Belgium summons Israeli ambassador over bombing of Gaza development office building – as it happened

Tory Shepherd

In Australia, New South Wales police say an independent analysis of audio and video files from a pro-Palestine protest at the Sydney Opera House last year found no evidence for claims that anyone had chanted “gas the Jews”.

People reported hearing the comments at the protest in October last year, and the reports are being investigated by Strike Force Mealing.

In a statement this morning, police said they would continue their investigation and urged anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers. Police said:

Strike Force Mealing was established to investigate reported unlawful activity committed during an unauthorised protest at the Sydney Opera House on 9 October 2023.

Police received reports following the protest suggesting that an offensive antisemitic phrase was chanted during the event.

As a result of independent forensic analysis of audio-video files of the demonstration provided to investigators, police have no evidence that this phrase was used.

Police also obtained statements from several individuals who attended the protest indicating they heard the phrase however these statements have not attributed the phrase to any specific individual.

Police have detained an armed man who took staff hostage at a Procter & Gamble factory in northwestern Turkey on Thursday and rescued seven hostages, ending a protest against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the local governor’s office has said according to Reuters. The news wire reports:

The Kocaeli governor’s office said that the hostages were unharmed, adding that the operation to rescue them was launched after negotiations with the hostage-taker failed.

“Our security forces intervened and neutralised the suspect,” the statement said, adding that he was an employee of the factory who “wanted to draw attention to the ongoing occupation in Gaza.”

The hostage-taker entered the factory in Gebze industrial zone in Kocaeli province around 3 p.m. (1200 GMT), the Demiroren news agency said earlier, adding that police had then rushed to the scene and sought to persuade him to give himself up.

The hostages were six men and a woman, media reports had said.

A photo released by local media earlier showed a man inside the factory whose face was covered with a Palestinian scarf and who was wearing what looked possibly like an explosive device.

Another photo from the scene showed the man holding a gun in one hand and making a ‘V’ sign with his other hand in front of a wall on which Turkish and Palestinian flags were painted with a script that reads: “Gates will open. Either coffin rest or death for Gaza.”

Israeli forces will continue their Gaza military campaign to Rafah, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant has said, despite the huge numbers of Palestinian civilians there. In a Twitter post Gallant said:

The Khan Younis Brigade of the Hamas organization is disbanded, we will complete the mission there and continue to Rafah.

The great pressure that our forces exert on Hamas targets brings us closer to the return of the abductees, more than anything else [we can do].

We will continue until the end, there is no other way.

Israeli forces have continually expanded their campaign south to areas where they have previously told Palestinian to flee for safety, killing many civilians, most of them women and children.

Rafah is the southernmost city in Gaza and there is nowhere else for civilians to go as Israel and Egypt will not let them leave the territory. Eighty-five per cent of Gaza’s 2.2 million strong population is already deplaced, and Rafah, already overcrowded, is now hosting more than 1 million people.

Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

• At least 27,019 Palestinians have been killed and 66,139 injured in the Israeli assault on Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures by the Gaza health ministry on Thursday. In its statement, the ministry said in the past 24 hours, 118 Palestinians were killed and 190 injured. Images from the Gaza Strip today show that the Israeli bombardment continues.

• Hamas has received a proposal for a ceasefire deal that would involve the release of Israeli hostages, after US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators met Israeli intelligence officials in Paris. A Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson on Thursday said Hamas has given “initial positive confirmation” to a proposed deal, but a source close to Hamas said there is “no agreement on the framework of the agreement yet”, describing the Qatari statement as “rushed and not true”.

• Joe Biden has issued an executive order targeting Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have been attacking Palestinians. The order, a rare step against the US’s closest ally in the Middle East, initially imposes financial sanctions and visa bans against four Israeli individuals. The White House said there are currently no plans to target Israeli government officials with sanctions. A statement from Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the vast majority of West Bank settlers are “law-abiding citizens” and described Biden’s order as “drastic”.

• Britain could officially recognise a Palestinian state after a ceasefire in Gaza, the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, has said. In an interview, Cameron said no recognition could come while Hamas remained in Gaza, but that it could take place while Israeli negotiations with Palestinian leaders were continuing.

