Here’s What Happened During Israel’s Genocide In Gaza In May 2024
Take a look back at some of the updates on Israel's genocide on Gaza in May 2024.
Take a look back at some of the updates on Israel's genocide in Gaza in March 2024.
1. Israel forced Al Jazeera to shut down in the country for “endangering national security”
Israel has forced Al Jazeera to shut down in the country for “endangering national security”.
Since Oct. 7, the Qatar-owned outlet has been critical of Israel’s war on Gaza and has been providing crucial coverage on the ground.
As a result, several of its journalists in Gaza have been targeted and killed by Israel, including its Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh’s son Hamza Al-Dahdouh and his cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa.
On Sunday, May 5, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Al Jazeera – which is the Middle East’s largest news network – to close in Israel.
He accused the news outlet of endangering national security and being a “mouthpiece for Hamas".
Israeli police then raided a hotel room that Al Jazeera was using as its office in Jerusalem and dismantled the equipment inside.
The move comes after the Israeli lawmakers passed a law in April that would allow the government to shut down foreign media outlets that are seen as a threat to national security.
2. Israel rejected another deal for a ceasefire that Hamas accepted and began its full-blown invasion of Rafah
After rejecting another deal for a ceasefire, Israel has begun its full-blown invasion of Rafah.
On Monday May 6, Israel’s military started dropping leaflets in east Rafah, ordering the more than 100,000 Palestinians trapped there to evacuate.
Israel says Rafah, where it had ordered more than 1.4 million Palestinians to evacuate, is home to the last Hamas battalions it needs to destroy.
Shortly after, Hamas announced that it had accepted a deal for a ceasefire mediated by Qatar and Egypt, leading to short-lived celebrations in Rafah.
However, hours later, Israel rejected the deal and began intensely bombing eastern Rafah, killing at least 20 Palestinians including women and children.
3. Israel then announced it had taken control of the Gaza’s Rafah crossing to Egypt
The Israeli military has taken control of Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt after Israel’s war cabinet rejected a ceasefire proposal that Hamas had agreed to and began its full ground invasion of Rafah.
On Tuesday May 7, Israel’s military said it had gained “operational control” of the Rafah crossing to Egypt, claiming that the crossing was being used for “terrorist purposes”.
Footage released by Israeli outlet Yediotnews on Telegram showed a tank bulldozing a “I Love Gaza” sign on the Palestinian side of the border crossing.
Another video showed Israeli forces removing a Palestinian flag flying at the crossing and replacing it with the Israeli flag.
The Rafah crossing is the only land border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt that is not directly controlled by Israel.
With Israel taking control of the border, this means the Gaza Strip is now completely cut off from the rest of the region and the world.
4. US president Joe Biden said the US will stop supplying some weapons to Israel over its Rafah invasion but Israel hadn’t crossed his red line
US president Joe Biden has threatened to withhold some weapon supplies to Israel if it proceeds with a major ground invasion of Rafah, saying that civilians have been killed as a result of using these weapons.
In an interview on CNN with anchor Erin Burnett on Wednesday, May 9, Biden admitted when asked that the 2,000-pound bombs supplied by the US to Israel have been used to kill civilians in Rafah.
He said that he has made it clear to Israel that the US will withhold weapons and artillery shells Israel has been using in Rafah if it goes ahead with its plan to invade the southern city in Gaza.
“So it’s not over your red line yet?” Burnett asked.
“Not yet, but we’ve held up one shipment of weapons,” Biden said.
5. South Africa sued Israel again at the International Court of Justice
South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to order Israel to immediately withdraw from Rafah.
In hearings on May 16 and 17, South Africa and Israel each had two hours to make their case on the new request for emergency measures over Israel’s war on Gaza
South Africa said it returned to the court to stop Israel’s military campaign on Rafah and to “do what it can to stop the genocide”, which had almost “knocked Gaza off the map” and “shocked the conscience of humanity”.
South Africa also asked the court to order that Israel allow unimpeded access to Gaza for UN officials, organizations providing humanitarian aid and journalists and investigators.
