Closing summary
Iran has urged the US to end its support for Israel’s continuing strikes on Yemen, claiming Israel is trying to use its conflict with the Houthi-led government to drive a wedge between Iran and the US in the negotiations over the future of Tehran’s civil nuclear programme. The strikes have been criticised by the UN-recognised Yemen government based in Aden, which said it had not been consulted and airstrikes alone were not an integrated plan to remove the Houthis from power. Yemen has been divided between the Houthis and the official government since the Houthis captured the capital, Sana’a, in 2015.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she told Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar in a telephone conversation that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is untenable. “Humanitarian aid must resume immediately and should never be politicised. The new aid delivery mechanism should run through humanitarian actors,” she added in a statement on X.
Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the Gaza Strip should be “entirely destroyed” and its inhabitants “leave in great numbers to third countries” after the war, in what would effectively amount to ethnic cleansing.
Smotrich’s comments came after Israel’s security cabinet approved plans for an expanded offensive which could see the forced displacement of most Palestinian people in Gaza and occupation of the territory on an indefinite basis.
In response, Hamas said there was no sense in truce talks (for a temporary ceasefire agreement) with Israel and urged the international community to halt Israel’s “hunger war” against Gaza, a reference to the total blockade on aid deliveries to Gaza.
However, a senior Hamas official said the Palestinian militant group would be open to a five to seven year truce with Israel if certain strict conditions were met.
Israel is reportedly planning to take control of the distribution of humanitarian aid inside Gaza, using private American security contractors, as a condition for lifting its two-month aid blockade into the territory.
The UN has condemned the Israeli proposal to fundamentally alter the aid system in Gaza, which the UN’s humanitarian office said is “designed to further control and restrict supplies” flowing into the Strip.
The Israeli military said it fired on Yemen’s main airport on Tuesday, a day after Israeli forces carried out airstrikes on Hodeidah port in Yemen in response to a Houthi missile landing near Israel’s main air hub on Sunday.
