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On friday the twentieth of october UN secretary-general Antonia Guterres visited the rafah crosing pleading for aid trucks to be allowed to pass.

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Israeli attacks hit church where christians and muslims were taking shelter.

Us sending emergency funding to israel and ukraine.

Reports suggest that the Rafha is unlikely to open on Friday.

Algeria and South Africa doing mass protests in support of Palestine.

21 journalists and media workers killed since beginning of war.

Lebanon’s military blames Israeli fire for killing journalist.

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Here is the situation on Friday, October 20, 2023:

Latest developments

Israeli attacks hit the compound of Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City on Thursday, killing eight people and wounding dozens. Christians and Muslims were taking shelter there.

United States President Joe Biden held an Oval Office address - usually reserved for matters of extreme importance.

Biden confirmed that he will be requesting the Congress to send emergency funding to Israel and Ukraine.

The Israeli bombardment in the central Gaza town of al-Zahra has levelled at least 10 buildings and left thousands of people either trapped in the rubble or awaiting medical care.

New reports suggest that the Rafah crossing, a passage for much-needed humanitarian aid into Gaza, is unlikely to open on Friday as was earlier suggested by Biden.

Pointing to parallels with their own past under colonisation and apartheid, Algeria and South Africa carried out mass protests in support of Palestine.

Human impact

The Israeli bombardment in the 24 hours leading up to Thursday evening has killed 307 in Gaza. The death toll has topped 3,700.

Israeli raids in Khan Younis have killed 21, wounded 79, and hit six homes.

Twenty-one journalists and media workers, mostly Palestinians, have been killed since the beginning of the war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

A Lebanese civilian was killed by firing between the Israeli and Lebanese border.

Lebanon's military has blamed Israeli fire for killing a journalist who was part of a seven-member team at the border.

Fighting

The threat of an Israeli ground invasion looms as Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told his troops that they will soon see Gaza "from inside".

Rockets have been fired at a US military facility near Baghdad airport in Iraq.

Missiles and drones fired from Yemen "potentially towards Israel" were shot down by a US warship.

Israeli forces continue to arrest Palestinians across the West Bank. At least 14 have been arrested in the city of Ramallah.

Diplomacy

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will travel to Egypt on Friday to discuss the Israel-Gaza war with Egyptian leaders. On Thursday, Sunak visited Israel and Saudi Arabia while extending his support for Israel.

World leaders are warning that the war may escalate. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said there is a "risk of a regional spillover".

In his Oval Office address, Biden stated the US was "pursuing every avenue" to bring back citizens who are being held hostage.

Biden added that he spoke with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to confirm US commitment to Palestinians' right to self-determination.

A Chinese official has indicated that the country is ready to coordinate with Russia to end the crisis in Gaza.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

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Israel-Hamas war: List of key events, day 14

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As the conflict between Israel and Gaza enters its 14th day, these are the main developments.

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Israel cut ties with Gaza so they do not provide any electricity or food or aid to Gaza.

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Israel withdrew from gaza in 2005 the United Nations say the strip and the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied land and says Israel is responsible for the basic needs of the population.

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A convoy of 20 trucks were expected to enter into south Gaza but they are stuck at the border. This was October as of 20th a Friday.

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Missiles and drones were fired from Yemen but were shot down by a US warship. Israeli forces continue to arrest Palestinians across West Bank.

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Names of killed and kidnapped people by Hams

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Names of killed and kidnapped people by Hams

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A bunch of students, primarily Jewish came together on the steps of Sproul Plaza and read the names of people who have been killed and kidnaped by Hamas

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anti- Israel people came to the reading and got in each others faces. some even did the Nazi salute

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due to meet Netanyahu as Israel's military battled Hamas militant who fought by using the hit-and-run attack strategy

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GAZA/JERUSALEM - Israel said it had surrounded the Gaza Strip's biggest city and the focus of its drive to annihilate Hamas, as the United States was set to press Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to pauses the fighting to allow aid into the Palestinian enclave.

