SVE NEWS & FRANCE24.COM Sharing Series — Israeli protesters demand new elections after war cabinet dissolution

The U.S. military said on Monday it had destroyed four Houthi radars, one uncrewed surface vessel and one drone in the past 24 hours.

The radars and uncrewed surface vessel were destroyed in Houthi controlled areas of Yemen, U.S. Central Command said in a post on the social media site X. The drone was destroyed over the Red Sea.

Israel struck Gaza on Monday and witnesses reported blasts in the besieged territory’s south, but fighting had largely subsided on the second day of an army-declared “pause” to facilitate aid flows.

The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said it had recorded 10 deaths over the previous 24 hours, in one of the lowest daily tolls since the war began.

Troops were still operating in Rafah and central Gaza, reporting “close-quarters combat” that killed several militants, the military said. “There was no change” in the military’s policy and fighting “continues as planned”, an Israeli official stressed, speaking on condition of anonymity to AFP.

“The idea behind the tactical pause in general is to allow for the UN to collect and distribute more aid,” Shimon Freedman, spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body overseeing Palestinian civilian affairs, told reporters.

A senior Israeli negotiator has told AFP that tens of hostages held by Hamas are certainly alive and that Israel cannot accept halting the war until all the captives are released in a deal.

“Tens are alive with certainty,” the official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak publicly on the issue. “We cannot leave them there a long time, they will die.”

Eight Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire as merchants and civil guards waited for commercial trucks along the eastern Gaza road, which is designated for commercial trucks to roll on, according to health officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Anti-government protesters converged on Jerusalem, calling for new elections in an effort to replace Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

By sundown, a crowd of thousands had gathered outside the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and planned to march to Netanyahu’s private home in the city.

Many waved Israeli flags. Others carried signs criticising Netanyahu’s handling of pivotal issues, like promoting a divisive military draft bill that exempts ultra-Orthodox Jews from otherwise mandatory service, as well as his handling of the war with Hamas in Gaza and fighting with Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

The often weekly demonstrations have yet to change the political landscape, and Netanyahu still controls a stable majority in parliament.

Following the departures of two centrist former generals, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot from the war cabinet, opposition groups declared a week of street protests that include blocking highways and mass demonstrations.

Al-Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by Yemen’s Houthi movement, said on Monday that US and British forces have carried out at least six airstrikes on Yemen’s Hodeidah International airport and

four strikes on Kamaran Island near the port of Salif off the Red Sea.

The report has not been independently verified.

The Houthis and social media accounts supporting them have repeatedly made false claims that they hit or even sank the USS Dwight Eisenhower, which leads the US response to the rebels’ targeting of commercial vessels and warships in the Red Sea.

The US and its allies have struck targets in Yemen controlled by the Houthis since the start of the year.

The Houthis say their attacks are aimed at bringing an end to the Israel-Hamas war.

The University of Michigan failed to assess whether protests and other incidents on campus in response to the Israel-Hamas war created a hostile environment for students, staff and faculty, according to the results of an investigation by the US Education Department announced Monday.

The department’s Office of Civil Rights investigated 75 instances of alleged discrimination and harassment based on shared Jewish ancestry and shared Palestinian or Muslim ancestry. The investigation found that the university’s responses did not meet its Title VI requirements to remedy the hostile environment.

In its resolution agreement, the University of Michigan agreed to administer a climate assessment, implement additional training and revise its policies as necessary. It also agreed to monitoring by the Office of Civil Rights through the end of the 2026 school year, reporting its responses to future incidents of discrimination to the department.

It’s the first investigation to reach a conclusion among dozens launched by the Education Department since the October 7 attack.

Norway said Monday that it was increasing its funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) by 100 million kroner ($9.3 million).

UNRWA, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, has been in crisis since January, when Israel accused about a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of involvement in the unprecedented October 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war.

That prompted several countries, including top donor the United States, to suspend funding to the agency, though many have since resumed payments.

“UNRWA is the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza,” Norway’s minister for international development, Anne Beathe Kristiansen Tvinnereim, said in a statement.

“The war, accusations made by Israel, continuous attacks on the organisation and funds withheld by major donors, have put UNRWA in an extremely difficult financial situation,” she said.

Hostilities continue in Rafah and southern Gaza despite the Israeli military’s announcement on Sunday of tactical pauses in operations to allow humanitarian aid to enter, the chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, told reporters in Oslo on Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday criticised the military’s plans to hold daily pauses in fighting along one of the main roads into the Palestinian enclave.

“There has been information that such a decision has been taken, but the political level says none of this decision has been taken,” Lazzarini told a press conference. “So for the time being, I can tell you that hostilities continue in Rafah and in the south of Gaza. And that operationally, nothing has changed yet.”

The military had announced at the weekend the daily pauses from 0500 GMT until 1600 GMT in the area from the Kerem Shalom Crossing, in southern Israel, to the Salah al-Din Road and then northwards. It later clarified that normal operations would continue in Rafah, the main focus of its operation in southern Gaza.

