There are mounting concerns over whether the Israeli government’s ultimate war aims in Gaza include territorial expansion, as the IDF’s siege on the northern part of the territory – under sweeping evacuation orders – intensifies.

Here is an extract fro a report from my colleagues Malak A Tantesh and Julian Borger, who explore these concerns further:

The IDF says it is hunting Hamas militants but suspicions are growing that Israel is putting into practice a blueprint it had officially distanced itself from, known as the “generals’ plan”.

The plan, named after the retired senior officers promoting it, was intended to depopulate northern Gaza by giving the Palestinians trapped there an opportunity to evacuate and then treating those that stayed as combatants, laying total siege.

The government insisted the plan had not been adopted, but some IDF soldiers in Gaza, as well as Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, say it is being implemented on a daily basis, but with a major difference: the Palestinians in northern Gaza were not given a realistic chance to evacuate. They are trapped.

You can read the full story here:

Death toll from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza reaches 43,341, says health ministry

Here are some of the latest images coming out of Gaza from the newswires:

Israeli forces have detained at least 16 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank since last night, the Palestinian Authority’s Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees and the Prisoners’ Society said.

According to Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, the detentions were carried out in Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, Salfit and Tubas.

It is estimated that at least 11,500 Palestinians have been arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last October.

Human rights groups and international organisations have alleged widespread abuse of inmates detained by Israel in raids in the West Bank.

They have described alleged abusive and humiliating treatment, including holding blindfolded and handcuffed detainees in cramped cages as well as beatings, intimidation and harassment.

The commissioner general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), which provides shelter, education, medical services, food and water to Palestinian refugees, has said that banning the agency from operating within Israel and occupied East Jerusalem will deprive Palestinian children of learning in the “foreseeable future”.

Philippe Lazzarini, in a statement posted to X, said this deprivation of education will increase the likelihood of children becoming radicalised and exploited into joining armed groups, as well as increasing poverty levels.

“Without Unrwa, the fate of millions of people will hang by the thread. Instead of focusing on banning Unrwa or finding alternatives, the focus should be on reaching an agreement to end this conflict,” Lazzarini wrote.

“This is the only way to prioritize the return to school for hundreds of thousands of children, currently living in the rubble. It’s time to prioritise children and their future.”

Israel’s war on Gaza has left nearly all of the territory’s population in poverty, with quality of life indicators such as health and education knocked back 70 years, the United Nations development agency said in a report last month.

Since the war began last October, schools have been bombed in Israeli attacks or turned into shelters for displaced people, leaving Gaza’s estimated 625,000 school-age children unable to attend classes.

Lazzarini said that until last October Unrwa provided learning to over 300,000 children, but now they are losing a second year of education.

The Palestinian education ministry said it has begun to launch virtual schools and open schools in the occupied West Bank to students in Gaza, saying it is determined to provide as much education as possible, even if it is from inside “dilapidated tents”.

Last week, 92 Israeli MPs voted for a measure to ban Unrwa’s activities in Israel while only 10 voted to oppose the measure. A second bill severed diplomatic relations with the agency. You can read more about the passing of the bill and its effects here.

Israeli military issues new evacuation order for Lebanon’s Baalbek region

Israeli attacks across Gaza kill at least 23 people, medics say

Palestinian officials have said an Israeli drone strike on a clinic in northern Gaza where children were being vaccinated for polio injured six people, including four children, on Saturday. The Israeli military has denied responsibility.

Dr Munir al-Boursh, director general of the Gaza health ministry, told the Associated Press that a quadcopter struck the Sheikh Radwan clinic in Gaza City early on Saturday afternoon, just a few minutes after a UN delegation left the health facility.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef expressed alarm over reports that the clinic was hit during the vaccination drive.

Rosalia Bollen, a spokesperson for Unicef, said:

The reports of this attack are even more disturbing as the Sheikh Radwan Clinic is one of the health points where parents can get their children vaccinated.

Today’s attack occurred while the humanitarian pause was still in effect, despite assurances given that the pause would be respected from 6am to 4pm.

The polio campaign began on 1 September after the WHO confirmed in August that a baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

The first round of the vaccine campaign in early September successfully reached 559,000 children under 10 years old. The vaccines were able to be administered due to local “humanitarian pauses” to fighting in Gaza agreed by Israel and Palestinian groups (while these temporary pauses were generally stuck to in certain areas in Gaza, there were reports of Israeli airstrikes killing Palestinian people in others).

The second phase of the drive began yesterday having been postponed last month due to relentless Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza, mass displacement of Palestinians and a lack of access in the region (you can read this story to find out more).

A Bangladeshi worker, Mohammad Nizam, 31, was killed in an airstrike in Lebanon on Saturday afternoon, Dhaka’s foreign ministry has said.

Nizam was killed in the airstrike as he stopped at a coffee shop on the way to work in Beirut, Bangladesh’s ambassador to Lebanon, Javed Tanveer Khan, said.

Mohmmad Jalaluddin said his younger brother Nizam had lived in Beirut for more than a decade, and had not been among the estimated 1,800 Bangladeshis who had registered for an evacuation flight home.

“We want to bury him in our ancestral home, and are now waiting for the government’s response,” Jalaluddin told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

But senior Bangladeshi foreign ministry official Shah Mohammad Tanvir Monsur said it was challenging to arrange a flight into Beirut.

Monsur said:

With the ongoing war, there are hardly any flights from Lebanon to Bangladesh. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to repatriate our citizens who have registered to return home.

The foreign ministry estimates that between 70,000 and 100,000 of its nationals are working in Lebanon, many as labourers or domestic workers.

Entire population in northern Gaza at ‘imminent risk of death’, Unicef warns