Closing summary
It is has gone 6.30pm in Gaza and Tel Aviv. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Israel-Gaza war coverage here and on the Middle East here.
Here is a recap of the latest developments:
Hezbollah identified a top commander, that was killed in a reported Israeli strike outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on Wednesday, as Mohammed Nasser. Reuters’ sources said Nasser was responsible for a section of Hezbollah’s operations at the frontier. One of the sources said a second Hezbollah fighter and a civilian were also killed. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military to Reuters.
Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said the country will reach a state of full readiness to take any action required in Lebanon. He said Israel would prefer to reach a negotiated agreement, but if not, the country knows how to fight. Earlier it was reported that Lebanon’s foreign minister had sent a message to his Israeli counterpart saying the country was seeking peace, not war, in a rare diplomatic engagement between the two nations, who have no formal diplomatic ties.
Israeli forces bombed and battled Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday as tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled for a safe haven after the army issued an evacuation order for a vast swathe of the territory’s south. Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City’s Shejaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters said.
The air force struck “over 50 terror infrastructure sites” across Gaza in 24 hours while ground troops “eliminated terrorists”, located tunnels and found weapons including AK-47 assault rifles, the Israeli military said.
Israeli forces killed five Palestinians in two military operations in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli sources said on Wednesday. A night-time airstrike killed four men at a refugee camp near the town of Tulkarm, while another man was killed by Israeli fire in a separate Israeli operation in Jenin, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. An Israeli military statement said forces “carried out a precise strike on the terrorist cell,” killing four militants it identified as Muhammad Shehade, Muhammad Kanouah, Yazid Shafa and Namer Ibrahim.
The Associated Press (AP) reported that some of the Palestinian people killed in airstrikes on Tuesday by Israel had followed Israeli military instructions to flee their homes, only to be targeted in an area which had been designated as a safe area. Nine members of the Hamdan family were killed.
The UN relief works agency for Palestinians (Unrwa) said 250,000 people had been affected by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt. UN secretary general António Guterres’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the southern evacuation order covers 117 square kilometres (45 square miles), “making it the largest such order since October”.
Almost all patients in the European Gaza hospital and the Red Cross field hospital decided to flee after the evacuation order, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. Though the European Gaza hospital itself is not under evacuation instructions, the order has affected operations. “Now only three patients remain at the European Gaza hospital and three at the ICRC field hospital,” the WHO said, citing figures from Tuesday.
A man was killed in a stabbing attack at a shopping mall in Karmiel in northern Israel which left another person injured. The suspect was shot and killed on the scene. Three members of the suspect’s family have been arrested by Israeli police.
Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, a settlement tracking group said on Wednesday. Authorities recently approved the appropriation of 12.7 square kilometers (nearly 5 square miles) of land in the Jordan Valley, according to a copy of the order obtained by the Associated Press (AP). The news agency said that data from Peace Now, the tracking group, indicates it was the largest single appropriation approved since the 1993 Oslo accords at the start of the peace process.
More than 37,953 Palestinians have been killed and 87,266 have been injured in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. Over the same period, Israel says 320 of its troops have been killed during ground operations in the territory. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
At least 20 Palestinians were detained by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank, reported the Palestinian news agency Wafa. Most of the detentions were in the Hebron region, it said.
Slovenia’s conservative opposition on Wednesday filed a demand for the country’s constitutional court to nullify parliament’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state. Slovenia’s parliament on 4 June passed a decree recognising a Palestinian state, pushing ahead with a vote in defiance of an opposition motion to derail it.
Yemen’s Houthis will release Mohammed Qahtan, a member of the Islah party, under a deal reached with the Saudi-backed government in Aden, the head of the Houthi negotiating delegation at prisoners swap talks in Muscat, told Reuters on Wednesday.
Joe Biden’s envoy Amos Hochstein was in Paris today to talk to French officials about a pathway to defuse tensions in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, according to the New York Times.
Updated
The UN relief works agency for Palestinians (Unrwa) said 250,000 people had been affected by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Almost all patients in the European Gaza hospital and the Red Cross field hospital decided to flee after the evacuation order, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
Though the European Gaza hospital itself is not under evacuation instructions, the order has affected operations, reports AFP
“Now only three patients remain at the European Gaza hospital and three at the ICRC field hospital,” the WHO said, citing figures from Tuesday.
UN secretary general António Guterres’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the southern evacuation order covers 117 square kilometres (45 square miles), “making it the largest such order since October”.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, told the UN security council on Tuesday that the war had now displaced 80% of Gaza’s population.
