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STORY: Civilian casualties continue to tick up as Israel stepped up its assault in the northern and southern parts of Gaza on Monday. Rescue crews brought in badly-wounded civilians, some of them children, to a hospital in northern Beit Lahiya. Some of the most intense fighting for weeks is raging in both the north and south. Israeli forces had gone back into Jabalia, where they’ve said they have dismantled Hamas months ago, to prevent militants regrouping there. A medical worker, Fares Afana, says they’ve tried to reach the Jabalia camp. Bodies were recovered there after overnight strikes. But he claims Israeli forces had been targeting ambulance crews, blocking them from saving wounded and trapped civilians. In southern Gaza’s Rafah, streets were near empty as Palestinians fled the fighting. Israel on Monday cut across a main highway into Rafah, closing a main crossing point for aid. The U.N. says a foreign security staff member was killed on Monday when a U.N.-marked vehicle travelling to a hospital in Rafah was struck. This marks the first international U.N. fatality in the Gaza war. Hamas' armed wing says due to Israeli bombardments it lost contact with militants guarding four Israeli hostages, including U.S.-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who appeared in a Hamas video in April. Supplies are also wearing thin for many displaced Palestinians, who’ve fled the north and south to Deir al-Balah, in the center of the Gaza strip. “There is not enough water for all displaced people, there is not enough food, not enough markets for everyone." "This water tank that you see, this was barely enough for those who were already here, it was already not enough but we were living with it, so what about those who joined us? There are people from two camps, in addition to our camp.” The U.N. says around 360,000 people have fled Rafah since Israel’s evacuation order a week ago. Many uprooted families are moving to empty tracts of land along the coast, but the U.N. warns of poor sanitary conditions there. Starving Palestinians on one side of the border – and on the other… Israeli protesters blocking aid trucks to Gaza on Monday. Some Israelis were seen spilling contents of the trucks onto a road at a West Bank checkpoint – the second such incident in less than a week. This comes even as Israel has pledged to allow uninterrupted humanitarian supplies into the besieged enclave. Washington, which has paused some deliveries of weapons to Israel, as it disagrees with an assault on Rafah, has denounced "looting" these convoys. Gaza health officials say the Palestinian death toll in the war has now surpassed 35,000. The conflict began after militant group Hamas burst into Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages.

STORY: ::The Biden administration says it does not view the killings of Palestinians in Gaza as 'genocide' ::May 13, 2024 :: Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor / White House "We believe Israel can and must do more to ensure the protection and well-being of innocent civilians. We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. We have been firmly on record rejecting that proposition." "We have paused the shipment of £2,000 bombs because we do not believe they should be dropped in densely populated cities. We are talking to the Israeli government about this. We still believe it would be a mistake to launch a major military operation into the heart of Rafah. That would put huge numbers of civilians at risk without a clear strategic gain. The president was clear that he would not supply certain offensive weapons for such an operation were it to occur." Sullivan, speaking to reporters at the White House, said the United States wants to see Hamas defeated, that Palestinians caught in the middle of the war were in "hell," and that a major military operation by Israel in Rafah would be a mistake. Biden, who is running for reelection this year, has faced heavy criticism from his own supporters domestically for his support of Israel; some of those critics have accused Israel of committing genocide. More than 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza have died, according to Gaza health officials.

STORY: :: Israeli protesters block an aid convoy heading to Gaza :: Tarqumiya checkpoint, West Bank :: May 13, 2024 :: Four protesters, including a minor, were arrested, according to lawyers representing them Videos circulated on social media showed protesters throwing supplies from the trucks on to the ground, with the contents of opened cartons lying spilled across the road. The video was verified by buildings, signs and hills seen in the footage which match file imagery of the checkpoint. Separate visuals from the same location also show the same truck being unloaded, which corroborates the video. Last week, four people were arrested in southern Israel after a similar protest by Israelis who object to delivering humanitarian supplies into an area controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas, according to their lawyers. The protests came as Israel has faced heavy international pressure to step up the flow of aid into Gaza, where international organizations have warned of a severe humanitarian crisis threatening a population of more than 2 million people.

STORY: :: Israel's prime minister and his cabinet ministers are heckled during Memorial Day ceremonies :: May 13, 2024 :: Jerusalem :: Ashdod, Israel :: Tel Aviv, Israel A person called Netanyahu "garbage" as he ended his speech addressing bereaved families in Jerusalem. Separately, a woman shouted at a far-right member of Netanyahu's cabinet, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, as he took to the stand to address a military ceremony in the southern city of Ashdod. The woman pointed at him and shouted, "He's a criminal." Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant was confronted with a sign in Tel Aviv that read, "Their blood is on your hands." Some 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 kidnapped on Oct. 7, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, a further 273 Israeli soldiers have died, mostly in an assault on Gaza that Palestinian medics say has killed more than 35,000 people. Despite his image as a security hawk, Netanyahu has struggled with a widespread perception that he was to blame for the security failures that allowed Hamas to overwhelm Israel's defences around Gaza.