Meanwhile residents said Israeli forces were advancing deeper into the central and western areas of Rafah under heavy fire from the ground and the air on Monday.

Armed groups led by Hamas were fighting from close range inside the Al-Shaboura camp in the heart of Rafah, according to militants and residents, who reported hearing sounds of non-stop explosions and gunfire.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) could collapse in the coming months, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said on Monday, citing a lack of funding, continuing violence and the fact that half a million Palestinians are not allowed to work in Israel.

“The situation is extremely dire. The Palestinian Authority, with whom we work closely, are warning us that they might be collapsing this summer,” Barth Eide told Reuters.

“If it collapses, you could end up having another Gaza, which would be terrible for everybody, including the people of Israel,” he added.

Norway chairs the international donor group to the Palestinians and is a backer of the PA.

A major defence and security industry show outside Paris says a French court has banned Israeli exhibitors from participating.

Event organizers said in a press release posted at the entrance of the Eurosatory exhibition, seen Monday by Associated Press journalists, that the court order issued Friday prohibited “the participation of employees or representatives, of any nationality whatsoever, of Israeli companies” in the show.

“In addition, all exhibiting companies are prohibited from receiving, selling or promoting Israeli weapons,” the press release said. It also said exhibitors cannot act as intermediaries at the show for Israeli companies “in any way whatsoever”.

It did not say what motivated the court’s decision. But it said the ruling came on the heels of a French government decision two weeks ago to prohibit Israeli companies from exhibiting at the show “in the current context”.

Israel said Monday the United Nations, the main aid provider in war-ravaged Gaza, is yet to “take full advantage” of a new route meant to ease the flow of aid into the enclave.

The military announced on Sunday a “tactical pause” in daytime fighting along roads leading from a main goods crossing to a north-south highway. The route is meant to help address a backlog of aid waiting for pickup on the Gaza side of the crossing.

“We have not seen the UN take full advantage of this step,” said Shimon Freedman, a spokesman for COGAT, an Israeli defence body that oversees aid distribution in Gaza. Freedman was speaking at a briefing for reporters at the Kerem Shalom crossing.

Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office, said workers on the ground were unable to use the route on Sunday, blaming a breakdown in law and order in the territory. At the Israeli briefing, officials did not say how many trucks had made use of the route.

Hostilities continue in Rafah and southern Gaza despite the Israeli military’s announcement on Sunday of tactical pauses in operations to allow humanitarian aid to enter, the chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, told reporters in Oslo on Monday.

Medics at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City on Monday said at least five people were killed in two separate air strikes, and witnesses reported tank shelling in the southern neighbourhood of Zeitun.

A daytime “pause” for aid deliveries announced at the weekend by Israel’s military around a southern Gaza route appeared to be holding, while elsewhere in the war-torn enclave an AFP correspondent said strikes and shelling have decreased.

Witnesses also reported blasts in Gaza’s south, but fighting in the Palestinian territory has largely subsided after a day of relative calm and as Muslims marked Eid al-Adha.

Palestinian officials in the far-southern city of Rafah reported tank shelling early on Monday, before the start of the daily “local, tactical pause of military activity” announced by the army.

An army spokesperson told AFP the pause was in effect on Monday, and the military in a statement said troops were still operating in Rafah and central Gaza, reporting “close-quarters combat” that killed several militants.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has dissolved the six-member war cabinet, an Israeli official said on Monday, in a widely expected move that came after the departure from government of centrist former general Benny Gantz.

Netanyahu is now expected to hold consultations about the war in Gaza with a small group of ministers, including Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer who had been in the war cabinet.

Netanyahu had faced demands from the nationalist-religious partners in his coalition, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, to be included in the war cabinet, a move which would have intensified strains with international partners including the United States.

The forum was formed after Gantz joined Netanyahu in a national unity government at the start of the war in October and also included Gantz’s partner Gadi Eisenkot and Aryeh Deri, head of the religious party Shas, as observers.

Gantz and Eisenkot both left the government last week, over what they said was Netanyahu’s failure to form a strategy for the Gaza war.

US President Joe Biden used his Eid al-Adha message to Muslims to advocate a US-backed ceasefire deal in Gaza, saying Sunday it was the best way to help civilians suffering the “horrors of war between Hamas and Israel”.

“Too many innocent people have been killed, including thousands of children. Families have fled their homes and seen their communities destroyed. Their pain is immense,” Biden said in a statement.

“I strongly believe that the three-phase ceasefire proposal Israel has made to Hamas and that the UN Security Council has endorsed is the best way to end the violence in Gaza and ultimately end the war,” he added.

The United States has been pressing Israel and Hamas to formally accept the ceasefire deal greenlighted by Security Council members last week, which would allow an initial six-week pause to fighting.