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The Erez border crossing, which connects Israel with northern Gaza, remains closed and no humanitarian aid has been allowed to enter the Strip through it, according to Juliette Touma, director of communications for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), speaking to EL PAÍS from Jordan. Touma stresses that the announcement last Thursday by the Israeli authorities that they would reopen the crossing remains only “a promise.” The Israeli government implicitly confirmed the information to this newspaper. Supplies to alleviate the plight of Gaza’s population have also not yet begun arrive via the nearby port of Ashdod, 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of the enclave. These two concessions were the main commitments made by the Israeli War Cabinet following a telephone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden.

This Indian Express article goes into detail about the volume of humanitarian aid entering Gaza

Israel says aid is moving into Gaza more quickly after international pressure to increase access, but the amount is disputed and the United Nations says it is still much less than the bare minimum to meet humanitarian needs. Israel said 419 trucks – the highest since the conflict began – entered on Monday, though the Red Crescent and United Nations gave much lower figures, with the UN saying many were only half full because of Israeli inspection rules.

Aid agencies have complained that Israel is not ensuring enough access for food, medicine and other needed humanitarian supplies and the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war. UN humanitarian agency (OCHA) spokesperson Jens Laerke also pointed to severe restrictions on delivery of aid inside Gaza itself last month, saying Israel had denied permission for half the convoys it tried sending to the north in March, with UN aid convoys three times more likely to be refused than any other.

An increase in aid flows into Gaza over recent days has also been noted by Red Crescent officials in Egypt, who said more than 350 trucks had crossed from there into Gaza on Monday and 258 on Sunday. That was much more than in recent weeks, when the number was usually fewer than 200, they said. However UNRWA, the main United Nations agency in Gaza, said 223 trucks had entered on Monday, fewer than half the 500 trucks it says are required daily.In its daily situation report on Tuesday, UNRWA said “there has been no significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza or improved access to the north”.

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Egyptian officials tell a Qatari outlet that the US has accepted Israel’s plan for an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, in return for not carrying out a large strike in Iran in response to Tehran’s unprecedented missile and drone attack. “The American administration showed acceptance of the plan previously presented by the occupation government regarding the military operation in Rafah, in exchange for not carrying out a large-scale attack against Iran,” an unnamed official tells Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. The Egyptian officials tells the outlet that preparations are underway so that Egypt can deal with any possible impact of the planned operation.

#the us was always going to let the invasion happen #also in exchange for what?? a smaller strike? #how is that a compromise? #like who is the superpower here?

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“A special State Department panel told Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the U.S. should restrict arms sales to Israeli military units that have been credibly accused of human rights abuses. He has not taken any action.”

#infuriating #so so infuriating

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Dozens of Google employees began occupying company offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, on Tuesday in protest of the company’s $1.2 billion contract providing cloud computing services to the Israeli government. The sit-in, organized by the activist group No Tech for Apartheid, is happening at Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office in Sunnyvale and the 10th floor commons of Google’s New York office. The sit-in will be accompanied by outdoor protests at Google offices in New York, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, and Seattle beginning at 2 pm ET and 11 am PT. Tuesday’s actions mark an escalation in a series of recent protests organized by tech workers who oppose their employer’s relationship with the Israeli government, especially in light of Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. Just over a dozen people gathered outside Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale on Tuesday. Among those in New York was Google cloud software engineer Eddie Hatfield, who was fired days after disrupting Google Israel’s managing director at March’s Mind The Tech, a company-sponsored conference focused on the Israeli tech industry, in early March. Several hours into the sit-ins on Tuesday, Google security began to accuse the workers of “trespassing” and disrupting work, prompting several people to leave while others vowed to remain until they were forced out. The 2021 contract, known as Project Nimbus, involves Google and Amazon jointly providing cloud computing infrastructure and services across branches of the Israeli government. Last week, Time reported that Google’s work on Project Nimbus involves providing direct services to the Israel Defense Forces. No Tech for Apartheid is a coalition of tech workers and organizers with MPower Change and Jewish Voice for Peace, which are respectively Muslim- and Jewish-led peace-focused activist organizations. The coalition came together shortly after Project Nimbus was signed and its details became public in 2021.

You can read No Tech for Apartheid's open letter here.