Israel’s leaders have said the military needs to move into Rafah to dismantle the remaining battalions of Hamas. Photo: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

This week on "Face the Nation," Secretary of State Antony Blinken joins Margaret Brennan as America's relationship with Israel faces a serious stress test this week, with a new U.S. report that says it is "reasonable to assess" that Israel violated international law in its war with Hamas. Plus, a story about how a group of special operations veterans helped a fellow service member's family get their mother out of war-torn Gaza.

Ruby and Hagit Chen are still waiting to bury their son. Itay was killed in Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7. But unlike scores of other families of soldiers killed that day, Chen doesn’t have a grave to visit because his son’s remains are held captive in Gaza. The absence of a final resting place is being felt acutely now, as Israel marks its memorial day for fallen soldiers, when cemeteries are brimming with relatives mourning over the graves of their loved ones. (AP Video shot by Moshe Edri and Ami Bentov)

STORY: :: Thousands protest against Israel's participation in the Eurovision song contest :: May 11, 2024 :: Malmo, Sweden The 68th version of the contest, normally a festival of catchy songs and tongue-in-cheek kitsch, is taking place amid protests in host city Malmo over the participation of Israel, due to its war in Gaza. Eurovision organizers have resisted calls for Israel to be excluded, but demanded that Israel tweak the lyrics of its original entry to remove what they said were references to Palestinian group Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which sparked its war on Gaza. Protesters have complained of double standards as the European Broadcasting Union banned Russia from Eurovision in 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine.

STORY: : Palestinians hold funerals for loved ones killed during overnight Israeli airstrikes in Gaza :: Deir Al-Balah, Gaza :: May 11, 2024 :: Khitam al-Khatib "Here they are, in pieces, here is my sister in-law, without a head, my aunt is without a head. What is this injustice? Until when will this be going on? We are exhausted, by God we are exhausted. I have been in tents for the past seven months, I have never lived in a tent before. We were not cut out for this, the women of Palestine were not cut out for this, we were always honored. It's not fair that this is happening to them, it's not fair. By God we are exhausted from this." According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, 24 Palestinians were killed overnight after Israeli jets targeted several areas in central Gaza, while at least seven were killed after the airforce targeted dozens of homes in Jabalia. Some people are still missing under the rubble. At least 34,943 Palestinians have been killed and 78,572 injured in Israel's military offensive in Gaza since Oct. 7, Gaza's health ministry said in a statement on Friday. The conflict was triggered by a Hamas-led attack on Southern Israel where 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 people taken hostage in the attack, according to Israeli tallies.

Historian and author of the book "Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest," Dean Vuletic believes the Eurovision Song Contest, where the final is to take place on Saturday in the Swedish city of Malmo, brings together Europe through music although the current Israel-Hamas war could bring division. (May 11)

STORY: The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly backed a bid by Palestine to become a full U.N. member Friday, recommending the U.N. Security Council "reconsider the matter favorably." The vote serves as a global survey of support, after the United States vetoed the idea in the U.N. Security Council a month prior. The Palestinian push for full U.N. membership comes seven months into a war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and as Israel is expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, which the U.N. considers to be illegal. "We want peace, we want freedom." Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour spoke to the assembly before the vote: “A yes vote is a vote for Palestinian existence, it is not against any state." "It is an investment in peace, and thus empowers the forces of peace." Meanwhile, Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan, who spoke after Mansour, accused the assembly of shredding the U.N. Charter: “You are shredding the U.N. Charter with your own hands. Yes, yes. That's what you're doing. Shredding the U.N. Charter. Shame on you.” The vote by the General Assembly Friday does not give the Palestinians full U.N. membership, but simply recognizes them as qualified to join. An application to become a full U.N. member first needs to be approved by the 15-member Security Council and then the General Assembly. If the measure is again voted on by the council it is likely to face the same fate: a U.S. veto.

On Friday, students at the University of Minnesota spoke to the Board of Regents, demanding it divest from companies profiting from the Israel-Hamas war.

Israel has indicated it plans to push forward with war operations in Rafah. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “we will do what we have to do to protect our country…”

STORY: :: Israeli prime minister Netanyahu says he hopes he can "overcome disagreements" with Biden :: Jerusalem, Israel :: May 9, 2024 :: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister “I've known (U.S. President) Joe Biden for many years, 40 years and more. You know, we often had our agreements, but we've had our disagreements. We've been able to overcome them. I hope we can overcome them now, but we will do what we have to do to protect our country, and that means protect our future.” :: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister “You know, we've lost hundreds of soldiers who fought bravely and fell in Gaza. And, you know, it requires continuous effort of assistance and treatment because their souls are scarred. But at the same time, we also think about the reconstruction of Gaza once we eliminate these terrorists, these terrorist thugs who are controlling it." :: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister "If Israel has to stand alone, we'll stand alone. But we also know we are not alone because we have so many decent people everywhere who do support us, who do understand the truth, and we will defeat our enemies and we will secure our future." In a CNN interview on Wednesday (May 8), Biden warned Israel that the U.S. would stop supplying weapons if Israeli forces go ahead with a major invasion of Rafah. Israel has destroyed 20 of Hamas’ 24 “terrorist” battalions, Netanyahu said in an interview on the “Dr. Phil Primetime” show on Thursday (May 9). He added that the remaining four are in Rafah, and that is why Israeli forces have to enter the area.