During the latest proceedings, Adila Hassim, one of South Africa’s lawyers, presented evidence accusing Israel of violating the previous provisional measures imposed by the court to prevent genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
The evidence include Israel forcibly displacing Palestinians multiple times, besieging and targeting of Gaza’s hospitals, leading the medical system to collapse, as well as the revelation of multiple mass graves, Israel blocking humanitarian aid including water, food and fuel from entering and causing famine, and intensifying its operation in Rafah “leaving displaced Palestinians nowhere safe to go.”
6. The ICJ then ordered Israel to immediately stop its attack on Rafah in a new legally binding ruling
In a new ruling, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Israel to immediately halt its attacks on Rafah in southern Gaza.
In its new ruling on Friday, May 24, which is legally binding, the court noted that the "catastrophic" humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip had worsened since it issued its previous order in January, adding that the situation is now characterized as "disastrous".
The court ordered Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
It also ordered Israel to open the Rafah crossing to allow essential humanitarian aid to enter the Strip, as well as let investigative bodies to enter to investigate allegations of genocide.
Finally, it ordered Israel to provide a report in one month about its progress in adhering to the court's new order.
7. Israel defied the order and bombed a “safe” camp in Rafah and burned Palestinians alive
After the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to immediately halt its military assault on Rafah, Israel instead bombed a displacement camp in the southern city, which was supposedly a designated safe zone, burning Palestinians alive.
On the evening of Sunday, May 26, two days after the ICJ’s latest order, Israeli forces dropped 2,000-pound bombs on a displacement camp in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood near a UNRWA warehouse, killing at least 40 Palestinians and injuring many more, mostly women and children.
Thousands of people had evacuated to the camp from the eastern parts of Rafah after Israel ordered them to leave earlier in May ahead of its invasion.
Videos and photos circulating social media showed graphic scenes of scattered and burned bodies, as well as people holding up the bodies of children whose heads had been blown off.
The Israeli military took responsibility for the attack, saying the camp was a Hamas compound and that the strike was carried out with “precise ammunition and on the basis of precise intelligence.”
8. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel bombing the displacement camp in Rafah was a “tragic accident”
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called Israel’s bombing of a displacement camp in Gaza’s Rafah a “tragic accident”.
Speaking in the Israeli parliament the next day on Monday May 27, Netanyahu called the airstrike a “tragic” accident.
“In Rafah, we already evacuated about one million non-combatant residents, and despite our utmost effort not to harm non-combatants, something unfortunately went tragically wrong,” he said.
Netanyahu said the incident will be investigated because it is the government’s policy.
9. Israel then bombed another “safe” camp in Rafah and killed at least 21 people
Two days after Israel defied the International Court of Justice’s order and bombed a displacement camp in Rafah, it bombed another camp it told civilians in Rafah to evacuate to, killing at least 21 Palestinians.
On Tuesday, May 28, Israel bombed a camp in the Al-Mawasi area west of Rafah, where it had ordered civilians to evacuate ahead of its offensive on Rafah.
The attack killed at least 21 Palestinians, mostly women, and injured many others.
Videos and photos circulating social media showed graphic scenes of multiple bodies on the ground and people rushing while holding the injured in the destruction left by the airstrike.
The Israeli military has denied bombing the Al-Mawasi camp.
Israel had told Palestinians to evacuate to the Al-Mawasi area when it started its invasion of Rafah earlier in May.
10. The International Criminal Court has requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s defense minister
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has announced that it is submitting applications for arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its defense minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced on Tuesday, May 20 that he has charged Netanyahu and Gallant with bearing “criminal responsibility” for war crimes and crimes against humanity “committed on the territory of the State of Palestine from at least 8 October 2023”.
These included starving civilians as a method of warfare, willfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health, willful killing or murder, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, extermination and/or murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.
"Those who do not comply with the law should not complain later when my office takes action,” Khan said in his announcement. “That day has come.”
He stressed that international law and the laws of armed conflict apply to all.
11. Netanyahu then accused the ICC of being “anti-Semitic” and “a farce”
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denounced the International Criminal Court (ICC) decision to seek arrest warrants for him and Israel’s defense minister, calling it a “moral outrage of historic proportions.”
In a video statement released in English on the same day, Netanyahu called the decision “outrageous” and that it will cast an “everlasting mark of shame” on the ICC and “turn it into a farce.”
