Closing summary
It is 3.45pm in Gaza City, Tel Aviv and Beirut. This blog will be closing shortly but you can keep you to date with the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Here are the latest developments from today’s blog:
South Africa on Wednesday denounced Israel’s restriction of aid into Gaza since the weekend, saying it amounted to using starvation as a weapon of war. “Preventing food from entering Gaza is a continuation of Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war as part of the ongoing campaign of what the ICJ ruled to be plausible genocide against the Palestinian people,” the foreign ministry said in a statement, referring to South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ).
The World Food Programme (WFP), the UN’s main food agency, says it has no major stockpile of food in Gaza because it focused on distributing all incoming food to hungry people during phase one of the deal. In a statement to the Associated Press (AP), it said existing stocks are enough to keep bakeries and kitchens running for under two weeks.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told new military chief Lt Gen Eyal Zamir on Wednesday that Israel is “determined” to achieve victory in the multi-front war that began with Hamas’s October 2023 attack. “A very heavy responsibility rests on your shoulders, the results of the war will have significance for generations, we are determined to achieve … victory” Netanyahu told Zamir during his inauguration at the military’s headquarters in the commercial hub of Tel Aviv. Zamir replied: “Hamas has indeed suffered a severe blow, but it has not yet been defeated. The mission is not yet accomplished.”
Arab leaders have endorsed a plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip under the future administration of the Palestinian Authority (PA), presenting an alternative to US president Donald Trump’s widely condemned proposal to take over the territory and displace its people. The prospect of the PA governing Gaza remains far from certain, however, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Israel has ruled out any future role for the body, and Trump closed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) liaison office in Washington during his first term while stepping up support for Israel.
Qatar has dismissed claims by Israel’s Shin Bet that aid it supplied to Gaza went to Hamas. In a statement, Qatar said “aid was never provided to the political or military wing of Hamas,” and that “it is well known in Israel and around the world that all aid sent from Qatar to Gaza was delivered with the full knowledge, support and supervision of the Israeli government and its security agencies”.
Lebanese official media said two people were injured on Wednesday when Israeli drones struck a vehicle in the south, a day after a deadly raid and despite an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire. “Israeli drones carried out more than one strike on a vehicle in Ras Naqura, near a rubbish dump” south of a United Nations peacekeeping position, the National News Agency (NNA) said. “Two siblings who were collecting scrap metal” were injured and taken to hospital, it added.
The wife of French-Israeli national Ohad Yahalomi, who was killed in captivity in Gaza, spoke at his funeral on Wednesday in Israel. Haaretz reports that Batsheva Yahalomi said: “We were certain that if anyone could survive the harsh captivity, it is you, because there is no one as strong as you in body and in spirit.”
A report has been published by the Shin Bet security agency that summarises its investigations into its failures in the lead-up to the Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack. According to the Times of Israel, Shin Bet agency director Ronen Bar acknowledged on Tuesday that if the agency had acted differently “the massacre would have been avoided”.
Amnesty International said on Wednesday that Israel’s attacks on ambulances, paramedics and health facilities during its recent war with Hezbollah should be investigated as war crimes. During the conflict, the Israeli military accused Hezbollah of using ambulances belonging to the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee for transporting fighters and weapons, accusations the group denied. According to Amnesty, “the Israeli military’s repeated unlawful attacks during the war in Lebanon on health facilities, ambulances and health workers, which are protected under international law, must be investigated as war crimes”.
An Israeli rights group says Israel demolished a record number of Palestinian homes in annexed East Jerusalem last year. Ir Amim, which closely tracks settlement activity and demolitions in the city, said on Wednesday that 181 homes were destroyed last year, in addition to dozens of other structures. It said that more recently, Israel appears to have dropped a longstanding policy against demolishing homes during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began last weekend.
A slow convoy of a dozen ambulances and buses brought 25 wounded and sick Palestinian children from Gaza and across Israel on Tuesday. The patients were among the 4,500 people in Gaza believed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be in urgent need of evacuation, and they were transferred to Jordan by a joint operation by the Jordanian army, the country’s health ministry and the WHO.
The US state department has reinstated the “foreign terrorist organization” designation for Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi group, fulfilling an order announced by Donald Trump shortly after he took office. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced on Tuesday the department had restored the designation, which carries with it sanctions and penalties for anyone providing “material support” for the group.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that future talks between Russia and the United States would include discussions on Iran’s nuclear programme, a subject it said had been “touched upon” in an initial round of US-Russia talks last month. In a call with reporters on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia believed that problems around Iran’s nuclear programme needed to be resolved by diplomatic means.
Jeremy Corbyn has urged the prime minister to set up an independent inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Israel’s military assault on Gaza. In a letter to Keir Starmer, the independent MP warned “history is repeating itself” and demanded an independent inquiry over beliefs that the government has taken decisions “that have implicated officials in the gravest breaches of international law”. “Britain has played a highly influential role in Israel’s military operations,” the letter said.
The World Food Programme (WFP), the UN’s main food agency, says it has no major stockpile of food in Gaza because it focused on distributing all incoming food to hungry people during phase one of the deal. In a statement to the Associated Press (AP), it said existing stocks are enough to keep bakeries and kitchens running for under two weeks.
WFP said it may be forced to reduce ration sizes to serve as many people as possible. It said its fuel reserves, necessary to run bakeries and transport food, will last for a few weeks if not replenished soon.
There is also no major stockpile of tents in Gaza, said Shaina Low, communications adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, reports the AP. The shelter materials that came in during the ceasefire’s first phase were “nowhere near enough to address all of the needs,” she said.
“If it was enough, we wouldn’t have had infants dying from exposure because of lack of shelter materials and warm clothes and proper medical equipment to treat them,” she said. At least seven infants in Gaza died from hypothermia during phase one.