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AHEAD OF THE United Nations Security Council action to consider the Palestinian Authority’s application to become a full member of the international body, the United States is lobbying nations to reject such membership, hoping to avoid an overt “veto” by Washington. The lobbying effort, revealed in copies of unclassified State Department cables obtained by The Intercept, is at odds with the Biden administration’s pledge to fully support a two-state solution. In 2012, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution granting Palestine the status of a non-member observer state. The diplomatic cables detail pressure being applied to members of the Security Council, including Malta, the rotating president of the council this month. Ecuador in particular is being asked to lobby Malta and other nations, including France, to oppose U.N. recognition. The State Department’s justification is that normalizing relations between Israel and Arab states is the fastest and most effective way to achieve an enduring and productive statehood. While clarifying that President Joe Biden has worked vigorously to support “Palestinian aspirations for statehood” within the context “of a comprehensive peace that would resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” a diplomatic cable dated April 12 details U.S. talking points against a U.N. vote for Palestinian statehood. The cable says that Security Council members must be persuaded to reject any proposal for Palestinian statehood — and thereby its recognition as a sovereign nation — before the council’s open debate on the Middle East, scheduled for April 18. “It remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors,” the cable reads. “We believe this approach can tangibly advance Palestinian goals in a meaningful and enduring way.” “We therefore urge you not to support any potential Security Council resolution recommending the admission of ‘Palestine’ as a U.N. member state, should such a resolution be presented to the Security Council for a decision in the coming days and weeks.”

#wow what a shock that the us doesn’t care about the two state solution

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Palestinians in the West Bank tearing down the apartheid wall.

Credit to @caniscathexis for showing me this

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"COGAT counts what they screen and send across the border. We count trucks that arrive in our warehouses," Laerke said.

"Trucks that go in, screened by COGAT, are typically only half full. That is a requirement that they have put in place for screening purposes. When we count the trucks on the other side, when they have been reloaded, they are full," he said.

#it is insane that the ‘400+’ trucks figure was everywhere #and it turns out it was a lie #it’s only 200

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Remember the first Flour Massacre? Well, CNN has finally dropped the official Israeli story to give you an investigation that basically repeats what Palestinians have been saying all along

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#pffffft the us has the right to remain silent #anything it says can and will be used against it in a court of law #self incrimination??? #not today satan

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Israel has killed 14,350 Palestinian children between October 7 and April 4. This means children account for 44% of all Palestinians killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said in a press release ahead of Palestinian Children’s Day. Women and children constitute nearly 70% of over 7,000 additional persons missing in the same period, and the majority of the over 75,000 wounded Palestinians are women and children. Out of a total of 455 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank by the Israeli forces in the same period, 117 were children. Over 17,000 Palestinian children have also been orphaned or separated from their parents as a result of Israel’s genocidal attacks, according to UNICEF data, after either both or one of their parents were killed in the Israeli bombings and ground offensives since October 7.

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Insane. The IDF bombed the aid group three separate times in order to kill all 7 volunteers

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“This is not a normal war. The war in Ukraine has killed 500 kids in two years and the war in Gaza has killed over 10,000 in less than five months. We have seen wars before but this is something that is a dark stain on our shared humanity.”

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Just a little while ago this happened:

Israel is killing not just Palestinians but anyone who tries to help them. These people just wanted to help, and their families were probably so scared for them, and they were probably so scared themselves, but they went anyway and now they're dead, deliberately targeted.

They will get no justice, their families will get no justice. The world will lose some of its best, bravest people and all the future good they would have gone on to do. This pattern has only repeated tens of thousands of times already.

The US will say it hasn't heard of the reports, that it's very concerned about them, like Susan Collins was concerned about Kavanaugh, that ultimately this is for Israel to investigate, like the NYPD investigates itself, that Israel is a sovereign nation who we can't tell what to do, only give them billions in weapons to do it with. More will be killed until they stop coming or everyone is forced out.

And you know, there is a tweet that has identified them, British, Polish, Australian, Irish, and their Palestinian translator. I almost posted it but it has a pic of their dead bodies and I remembered that posting it isn't the standard. That people who aren't Palestinian get the respect of being believed about their deaths, that their bodies will be returned home and not put into mass graves so this last identification isn't needed, that the shock to onlookers in an attempt to convince them to intervene isn't worth the shock to the family. Maybe that last point's still worth trying. But at this point if you haven't been convinced by dead babies, what hope is left?

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That AP headline is from February 12th. The number is now 15,000 Palestinian children killed in the genocide.

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FU to all those attendees. Love and solidarity to the resistance -Free Palestine.

#Obama telling protestors they just wanted to talk and not listen infuriated me