Israel-Gaza latest: Hamas reviews Trump’s peace plan as Israel says ‘last opportunity’ for Palestinians to leave – UK Times

More than 150 health care workers, including doctors, nurses and surgeons, who volunteered in Gaza have asked US president Donald Trump to end America’s military, economic and diplomatic support for the “ongoing destruction of Gaza”.

“We are among the very few neutral American observers that Israel has permitted to enter Gaza for nearly two years,” the group, which includes surgeon Feroze Sidhwa from the California Northstate University College of Medicine, wrote in an open letter to Trump.

The health care workers warned that children in Gaza were facing “every possible type of injury”, including dismemberment, gunshots to the head and chest, and evisceration.

“Most of us saw pre-teen children shot in the head or chest on a regular basis, often multiple times per day,” the group wrote.

“We beg you to hear the cries of Gaza’s children that our consciences will not let us forget. We cannot fathom why our government continues arming Israel while its armed forces kill children en masse.”

The group urged Trump to immediately end “US military, economic, and diplomatic support for the ongoing destruction of Gaza, and support an international arms embargo on all warring parties”.

“These policies should remain in place until a permanent resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is negotiated and implemented between the two parties,” they wrote.

At least 73 Gaza residents have been killed by Israeli strikes since dawn, with most victims in Gaza City, Al Jazeera reported, citing medical sources.

Israel’s missile bombardment included two that struck a school in the city, which had been converted to a shelter.

The missile strike reportedly killed dozens of Palestinians.

Another strike killed six more civilians, officials said.

An attack on a building in the Daraj neighbourhood killed seven, according to Al Jazeera.

Israeli defence minister Israel Katz issued a “last opportunity” warning for Gazans to flee Gaza City in a post on X.

“This is the last opportunity for Gaza residents who wish to do so to move south and leave Hamas terrorists isolated in Gaza City itself, facing the IDF’s ongoing operations at full force,” Katz said.

Colombian president Gustavo Petro has announced on X the immediate revocation of the country’s free trade agreement with Israel and the expulsion of the Israeli diplomatic delegation in Colombia.

Petro’s announcement comes after the Israeli navy intercepted the Global Sumud humanitarian flotilla boats carrying aid to Gaza, which reportedly also had two Colombian activists onboard.

“If this information is true, there is a new international crime by Netanyahu,” he wrote in his post, referring to a press release from the Global Sumud Flotilla.

“Hitler is alive in world politics; Arendt was right,” he wrote, referring to political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt.

A Palestinian rights group has condemned Donald Trump’s “ultimatum” Gaza plan, calling it a “grave violation of international law and an outright assault on the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people”.

The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC) said the plan “entrenched and normalised” Israel’s activity in the region.

“While PHROC welcomes all genuine efforts to end the genocide in Gaza, the US plan does not aim to end the Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime and unlawful occupation but rather to entrench and normalize it,” it wrote in a statement.

“By rewarding Israel’s systematic crimes of apartheid, persecution, and genocide, the plan denies Palestinians their most fundamental rights.

“It mirrors the failures of the international community, in ignoring the root causes i.e., the imposition of Israel’s expansionist settler colonial apartheid regime, in breach of the collective Palestinian rights to self-determination and return.”

A plan is underway for “eternal peace in the Middle East” with officials “very, very close” to a ceasefire deal in Gaza, a beaming Donald Trump declared during a White House press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.

The reason? His new “extremely fair” 20-point peace proposal.

A plan so great, he claimed, that European leaders have been on the phone heralding it as “the most incredible thing we’ve heard”.

“Some think it’s the biggest thing they’ve ever heard. They called just to find out: was it just a rumour or is it actually done?” he added.

Certainly the leaders of Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt released a joint statement immediately afterwards “welcoming” Trump’s “sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza”.

German police arrested three men they suspect of preparing a serious act of violence against Jewish targets in Germany for Hamas, prosecutors said on Wednesday, a week before the second anniversary of the militant Islamist group’s attack on Israel.

Prosecutors suspect the three men of being foreign operatives for Hamas and of being involved in procuring firearms and ammunition to be used for assassinations targeting Israeli or Jewish institutions in Germany, they said.

Hamas on Wednesday denied links to the three men, calling the allegations unfounded and saying its struggle is “confined to opposing Israeli occupation in Palestine.”

Donald Trump’s plans for Gaza are doomed and mad. Don’t be conned by what appears to be widespread support for it, writes world affairs editor Sam Kiley