With the conflict nearing the end of its fourth week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due to visit Israel for the second time in a month to meet Netanyahu as Israel's military battled Hamas militants, who fought back with hit-and-run attacks from underground tunnels.

"We're at the height of the battle. We've had impressive successes and have passed the outskirts of Gaza City. We are advancing," Netanyahu said in a statement after the military said it had encircled the seaside enclave's main city.

As Blinken left Washington for the Middle East, he said he would discuss concrete steps to minimize harm to civilians in Gaza. The White House, meanwhile, said any pauses in fighting should be temporary and localized, and insisted they would not stop Israel defending itself.

Mounting casualties among Palestinian civilians, along with acute shortages of food, water, medicine and fuel, have intensified calls by global leaders for a pause in fighting or a ceasefire.

Israel has dismissed those calls, saying it targets Hamas fighters whom it accuses of intentionally hiding among the population and civilian buildings. The White House has also rejected calls for a ceasefire.

Gaza health authorities say at least 9,061 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its assault on the enclave of 2.3 million people in retaliation for deadly attacks by Hamas militants on southern Israel.

A group of independent United Nations experts warned Palestinians there are at "grave risk of genocide."

"We call on Israel and its allies to agree to an immediate ceasefire. We are running out of time," the group of UN special rapporteurs said in a statement.

The Israeli mission to the UN in Geneva called the rapporteur's comments "deplorable and deeply concerning" and blamed Hamas for the civilian deaths. Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said a determination of genocide could only be made by a relevant UN judicial body.

Israel says Hamas killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 240 hostages in the attack on Oct. 7, the deadliest day of its 75-year-old history.

The White House said on Thursday it was looking into a series of pauses in the conflict.

"What we're trying to do is explore the idea of as many pauses as might be necessary to continue to get aid out and to continue to work to get people out safely, including hostages," US national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

Blinken also was due to meet Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in Amman on Saturday. In a statement, Safadi said Israel must end the war on Gaza, where he said it was committing war crimes by bombing civilians and imposing a siege.

Hamas fighters emerge from tunnels

Amid heavy explosions in Gaza, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters his country's "troops completed the encirclement of Gaza City, which is the focal point of the Hamas terror organization."

Brigadier General Iddo Mizrahi, chief of Israel's military engineers, said troops were encountering mines and booby traps.

"Hamas has learned and prepared itself well," he said.

Abu Ubaida, spokesperson for the armed wing of Hamas, said in a televised speech on Thursday that Israel's death toll in Gaza was much higher than the military had announced. "Your soldiers will return in black bags," he said.

Israel has said it has lost 18 soldiers and killed dozens of militants since ground operations expanded on Friday.

Hamas and allied Islamic Jihad fighters were emerging from tunnels to fire at tanks, then disappearing back into the network, residents said and videos from both groups showed.

Two US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the USwas flying intelligence-gathering drones over Gaza to help locate hostages. One of the officials said they had been carrying out the drone flights for over a week.

More foreigners due to evacuate

The Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt was due to open for a third day on Friday for limited evacuations under a Qatari-brokered deal aimed at letting some foreign passport holders, their dependents and some wounded Gazans out of the enclave.

According to border officials, more than 700 foreign citizens left for Egypt via Rafah on the two previous days. Dozens of critically injured Palestinians were to cross too. Israel asked foreign countries to send hospital ships for them.

Over a third of Gaza's 35 hospitals are not functioning, with many turned into impromptu refugee camps.

"The situation is beyond catastrophic," said the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, describing packed corridors and many medics who were themselves bereaved and homeless. - Reuters

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Israel says it has encircled Gaza City; US to urge for 'localized' humanitarian pauses

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GAZA/JERUSALEM - Israel said it had surrounded the Gaza Strip's biggest city and the focus of its drive to annihilate Hamas, as the United States was set to press Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to pauses the fighting to allow aid into the Palestinian enclave.

