Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday again rejected calls for a ceasefire in Gaza until all of the more than 240 hostages captured by Hamas during its 7 October attack are returned. “There will be no ceasefire without the return of our hostages, we say this to both our enemies and our friends. We will continue until we beat them,” Reuters Netanyahu told air and ground crews at the Ramon air force base in southern Israel, reiterating the government’s position.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah after meeting with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan. A spokesman for Abbas said after the meeting that the Palestinian president had called for an immediate ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Al Jazeera reported small protests against the visit took place.
The US said Blinken reaffirmed the US commitment to the delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance and resumption of essential services in Gaza and made clear that Palestinians must not be forcibly displaced. It has refused to back calls for a ceasefire, arguing that it would allow Hamas to re-group.
Blinken also visited Cyprus, where he spoke to president Nikos Christodoulides about Cypriot proposals for a maritime humanitarian corridor to deliver aid to Gaza.
Israel says that in the combined activities of its ground, air and naval forces in the Gaza Strip, “over 2,500 terror targets have been struck”. Israel launched the campaign on 7 October after the surprise Hamas attack inside Israel’s borders that killed more than 1,400 Israelis, and during which at least 240 people were abducted and taken into Gaza as hostages.
It is reported that at least 9,770 Palestinians, including 4,008 children, have been killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip since 7 October. In addition, the Palestinian Authority health ministry in the Israeli-occupied West Bank says that 152 Palestinians have been killed and 2,100 wounded since 7 October. The claims have not been independently verified.
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari has demanded that Hamas stop using hospital facilities in Gaza, saying “we will not accept Hamas’s cynical use of hospitals to hide their terror infrastructures”. In a Sunday afternoon briefing in English, Hagari presented what Israel claimed was evidence that the Indonesia hospital in Bait Lahia was built over existing Hamas infrastructure that Israel had photographed in 2010.
Evacuations for civilians and heavily wounded Palestinians from Gaza have been suspended since Saturday, according to Egyptian security and medical sources said, following an Israeli strike on ambulances near the entrance to Gaza City’s main Dar al-Shifa hospital. Israel later claimed Hamas was using an ambulance to move its fighters. The health ministry in Gaza has appealed to Egypt to allow Egyptian ambulances into the Gaza Strip to treat the wounded.
The head of the World Food Programme (WFP), Cindy McCain, said on Sunday that the aid entering Gaza was “nowhere near” enough to meet the needs of people there, which she added were growing exponentially. “We need to continue to work together to get safe and sustained access to Gaza at a scale that aligns with the catastrophic conditions facing families there,” McCain said in a statement after visiting the Rafah border crossing
More than 300 US citizens have left Gaza, but there are still those who remain in the besieged Gaza Strip, White House official Jonathan Finer told the CBS show Face the Nation.
More than 100 Britons have been evacuated from Gaza and the government hopes more will be able to leave, the UK’s deputy prime minister said on Sunday, as he urged the reopening of the Rafah crossing. Oliver Dowden said “The first thing we are doing is trying to make sure we get the Rafah crossing open again and I’m hopeful we will make progress on that today. Secondly, we are seeking to have these temporary pauses to allow humanitarian aid in and to get our people out”. The UK government has also refused to back calls for a ceasefire.
Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said on Sunday that there had been “false” reports on negotiations to release Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Qatar’s foreign ministry said that efforts to secure the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza required a “period of calm”, and that leaks from the negotiations are “harmful” and make it difficult for mediators to do their jobs.
The French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, said in Doha on Sunday that too many civilians had died in Israeli strikes on Gaza. Colonna added that an international humanitarian conference, to be hosted by France on 9 November, would cover respecting international law, basic needs such as health, water, energy and food, and would call for concrete action to help civilians in Gaza.
Pope Francis made an urgent plea for a halt to the conflict in Gaza on Sunday, calling for humanitarian aid and help for those injured in order to ease the “very grave” situation. “I keep thinking about the grave situation in Palestine and Israel where many people have lost their life. I pray you to stop in the name of God, cease the fire,” he said, speaking to crowds in St Peter’s Square after his weekly Angelus prayer.
The World Health Organization in Palestine has issued an updated bulletin in which it says it has documented 102 attacks on healthcare facilities within the Gaza Strip since 7 October.
An Israeli drone struck near two ambulance on their way to pick up casualties from overnight strikes in southern Lebanon, wounding four paramedics, local officials have claimed.
Netanyahu has sought to distance himself from comments by a minister in his government that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza is “one of the possibilities” and that the Palestinian population can “go to Ireland or deserts”. Heritage minister Amichai Eliyahu of the Otzma Yehudit party made the comments in a radio interview. Netanyahu said the statements “are not based in reality” and suspended Eliyahu from cabinet meetings. Opposition leader Yair Lapid called for him to be fired, saying the comments harmed Israe’s “international standing”.
Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, has posted an image to social media of his family reunited after his in-laws were trapped inside Gaza by the Israeli blockade and the closure of the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
I am pleased to say my in-laws are safe and back home ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّٰهِ
— Humza Yousaf (@HumzaYousaf) November 5, 2023
We are, of course, elated, but my father-in-law said, "My heart is broken in two, and with my mum, son & grandchildren in Gaza." He then broke down telling me how hard it was saying goodbye to them. pic.twitter.com/rJxccT6SkQ
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged protests in London, Berlin, Paris, Ankara, Istanbul, Sydney and Washington on Saturday to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Hamas’s armed wing said more than 60 hostages were missing due to Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, also said on Hamas’s Telegram account that 23 bodies of Israeli hostages were trapped under the rubble. Reuters could not immediately verify the statement.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has said that more media workers have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war than in any other conflict in the area since it started monitoring in 1992. As of Friday, 36 media workers — 31 Palestinians, four Israelis and one Lebanese — have been killed since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, according to the group.
Agence France-Presse has called on Israel ot provide “an in-depth and transparent investigation” into the exact involvement of its army after a strike severely damaged its office in Gaza City, which has been shelled for weeks. “A strike on the offices of an international news agency sends a deeply troubling message to all the journalists working in such difficult conditions in Gaza,” the news agency’s chairman and CEO Fabrice Fries said.