• The US has ordered a series of reprisal strikes to be launched over more than one day against an Iranian-backed militia, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has said. The attacks are expected to hit militia in Syria and possibly Iraq, though Austin did not specify the timing or precise location. They are in response to the drone strike on a US base on the Iran-Syrian border on Sunday that killed three US service personnel and injured more than 30.

• The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said it has lost contact with a team of paramedics dispatched to rescue a six-year-old Palestinian girl trapped inside a car in north Gaza. The organisation released audio recordings between dispatchers and Hind Rajab, the only survivor trapped inside the vehicle near a petrol station in Gaza City.

• Ministers in Israel’s war cabinet are reportedly considering limiting the amount of aid reaching Gaza, as rightwing protesters disrupt the entry of trucks carrying desperately needed humanitarian supplies to the besieged Palestinian territory. Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot have suggested temporarily limiting aid to weaken the Hamas, following an unverified report from Israel’s internal security service that estimated up to 66% of aid entering Gaza was being hijacked by Hamas.

• The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) will be forced to shut down its operations across the region “by the end of February” if funding does not resume, the agency’s head has warned. More than 10 western countries including the US, UK and Germany have said they would suspend funding to UNRWA after Israel accused some of its workers of taking part in Hamas’s 7 October attack. The UN agency provides aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.

• Algeria has drafted a UN security council resolution to demand an immediate humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The draft was shared with the 15-member council on Wednesday, according to diplomats, after the UN body met to discuss a ruling by the international court of justice that ordered Israel to take action to prevent acts of genocide.

• US forces have carried out strikes in Yemen against 10 attack drones and a ground control station belonging to the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, according to the US military. Early on Thursday local time, US forces targeted a “Houthi UAV ground control station and 10 Houthi one-way UAVs” that “presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and the US navy ships in the region,” Centcom said.

• The UK will not send ground troops into combat against Houthi militants in Yemen, Britain’s deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, has said. Dowden said he was confident US and UK airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen were a step in degrading the Iranian-backed group’s capability to threaten the Red Sea, and part of broader measures that include sanctions on Houthi figures.

• UN rights experts have voiced alarm at soaring numbers of journalists killed in the Gaza war. In a statement on Thursday, the independent experts said they had received “disturbing” reports that appeared to indicate that the killings, injury and detention of journalists are “a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical reporting”.

Palestinians who were rounded up and detained by Israeli forces have said they were abused by their jailers and “tortured relentlessly” while in detention.

Khaled al-Nabrisse, 48, a resident of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, spoke to AFP while wearing a neck brace after he was freed from Israeli detention on Thursday. He said:

During the first 72 hours, drinking, eating or going to the toilets was banned, and we were handcuffed and blindfolded for those seven days.

The Gaza crossings authority said 114 detainees, including four women, were sent through Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing on Thursday.

The group included Mohammed al-Ran, head of the surgery department at the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, the territory’s health ministry said. Ran was taken by soldiers who stormed the hospital two months ago, it said.

At Najjar hospital in Rafah, AFP journalists saw multiple freed Palestinians from Gaza with bandaged wrists and feet.

Abu Khamis, 50, from the central Bureij refugee camp, said he was subjected to “torture, hits and insults” while in detention. “As you see, these (wounds) happened in prison,” he said.

Asked about the allegations, the Israeli military told the news agency it had detained “individuals suspected of involvement in terrorist activity” and that they were treated “in accordance with international law”.

Britain could officially recognise a Palestinian state after a ceasefire in Gaza without waiting for the outcome of what could be years-long talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a two-state solution, the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, has said.

Cameron, in an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, said no recognition could come while Hamas remained in Gaza, but that it could take place while Israeli negotiations with Palestinian leaders were continuing.

Britain’s recognition of an independent state of Palestine, including in the UN, “can’t come at the start of the process, but it doesn’t have to be the very end of the process”, he said, adding:

It could be something that we consider as this process, as this advance to a solution, becomes more real … What we need to do is give the Palestinian people a horizon towards a better future, the future of having a state of their own.

That prospect is “absolutely vital for the long-term peace and security of the region”, he said.

Cameron said the first step must be a “pause in the fighting” in Gaza that would eventually turn into “a permanent, sustainable ceasefire”.

He added that in order for the UK to recognise a Palestinian state, the leaders of Hamas would need to leave Gaza “because you can’t have a two-state solution with Gaza still controlled by the people responsible for October 7”.