Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the Israeli army should create a security zone in southern Lebanon should Hezbollah not heed an Israeli ultimatum to withdraw from the border area. He also called on the security cabinet to order a permanent military presence "in all of the Gaza Strip."

While on a visit to Israel's north, the far-right leader of the Religious Zionism party said that "the war must end with Hezbollah's total military defeat. It must be presented with an ultimatum to stop firing and withdraw its forces… and if [Hezbollah] doesn't fully comply – the Israeli army must launch a defensive attack … deep in Lebanese territory, including a ground incursion and an Israeli military takeover of the southern Lebanon area."

Regarding Gaza, Smotrich said that the IDF must have a permanent military presence in the Strip. Military outposts, he added, should be erected "in the north, center and south of the Gaza Strip, to prevent a situation in which Hamas rebuilds its military infrastructure and [reasserts] civilian control."

In the extensive investigations conducted in the months following the publication of the position paper in November, some testimonies referenced within it have been disputed or deemed unverifiable, and more may face similar scrutiny in the future. We regret their inclusion in the position paper. As mentioned, a substantial portion of the information that is now available was not accessible when the document was originally drafted. The new information that has come to light further reinforces our call for an investigation into the subject. It is crucial to recognize that due to the fragmented nature of traumatic memories, they are often expressed in incomplete, confused, or contradictory ways. Therefore, it is neither accurate nor just for persons lacking the required expertise and tools to assess the credibility of witnesses. Accordingly, moving forward, we will rely on the Patten report and, when available, additional reports and documents produced by competent investigative bodies. We will continue to monitor their findings and reports while drawing necessary professional conclusions.

Since October 7, the Israeli government and other entities have been exploiting reports of sexual violence in a manipulative and cynical manner. These reports have been utilized as part of a campaign to dehumanize Palestinians and as a propaganda tool to justify Israel’s brutal military assault on the Gaza Strip. This assault has resulted, and continues to result, in the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, the forced displacement and starvation of most of the Gaza Strip’s population, and extensive destruction of civilian infrastructure, including health facilities. We are appalled by this cynical exploitation of the victims’ suffering, condemn it, and view it as a complete abandonment of any moral integrity.

The United States is focused on tracking down Hamas's Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, amid a new push by the White House to help Israel declare "total victory" so it can bring an end to the war on Gaza, US officials have told Middle East Eye.

On Monday, The Washington Post reported that the US was offering Israel new intelligence to help track Hamas leaders in exchange for Israel not launching the assault on Rafah.

That report was carried by some Israeli news outlets under the title: US withholding "sensitive intelligence" on Hamas from Israel. However, several current and former US and Arab diplomats, as well as defence and intelligence officials, told MEE it was highly unlikely the US would withhold information on Hamas from Israel.

Israeli soldiers appear to be using the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in the Gaza Strip as a br for military operations, and, since March, also a school in the village of Juhor ad Dik, which is located about one kilometer from the border with Israel and was destroyed in the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, indicated by aerial photographs that the Washington Post published on Friday.

The report states that the satellite imagery documents the construction of earth berms around the hospital, which halted operations early in the war, in late November, and near the school in Juhor ad Dik in the second half of March.

Germany's travel ban against British-Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sitta has been overturned, according to a leading legal advocacy group in the UK.

On 12 April, Abu Sitta was detained at an airport in Germany and was refused entry into the country. He was travelling there to attend a conference on Palestine that he had received an invitation for.

He was then slapped with a Schengen-wide travel ban for one year, which barred him from travelling to 29 countries across Europe.

"This decision is a significant turning point in challenging the hostile environment that Palestinian human rights advocates like Professor Ghassan have faced in recent months," Gorski, Abu Sitta's lawyer, said in a statement.

"This decision means that Ghassan’s freedom of expression and freedom of movement are no longer under threat, and he can speak out about what he witnessed in Gaza. This victory cannot be overstated.”

The Israeli military has launched a new wave of attacks across the Gaza Strip, similar in intensity to the peak of its seven-month war on the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Heavy air strikes were reported across the strip over the weekend and on Monday, with attacks since Friday killing at least 180 Palestinians and wounding dozens more, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

The raids coincided with incursions into Jabalia in northern Gaza, the Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City and eastern Rafah.

The ground advances have been met with fierce resistance by Hamas and other Palestinian groups, with at least five Israeli soldiers killed over the weekend, the Israeli military said.

Another 68 have been wounded over the past 48 hours, including Yogev Bar Sheshet, a brigadier general and deputy defence establishment comptroller, the most senior Israeli officer wounded in the war so far.

The University of Cambridge's wealthiest constituent college, Trinity College Cambridge, has decided to divest from all arms companies, Middle East Eye can reveal.

MEE has learnt from three well-informed sources close to Trinity's student union that the college council, responsible for major financial and other decisions, voted to remove Trinity's investments from arms companies in early March.

According to the sources, the college decided not to announce that it would divest from arms companies after an activist defaced a 1914 portrait of Lord Arthur Balfour - who authored the infamous Balfour Declaration - inside the college on 8 March.

May 10 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge dismissed a lawsuit in which Elon Musk's X Corp accused an Israeli data-scraping company of illegally copying and selling content, and selling tools that let others copy and sell content, from the social media platform.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled on Thursday that X, formerly Twitter, failed to plausibly allege that Bright Data Ltd violated its user agreement by allowing the scraping and evading X's own anti-scraping technology.

For decades, Joe Biden has proudly declared that he is a Zionist, and he has repeated that claim since Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel. But for the student anti-war protests gripping the US, the words “Zionist” and “Zionism” have become a watchword – pejorative and emblematic of the violent state policies driving the war on Gaza.

On social media and in the streets, critics no longer call out supporters of the state of Israel as “pro-Israel”: they call them Zionist. Some university encampments have posted signs saying: “Zionists not allowed.”

Student protesters say that their criticisms of Zionism are rooted in the state of Israel’s displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Pro-Israel activists have responded by defending the term. “If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism,” a group of more than 500 Columbia University students recently wrote. “We are proud to be Zionists.”

As police cracked down on anti-war protests on college campuses across the US in recent weeks, among those arrested were a pair of silver-haired 65-year-old professors armed only with their cell phones.

Annelise Orleck was knocked to the ground and restrained with plastic handcuffs at a protest at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. She later complained of whiplash.

Steve Tamari was tackled by officers and taken into custody at a demonstration at Washington University in St. Louis, an attack he said resulted in multiple broken ribs and a broken hand.

Orleck and Tamari are among at least 50 professors arrested at campus protests across the country, according to a CNN review of police records, court filings, and news reports. (Since April 18, more than 2,400 students have been arrested amid protests on more than 50 campuses.) In some cases, professors said they were actively participating in protests based on their own beliefs. Others said they attended to show support for their students.