Police in the Dutch capital said in a statement on the social media platform X that their action was “necessary to restore order” after protests turned violent. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Video from the scene aired by national broadcaster NOS showed police using a mechanical digger to push down barricades and officers wielding batons and shields moving in to end the demonstration, beating some of the protesters and pulling down tents.

Protesters formed barricades from wooden pallets and bicycles, NOS reported.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here

GENEVA — The U.N. humanitarian aid agency said Tuesday that Israeli authorities have denied it access to the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt that is now in the control of the Israeli Defense Forces.

“Rafah is in the crosshairs,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at a regular briefing in Geneva.

“IDF is ignoring all warnings about what this could mean for civilians and for the humanitarian operation across the Gaza Strip,” he added. “I think it’s fair to say that the reports that we get from colleagues on the ground is that panic and despair has taken hold: People are terrified.”

He said 76% of the territory of Gaza is “under evacuation orders” and people in Rafah have not been given adequate time to abide by evacuation orders.

Laerke said the operations of the U.N. and its partners in Gaza have a “very, very short buffer of about one day of fuel” — primarily diesel to run trucks and generators. “It’s not like there are huge warehouses full of aid” in Gaza because as a general rule it’s distributed upon entry, he said.

BEIRUT — Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that a March 27 Israeli strike on a paramedic center in south Lebanon that killed seven emergency service workers “was an unlawful attack on civilians that failed to take all necessary precautions.”

It added that U.S.-supplied arms were used in the strike in the village of Hebbariye that was carried out using a U.S.-made joint direct attack munition guidance kit and an Israeli-made 500-pound (about 230 kilograms) general purpose bomb.

The rights group called for Washington to stop providing arms to Israel “given evidence that the Israeli military is using US weapons unlawfully.”

Israel at the time of the strike said it had hit a “military compound” and killed a “significant terrorist operative” from the Jamaa Islamiya, or Islamic Group, a Lebanese Sunni political group with an armed wing that has sometimes joined forces with the Shiite Hezbollah militant group as it has clashes with Israeli forces on the border over the past seven months.

Human Rights Watch said it found “no evidence of a military target” at the Lebanese Succour Association-run paramedic center that was struck, and that Islamic Group officials and family members of the seven people killed said they were civilians.

The Islamic Group said that while some of its supporters volunteered as paramedics with the association, “they do not include any fighters from its armed wing.” The report noted that under international law, warring parties “have a duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians” and “in case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person must be considered a civilian.”

Israeli strikes have killed more than 370 people in Lebanon over the past seven months, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups, but also including more than 70 civilians and non-combatants. In Israel, strikes launched from Lebanon have killed 14 soldiers and 10 civilians.

BEIRUT — Hamas has published a copy of the cease-fire and hostage release proposal that the militant group said it had agreed to on Monday.

The framework brought forward by Qatar and Egypt aims to bring a halt to seven months of war in Gaza. However, it’s unclear if Israel will agree to the terms. The proposal outlines a phased release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza alongside the gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from the entire enclave and ending with a “sustainable calm” or “permanent cessation of military and hostile operations.”

Israel has previously said it would not agree to either a full withdrawal of its forces or a permanent cease-fire as part of a hostage release deal.

The first stage would last 42 days and would involve a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the release of about 33 hostages held in the territory, including the remaining Israeli women — both civilians and soldiers — as well as children, older adults and people who are ill.

Thirty Palestinian prisoners held in Israel would be released in exchange for each Israeli civilian hostage and 50 in exchange for each female soldier.

Palestinians displaced in Gaza would be allowed to return to their home neighborhoods during that time.

The parties would then negotiate the terms of the next stage, under which the remaining civilian men and soldiers would be released, while Israeli forces would withdraw from the rest of Gaza. This phase would be conditioned on achievement of a “sustainable calm.”

The final stage would involve exchange of the bodies of hostages who died in captivity and the beginning of a reconstruction plan for the enclave that would take place over three to five years “under the supervision of a number of countries and organizations, including: Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations.”

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli tank brigade seized control Tuesday of the Gaza Strip side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, authorities said, moving forward with an offensive in the southern city even as cease-fire negotiations with Hamas remain on a knife’s edge.

The move comes after hours of whiplash in the Israel-Hamas war, with the militant group on Monday saying it accepted an Egyptian-Qatari mediated cease-fire proposal. Israel, meanwhile, insisted the deal did not meet its core demands. The high-stakes diplomatic moves and military brinkmanship left a glimmer of hope alive — but only barely — for an accord that could bring at least a pause in the 7-month-old war that has devastated the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli 401st Brigade entered the Rafah crossing early Tuesday morning, the Israeli military said, taking “operational control” of the crucial crossing. It’s the main route for aid entering the besieged enclave and exit for those able to flee into Egypt. Israel fully controls all access in and out of Gaza since the war began.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here