He said the “absurd” charges against him and Gallant are nothing but an attempt to refuse Israel the “basic right of self-defense” and referred to the warrant application as a “travesty of justice… a disgrace.”
In addition, Netanyahu accused Khan of “callously pouring gasoline on the fires of anti-Semitism that are raging across the world” and drew parallels between Khan and the Nazi judges who facilitated the Holocaust during World War II.
He described the decision to compare him and Gallant with Hamas leaders as “creating a moral equivalence after Sep. 11th between President Bush and Osama Bin Laden, or during World War II between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Hitler.
12. Israel’s representative shredded the UN Charter because the UN voted to reconsider Palestine’s membership
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, shredded the UN charter using a tiny shredder over the UN General Assembly voting in favor of a resolution granting Palestine new rights and supporting it joining as a full member of the UN.
On Friday, May 10, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that grants new “rights and privileges” to Palestine and recommends the UN Security Council admit Palestine as a member state.
Speaking before the vote, Erdan condemned the UN General Assembly for the resolution.
“Despite your obligation to the UN Charter, you are here today to expose what the charter truly means to you. When it comes to the lives of Israelis and Jews, the UN Charter means nothing to you, nada, kaput,” he said.
“You are shredding the UN Charter with your own hands,” Erdan said as he put a copy of the UN charter through the miniature paper shredder. “Shame on you.”
13. Norway, Ireland, and Spain recognized Palestine as a state
Norway, Ireland and Spain have announced they recognize the state of Palestine, which includes east Jerusalem, the West Bank – which are both occupied by Israel – and the Gaza Strip, on Wednesday May 22.
Currently, only 139 of the 193 UN members, many of which are non-European countries, recognize Palestine as a state.
Norway was the first country to announce the decision, followed by Ireland and Spain.
14. Macklemore released a pro-Palestine song slamming Israel and the US for the genocide on Gaza
Grammy-winning American rapper Macklemore has released a new song "Hind's Hall” denouncing Israel’s war on Gaza and the US’ complicity in the genocide.
The song’s title is a reference to pro-Palestine student protesters barricading Hamilton Hall at Columbia University in New York and renaming it to “Hind’s Hall” in honor of Hind Rajab, the six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli forces in January as she was fleeing Gaza with her family.
The song addresses various issues surrounding Israel’s war in Gaza, calling out the US funding Israel's military, politicians accepting financial resources from pro-Israel organizations and wrongly equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
In it, Macklemore criticizes the status quo and questions why peaceful actions like divestment from Israel and calls for peace are seen as threats and met with police brutality.
He also condemned the music industry for its silence over the genocide, saying “I want a ceasefire, fuck a response from Drake” – referencing the current feud between Kendrick Lamar and Drake that has been dominating headlines.
Since he released the song on Tuesday May 7, it has gained more than 112 million views on Instagram in just over 24 hours.
15. Cate Blanchett and Bella Hadid wore dresses to show their support for Palestine at the Cannes Film Festival
Bella Hadid and Cate Blanchett made bold fashion statements in support of Palestine at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.
At the premiere of the movie “Apprentice” on Monday, May 20, Blanchett wore a floor-length gown, designed by Colombian French designer Haider Ackerman for Jean Paul Gaultier, featuring a black front and light pink back, with an emerald green lining.
As Blanchett walked the red carpet, she drew attention to the dress’s hidden detail by lifting the back panel to show the green lining on the inside, forming the colors of the Palestinian flag against the red carpet, sparking widespread speculation that Blanchett was using her fashion choice to show solidarity with Palestine.
Meanwhile, Palestinian-American supermodel Bella Hadid wore a red dress made of the same patterns as those used in the Palestinian keffiyeh scarf.
16. Leaked images exposed the horrific conditions Palestinians abducted by Israel face in Israeli detention camps
In a shocking report by CNN, Israeli whistleblowers have exposed the harrowing conditions Palestinians abducted by Israel during its war on Gaza face at an Israeli detention facility.
The accounts from three whistleblowers at Sde Teiman detention center in Israel’s Negev desert paint a grim picture of extreme physical restraint Israeli authorities imposed on Palestinians it abducted, including physical and psychological abuse.
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Isha Jain
Isha Jain
Isha Jain
