TRANSCRIPT
Pro-Palestinian protests have intensified at universities around the United States.
Students have been arrested and many campuses have been forced to switch to virtual learning.
Malak Afaneh is a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and has called on the university to divest from Israel due to the conflict in Gaza.
“Quite frankly, we're going to be here until we achieve divestment. We're willing to risk suspension. We're willing to risk expulsion. We're willing to risk arrest. And so we have a full working team of medics, legal observers, hotlines, community members, food support, ready to stand with us. What I anticipate, because the university has not reached out to us, the administration has not reached out, what I anticipate is what happened at Columbia, where they gave them a 24-hour notice of the charges, the student conduct charges they would receive. After that, they called in NYPD. I expect the same to happen here.”
The Israeli military has ordered new evacuations in northern Gaza, warning civilians they are in a dangerous combat zone.
But humanitarian workers say they have no knowledge of plans to evacuate Palestinians, with Red Cross officials telling AFP such a transfer would not be possible under the current conditions.
Meanwhile in Israel, hundreds of people have marched in Tel Aviv to mark 200 days of the war.
They're demanding a deal to release the hostages as well as the resignation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ely Aloni was among the demonstrators.
“It's just atrocious, impossible. People in the world need to understand what is happening here in Israel: we were attacked, we were almost destroyed as a nation, and I don't understand why we don't have a million people here in the streets. It will come. It will come because we have to down the government, we have to change what's happening in Israel, we have to rebuild the country again. The antisemitism in the world is rising and we, Jews, we only have one place to be here.”
It comes as the United Nations human rights commissioner Volker Turk says he's horrified by reports of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies in Gaza.
Palestinian authorities say more than 300 bodies have been uncovered at Nasser hospital in the central city of Khan Younis, with two more sites found but not yet excavated.
Israel says it has examined bodies previously buried by Palestinians near Nasser hospital while checking to see if any of its hostages were among the dead.
It says claims it buried the bodies initially are baseless and unfounded.
But spokeswoman for Mr Turk says it needs to be investigated further.
“We are stressing the need for international investigations. There is a history here of impunity for gross violations and so many of them have gone undetected and unreported on. So we feel the need to raise the alarm, to raise the alarm because clearly there have been multiple bodies discovered. We don't know how many. There are reports that some of them had their hands tied, which of course indicates serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. And these need to be subjected to further investigations. They can't just be more reports in this horrific war that just pass under the radar.”
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has welcomed a report and recommendations from an independent review of the agency.
It found Israel had not provided evidence for its claim that thousands of UNRWA agency staff were members of terror groups.
Several nations halted funding to the agency after allegations by Israel some employees took part in the Hamas attacks on Israel.
Commissioner General the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees Philippe Lazzarini says it's hoped those nations will all now reinstate funding.
“I hope that the with this report and the measure we will be putting in place, that the last group of donors will get the necessary confidence to come back as a donor and partner of the agency. The only donor which will not come as a donor for the time being, but for which we have the political support, is the U.S. Since you know there is a prohibition of funding the agency until March 25th.”
Australia had initially paused funding to the agency, but resumed funds in March.
