• US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says 8 aid workers killed in attack. The bus carrying more than two dozen Palestinians attacked by Hamas, organisation says.
• Argentinian President Javier Milei has announced that his country will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem next year, as the populist leader signalled his support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly isolated government.
• Argentinian President Javier Milei also criticised Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was detained and deported by Israeli authorities this week after being taken with other activists from a Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship attempting to break Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza.
• UK MPs react to report alleging David Cameron ‘threatened’ ICC withdrawal. Cameron told ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan that applying for arrest warrants for Israeli officials would be like ‘dropping hydrogen bomb’, media report says.
• The body of Thai farmworker Nattapong Pinta, who was kidnapped by Hamas from Israel on Oct. 7 and later killed in captivity, was returned to Thailand

Humanitarian Foundation says 8 aid workers killed in attack

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the United States- and Israel-backed organisation established to supplant the aid work of the United Nations, has accused Hamas fighters of killing eight of its staff and wounding multiple others in an attack on a bus en route to a food distribution centre.

The bus, carrying more than two dozen Palestinians working with the organisation, was “brutally attacked” on Wednesday night while travelling to a distribution centre west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the foundation said in a statement.

“As of now, we can confirm at least eight fatalities, multiple injuries, and we fear that some of our team members have been taken hostage,” the GHF said on Thursday.

GHF’s interim director, John Acree, said his organisation had considered closing its centres on Thursday after the bus attack but opted to remain open.

“We decided that the best response to Hamas’ cowardly murderers was to keep delivering food for the people of Gaza who are counting on us,” he said in a statement.

Hamas, which governs Gaza, did not immediately comment on the claims.

The GHF, which is led by Johnnie Moore, an evangelical Christian who advised US President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has been mired in controversy since beginning operations on May 27.

The UN and aid groups have boycotted the GHF

The UN and aid groups have boycotted the foundation over concerns that it does not meet basic humanitarian standards and is not independent of Israel.

Numerous Israeli attacks on Palestinians have taken place near the foundation’s distribution sites in Rafah and the Netzarim Corridor.

On Wednesday, 57 people were killed and more than 363 injured as they tried to access aid at the sites, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said.

More than 220 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid since the foundation began operations, according to Gaza health authorities.

In its statement, the foundation, which on Saturday reported that it had been unable to distribute aid due to Hamas threats, said the attack on its team “did not happen in a vacuum”.

“For days, Hamas has openly threatened our team, our aid workers, and the civilians who receive aid from us. These threats were met with silence,” the foundation said.

“Tonight the world must see this for what it is: an attack on humanity,” the foundation added. “We call on the international community to immediately condemn Hamas for this unprovoked attack and continued threat against our people simply trying to feed the Palestinian people.”

Milei says Argentina to move embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2026

Milei says Argentina to move embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2026

Argentinian  President Javier Milei has announced that his country will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem next year, as the populist leader signalled his support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly isolated government.

Argentina’s embassy is currently located in Herzliya, just outside Tel Aviv. But in a speech to Israel’s parliament on Wednesday, staunchly pro-Israel Milei said he was “proud to announce” his country will move its “embassy to the city of west Jerusalem” in 2026.

“Argentina  stands by you in these difficult days,” Milei said.

“Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about a large part of the international community that is being manipulated by terrorists and turning victims into perpetrators,” he told the Knesset.

The Argentinian leader, currently on his second state visit to Israel since taking office in 2023, said Buenos Aires will continue to demand that Israeli captives held in Gaza be released, including four with Argentinian citizenship taken during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack.

Milei also criticised Swedish activist Greta Thunberg

Milei also criticised Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was detained and deported by Israeli authorities this week after being taken with other activists from a Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship attempting to break Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza.

Thunberg has been a vocal critic of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and deliberate starvation of the territory’s Palestinian population.

“[Thunberg] became a hired gun for a bit of media attention, claiming that she was kidnapped when there are really hostages in subhuman conditions in Gaza,” Milei said, according to a translation of his remarks from Spanish provided by the Knesset.

Israel is facing mounting international pressure over the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, with the overall death toll after more than 20 months of war surpassing 55,000 Palestinians.

Delicate issue- Not a new pledge

Milei had pledged to move Argentina’s embassy during his first visit in February 2024, in which he also prayed at the Western Wall, a revered religious site for Jews in Jerusalem.

Speaking in advance of Milei’s address to parliament this week, Prime Minister Netanyahu said “the city of Jerusalem will never be divided again”.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most delicate issues in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, with Israel claiming the entirety of the ancient city as its capital, while Palestine claims its occupied eastern sector as the capital of any future Palestinian state.

Israel first occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, before unilaterally annexing it in 1980 in a move rejected by the United Nations Security Council. Due to its disputed status, the vast majority of the 96 diplomatic missions present in Israel host their embassies in the Tel Aviv area to avoid interfering with peace negotiations.

The tale of six countries

Currently only six countries – Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay and the United States – have embassies located in West Jerusalem.

During his first term in 2017, President Donald Trump made the shock decision to unilaterally recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital before moving the US embassy there a year later, prompting Palestinian anger and the international community’s disapproval.

This status was not revoked under the Biden administration and Washington continues to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital today.

UK MPs react to report alleging David Cameron ‘threatened’ ICC withdrawal

Several  United Kingdom lawmakers have criticised the previous government over allegations in a recent media report that former Foreign Secretary David Cameron “privately threatened” to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its plans to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The report, published on Monday by the UK-based outlet Middle East Eye (MEE), cited sources with knowledge of a phone call Cameron allegedly made to ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan on April 23, 2024, after he had given advance notice of his intention to apply for the warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

MEE’s report cited unnamed sources, including former staff in Khan’s office, and had seen minutes of the conversation, claiming that Cameron warned the arrest warrants, which were issued in November that year, would be – in quotes reported by the sources – tantamount to “dropping a hydrogen bomb”, warning that if the ICC went ahead, the UK would “defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute”.

ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan stood his ground

Khan reportedly stood his ground, with sources telling MEE that he said afterwards that he did not like “being pressurised”. “I won’t say if it rises to blackmail – I don’t like being threatened,” he reportedly said, adding that the government was “debasing” the UK with its clear attack on the independence of the court and the rule of international law.

Cameron, who was prime minister between 2010 and 2016, and now sits in the House of Lords as a life peer, has not commented on the report. Khan was quoted as telling MEE on Monday that he had “no comment to make at this time”.

Following the report’s publication, Labour Party MP Zarah Sultana said on X that Cameron “and every UK minister complicit in arming and enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza” should be investigated.

Scottish National Party MP Chris Law said the allegations were “shocking”, but added the country was “not seeing much better under Labour”.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, a Labour MP, called for an “independent inquiry into the UK’s role in the Gaza genocide”.

Zack Polanski, the deputy leader of the Green Party, was cited by MEE as saying: “It’s been clear for all to see that both the former and current government have stood with the oppressors, not the marginalised.”

When the ICC applied for the arrest warrants in May last year, the previous Conservative Party government, a strong backer of Israel, decried the move as “not helpful in relation to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or getting humanitarian aid in”.

In July, the new Labour government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, dropped the previous Rishi Sunak-led government’s bid to challenge the ICC’s power to seek the warrants, which were issued for Netanyahu, Gallant and three Hamas leaders in November.

Body of Thai captive killed in Gaza returned home

The body of Thai farmworker Nattapong Pinta, who was kidnapped by Hamas from Israel on Oct. 7 and later killed in captivity, was returned to Thailand. He was one of 31 Thai farmworkers taken to Gaza. At least 45 Thai nationals have died in the conflict.