Updates: Israel begins ground invasion of Rafah, south Gaza

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Watch this video about Israelis targeting refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.

And to follow all of our coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza, click here.

This live page will close soon. But, before we go, here’s a recap of recent developments:

• Israel launched an invasion of Rafah’s central Shaboura area, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
• At least 591 Palestinians, including 200 children, have been killed and 1,042 injured in Gaza since Israel broke the ceasefire three days ago, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
• Yemen’s Houthis claimed responsibility for missile attacks on Israel.
• Israeli forces have struck villages in southern and eastern Lebanon.
• Israelis have been protesting against Prime Minister Netanyahu and clashing with police in Jerusalem.

Pro-Palestine protesters from the University of California, Los Angeles, are suing the university, accusing it of allowing pro-Israel rallies to frighten and assault people at an encampment that was on campus for months, The New York Times reports.

The encampment was set up as part of nationwide campus protests that called for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The Times said the demonstrators accused the university, as well as police forces, of failing to protect them and shutting down the camp without legal justification, after it was attacked by pro-Israel protesters in April last year.

The new complaint was filed on behalf of 35 pro-Palestinian activists, including “students, faculty members, legal observers, journalists and sympathisers”, the Times said.

It comes as the administration of US President Donald Trump pledged to expel and deport students who joined protests across university campuses last year.

Dozens of protesters have gathered in Dearborn, Michigan, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and condemning Israel’s renewed bombardments of the territory. Dearborn is home to one of the largest Arab-American populations in the US.

Salma Hamamy, one of the protesters, told Al Jazeera that the protesters hope to show that “people are paying attention to what’s happening in Gaza”.

“Just as the death toll has been increasing, so too are the protests, that’s why we are continuing to gather, continuing to make it very clear that the Gazan people are not alone and that we will be protesting in every corner of the world.”

Israeli forces invaded Rafah without even notifying or warning the residents of Rafah.

During the ceasefire’s first phase, Palestinians who used to live in Rafah went back to Rafah. What happened is that the Israeli military started launching artillery shelling, air strikes and strikes from drones, and started extensively firing and shelling Rafah.

People were shocked and started moving as soon as the shelling started.

But we’re also seeing another ground invasion in Beit Lahiya, in the northern parts of the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces also continue to carry out a ground invasion but also artillery shelling and air strikes.

Israeli forces took over the Netzarim Corridor which is in the centre of the Gaza Strip, splitting the northern parts from the southern parts and this is obviously a wide escalation in Israeli operations on the ground against Palestinians.

The military spokesman for the Yemeni group, Yahya Saree, says that the Houthis carried out a “qualitative operation” against Israel.

As we reported earlier, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen in midair.

Saree said that the group used a “Palestine-2 ballistic missile” and targeted an Israeli military position south of the Israeli town of Jaffa.

Israeli forces have raided the town of Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem in the West Bank, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reports.

Dozens of residents suffered from tear gas inhalation as Israeli soldiers hurled canisters towards them, Wafa said.

Separately, Israeli forces raided the town of Yatma in Nablus, arresting one person. The town’s mayor was quoted by Wafa as saying Israeli soldiers raided “several houses”, before detaining Saleh Younes Snoubar from his residence.

The mayor of the city in the occupied West Bank says that 65 percent of local infrastructure has been destroyed during Israeli raids.

Israel regularly attacks and destroys electricity, water and transportation infrastructure, even ripping up roads with military bulldozers, during its raids in the West Bank.

Al Jazeera is reporting from Jordan because it has been banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces initially went into the Netzarim Corridor yesterday in an effort to expand this buffer zone to divide the Gaza Strip in half, then we saw earlier in the day Israeli forces invading the northern part of Gaza, and now invading Rafah, an area in southern Gaza that they had been operating in for months.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Israeli military had issued evacuation orders a day ago for the entire Gaza border periphery — an indication that they were starting more ground raids and invasions once again.

Nonetheless, the Israeli prime minister, a couple of days ago after announcing that Israel was breaking the ceasefire, said that these campaigns are going to continue from land, air and sea and that they are going to be of a much wider and more intense scale than we saw in the 15 months of fighting.

Hundreds of people have been displaced from Gaza’s Shujayea and Beit Hanoun neighbourhoods following Israel’s new forced evacuation orders.

Families are cramped together in makeshift tents in Gaza City’s Yarmouk Stadium.

Displaced people there say the conditions are desperate.

Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reports from Yarmouk Stadium, where families are being forced to live in flimsy tents.

Watch our report from the ground:

Philippe Lazzarini, chief of the UN refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), has warned of a “deepening humanitarian crisis” unfolding in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces have been intensifying a crackdown in the northern West Bank, targeting refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarem, forcing thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes.

Homes and other civilian infrastructure have been “systematically destroyed”, Lazzarini said in a post on X.

“Just yesterday, the Israeli Authorities issued new demolition orders for another 66 buildings in Jenin camp. Dozens of houses have already been destroyed in the camp over the past two months,” he said.

“These demolition orders must not be carried out. Tens of thousands of Palestine Refugees are at risk of renewed long term displacement with Jenin Camp permanently altered.”

A deepening humanitarian crisis in the #WestBank with homes + other civilian infrastructure systematically destroyed.

Just yesterday, the Israeli Authorities issued new demolition orders for another 66 buildings in #Jenin camp.
Dozens of houses have already been destroyed in the…

— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) March 20, 2025

The UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy has condemned Israel’s resumption of hostilities in Gaza.

In a video statement posted on X, Lammy called for an immediate return to a ceasefire. “More bloodshed is in no one’s interest,” he said.

He called on Hamas to release all the captives and on Israel to “abide by international law and to lift the unacceptable restrictions on aid and demand the protection of civilians”.

“There remains no military solution to this conflict,” he added. “A two-state solution remains the only path to a just and lasting peace.”

We urgently want to see a return to a ceasefire.

Diplomacy is the only way to achieve security for both Israelis and Palestinians.

My statement on the situation in Middle East this morning: pic.twitter.com/Sd4v9aURUg

— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) March 20, 2025

Israelis protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem.

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has welcomed the approval of a record number of new housing units in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

“An annual record for approvals for housing units in Gush Etzion, and we are only in the first third of the year,” Smotrich wrote in a post on X, in reference to a report that 500 new housing units were approved today for the Gush Etzion cluster of settlements.

“We are leading a revolution in Judea and Samaria,” he added, using a biblical term for the occupied West Bank, “to strengthen our sovereignty and prevent the danger of the Palestinian state. And this is just the beginning.”

Israeli warplanes launched air strikes on southern and eastern Lebanon, targeting a string of villages, the Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) reports.

NNA said Israeli warplanes fired four rockets targeting an area between the towns of Jbaa, Zhalta, and Snaya near the Jezzine area in southern Lebanon.

In the Bekaa Valley’s Baalbek district in eastern Lebanon, NNA reported that Israeli warplanes targeted an area in the village of Janta.

A US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah began on November 27, but both sides have accused the other of repeated violations. Israel has launched near-daily strikes, mostly in southern Lebanon, that have killed scores of people since the deal took effect.

Video footage verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad agency shows crowds of Israelis protesting under the rain outside the government building in West Jerusalem.

Protesters gathered in front of the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where the government is expected to meet to approve the dismissal of Ronen Bar, the director of the Shin Bet domestic security service.

A statement from Netanyahu’s office earlier this week said the prime minister had an “ongoing distrust” for Bar.

אלפי מפגינים נגד פיטורי ראש שב"כ בקריית הממשלה בירושלים@nakash_noam pic.twitter.com/DDexDOBkzb

— גלצ (@GLZRadio) March 20, 2025

Translation: Thousands protest against the dismissal of the Shin Bet head at the government headquarters in Jerusalem.

Italian protesters gathered outside Rome’s Pantheon monument to show support for Palestinians amid Israel’s escalation on Gaza.

The UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) has confirmed the identity of its staff member who was killed yesterday when two UN guesthouses were hit by an attack in Deir el-Balah.

In a statement, UNOPS identified the staff member as Marin Valev Marinov, 51, from Bulgaria, and added that five other UNOPS colleagues were wounded.

Three of those wounded worked in support of the UN Mine Action Service, while others worked in support of the UN 2720 Mechanism for Gaza. They are all now in hospital, the statement said.

The UN is launching an investigation into the incident and expects “full support” from Israeli authorities, the statement said.

The Israeli military said it had begun a ground operation in Shaboura, Rafah, in southern Gaza, over the past few hours.

Israeli troops “dismantled a number of terrorist infrastructure”, the army claimed, as the death toll in Gaza continues to mount.

The army added that it had also expanded operations in southern Gaza and continued its activity in northern and central Gaza – where bombardment has so far killed hundreds of people, including at least 200 children in the last several days.