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The term Palestine, first being used my a ancient Greek historian and geographer Herodotus in the fifth century BCE. its to describe the coastal land between Phoenicia (mostly modern Lebanon) and Egypt.

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A feature of the constant media coverage of the latest bloody chapter of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been the oversimplification of the Palestinian identity. In general, including in India, the emphasis has been on the Palestinians being Muslims who are pitted against the Jewish Israelis.

This does a disservice to the rich and complex history of the Palestinians and reduces the decades-old conflict to a purely religious battle. To provide a fuller understanding and more accurate picture, we explain: Just who are the Palestinians?

When was the word 'Palestine' first used, and what did it denote?

The term Palestine was first used by the Ancient Greek historian and geographer Herodotus in the fifth century BCE to describe the coastal land between Phoenicia (primarily modern Lebanon) and Egypt. It was derived from 'Philistia', the name that Greek writers gave to the region of the southwestern Levant, principally around the cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath (all in present-day Israel or Palestine). The Levant is the historical-geographical term for the region around the eastern Mediterranean Sea, which represents the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia.

From the very beginning, Palestine was primarily used as a place name - and then, as a name for the people living in the region, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Thus, Roman records do not distinguish between Christians and Jews when using the term.

After the Arab conquest of the Levant in the 7th century CE, the term Palestine largely stopped being used in an official capacity. This continued until the 20th century. However, it remained common in local usage, and was borrowed into Arabic as "Filasteen". Indeed, Palestine in Hindi is "Filisteen".

As the region underwent Islamisation, and saw the spread of Arabic cultural influence, a number of overlapping identities emerged. In his book 'Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness' (1997), the historian Rashid Khalidi wrote: "Identity for the Palestinians is and has always been intermingled with a sense of identity on so many other levels, whether Islamic or Christian, Ottoman or Arab, local or universal, or family and tribal."

After the defeat of the Ottomans in World War I and the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, the territories of the Ottoman sultan, which included Palestine (apart from modern-day Turkey, Syria and parts of the Arabian peninsula and North Africa), were divided among the British and the French. The British Mandate of Palestine defined the geographical extent of Palestine. It is this Mandate that would eventually be partitioned into the states of Israel and Palestine in 1947.

In the Palestinian imagination, Palestine is the land that lies between the sea (the eastern Mediterranean) and the river (the historically significant Jordan, which flows north to south from the Golan Heights through the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea).

So who are the Palestinians today?

Today, the term Palestinians refers to those living in the State of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem), and to the refugees from the territorial boundaries of the erstwhile British Mandate who have settled elsewhere. Some people who currently live in Israeli territories may also identify themselves as Palestinians.

The Palestinian National Charter of 1968, the ideological document that forms the basis of modern Palestinian nationalism, emphasised the Palestinians' Arab identity. Article 5 of the charter says: "The Palestinians are those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father - whether inside Palestine or outside it - is also a Palestinian."

While most - though not all - Arabs in the region are Muslims, the Charter does not define Palestine in religious terms. Article 6 says: "The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians." However, very few native Jews after 1948 chose to maintain their Palestinian identity over the new Israeli one.

The majority of Palestinians today are Sunni Muslims. According to data published by the Central Intelligence Agency, 80-85 per cent of the population in the West Bank and 99 per cent of the population in the Gaza Strip is Muslim (it does not specify denomination).

Jews are the largest religious minority in Palestinian areas, and comprise mostly Zionist settlers living in occupied territories in the West Bank, who make up 12-14 per cent of the population. Palestinian Christians are 2.5 per cent of the population, according to the CIA, even though some other estimates put their number at as high as 6 per cent of the population. Both the West Bank and Gaza are home to thriving Christian communities that have survived for many millennia in the region.

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They are an ancient people who see themselves as refugees in their own land, which lies between the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the river Jordan. The vast majority of Palestinians are Muslims, but their nationalism is not just about a religious identity.

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21 journalists and media workers (mostly Palestinians) have been killed since the start of the war according to Committee to Protect Journalist