Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address a joint meeting of Congress on July 24, The Associated Press reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. Amid the ongoing war, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed at least 33 people on Thursday. Following the attack, the Israel Defense Forces said Hamas terrorists were operating from within the school.
Meanwhile, Qatar Foreign Ministry has said that Hamas has not yet handed mediators its response to the latest ceasefire proposal and is still studying it. The war began after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR: THE LATEST
Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address a joint meeting of Congress on July 24, The Associated Press quoted two people familiar with the matter as saying. Last week, Congressional leaders formally invited Netanyahu to come speak. However, the date of the speech had been in flux.
According to news agency Reuters, Netanyahu, over his upcoming speech, said he was "very moved to have the privilege of representing Israel before both Houses of Congress and to present the truth about our just war against those who seek to destroy us to the representatives of the American people and the entire world."
At least 33 people were killed after Israel hit a Gaza school on Thursday. Video footage showed Palestinians hauling away bodies and scores of injured in a hospital after the attack, which took place at a sensitive moment in mediated talks on a ceasefire that would involve releasing hostages held by Hamas and some of the Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Following the strike, the Israeli military said the central Gaza compound was being used by terrorists. Addressing a press conference, an IDF spokesperson said those targeted were members of Hamas's elite Nukhba force and of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group who "directed terror attacks from the area of the school while exploiting it as a civilian location and as a shelter. The terrorists inside this school were planning more attacks against Israelis, some of them imminent."
Meanwhile, the US State Department has said the country has been in contact with Israel about the strike at Gaza school. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller also said that Washington expects Israel to be fully transparent in making information about the strike public.
On Thursday, Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said Hamas has not yet handed mediators its response to the latest ceasefire proposal and is still studying it, adding that Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators were still making efforts. Talks began on Wednesday when Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns met senior officials from Qatar and Egypt in Doha to discuss a proposal that US President Joe Biden publicly endorsed last week.
Russia and China, which hold veto powers in the United Nations Security Council, raised concerns on Thursday with a US draft resolution that would back a proposal - outlined by President Joe Biden - for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The council's only Arab member, Algeria, also signalled it was not ready to back the text, diplomats said. A resolution needs at least nine votes in favour and no vetoes by the US, France, Britain, China or Russia to pass.
On Thursday, Israeli forces killed three Palestinians and injured at least 13 others in a raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, Reuters quoted the Palestinian Health Ministry and medics as saying. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it was treating at least six people who were shot, four who sustained shrapnel wounds and one person who was run over by a military jeep. It said its teams were fired at while recovering some of the dead.
The Israeli military claimed that Palestinian terrorists emerged from a tunnel on Thursday and attacked its forces inside Gaza some 300 meters (yards) from the border with Israel, killing one of the soldiers. Another military spokesman had earlier said that three terrorists who took part in the attack were killed in Israeli strikes.
Israel's representative on the panel of judges hearing the genocide case against Israel at the world’s top court resigned from his post, citing personal reasons, according to a letter he sent to Netanyahu, seen by The Associated Press. Justice Aharon Barak wrote Tuesday to Netanyahu, telling him that he had sent the president of the International Court of Justice a resignation letter.