Forced displacement is once again pushing people to look for safety where there is none in #Gaza.
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 3, 2024
This was yesterday around Hamad City. After fleeing the area affected by the latest evacuation orders from the Israeli Authorities, families were setting up tents among the rubble. pic.twitter.com/voGYPIwpbS
Kaag also said not enough aid was reaching Gaza and that crossings must be reopened, particularly to southern Gaza, to avert a humanitarian disaster.
“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering, their home lives shattered, their lives upended,” she said. “The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery.”
Amid the war, siege and mass displacement, more than 150,000 people have contracted skin diseases in the squalid conditions, the WHO said.
Israeli forces bombed and battled Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday as tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled for a safe haven after the army issued an evacuation order for a vast swathe of the territory’s south.
Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City’s Shejaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters said.
According to AFP, ten days after Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the war’s “intense phase” was winding down, the Israeli military again rained down airstrikes and artillery fire on militants in the Shejaiya district.
The air force struck “over 50 terror infrastructure sites” across Gaza in 24 hours while ground troops “eliminated terrorists”, located tunnels and found weapons including AK-47 assault rifles, the military said.
Thousands have fled the fighting in Shejaiya, among them Umm Bashar al-Jamal, 42, who was now sheltering in Gaza City’s Yarmouk sports stadium.
“We were displaced five days ago,” she told AFP. “We fled from Shejaiya. We woke up to the sound of tanks. The houses were bulldozed. All our homes.”
The Israeli army – which issued an evacuation order for Shejaiya a week ago – on Monday did the same for a larger area near Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, raising fears of renewed heavy battles there.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have again taken to the road, many bundling their scant belongings on top of cars or donkey carts as they sought safety elsewhere.
Slovenian opposition asks court to annul Palestine recognition
Slovenia’s conservative opposition on Wednesday filed a demand for the country’s constitutional court to nullify parliament’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Slovenia’s parliament on 4 June passed a decree recognising a Palestinian state, pushing ahead with a vote in defiance of an opposition motion to derail it. The move by the centre-left coalition followed the recognition of a Palestinian state by three other European countries.
AFP reports that Slovenia’s opposition in the court filing said the decision to go ahead with the parliament vote breached parliamentary rules and the constitution.
“We call upon the constitutional court … to declare it null and void,” reads the court filing by the Slovenian Democratic party (SDS), led by former prime minister Janez Janša, and the Nova Slovenija party (NSi). It accused the government of “undermining democratic procedures,” according to the filing published on SDS’s website.
SDS, which says the government’s recognition “causes long-term damage to Slovenia by supporting the terrorist organisation Hamas”, had requested an advisory referendum on the recognition to precede the parliamentary vote, reports AFP.
By filing the motion just ahead of the 4 June vote, the SDS had expected to delay it since the law sets a 30-day deadline before lawmakers can vote on a disputed bill.
But lawmakers of prime minister Robert Golob’s ruling Freedom Movement party (GS) rejected the SDS motion, claiming it “abused the referendum mechanisms”. According to AFP, they quoted interpretations according to which the 30-day deadline referred only to bills rather than to decrees such as one recognising a foreign state.
Spain, Ireland and Norway recognised a Palestinian state a week before Slovenia, bringing the number of countries that do so to 146 out of the 193 UN member states.
Updated
Five Palestinians killed in Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank
Israeli forces killed five Palestinians in two military operations in the occupied West Bank where tensions have risen because of the Gaza war, Palestinian and Israeli sources said on Wednesday, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The news agency reports that a night-time airstrike killed four men at a refugee camp near the town of Tulkarm. The Palestinian Authority health ministry said the four were “killed as a result of the occupation’s bombing of Nur Shams camp”.
AFP reports that an Israeli military statement said forces “carried out a precise strike on the terrorist cell,” killing four militants it identified as Muhammad Shehade, Muhammad Kanouah, Yazid Shafa and Namer Ibrahim.
The statement said the four were “attempting to plant explosive devices” targeting Israeli soldiers operating in the area.
According to the Palestinian official news agency Wafa, the dead, aged 20 to 25, were killed by a drone near the centre of the camp.
Another man was killed by Israeli fire in a separate Israeli operation in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. The statement identified the man as Nidal Ziad al-Amer, 23.
An Israeli security official told AFP that al-Amer was killed as the Israeli army tried to arrest him for militant activity.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis will release Mohammed Qahtan, a member of the Islah party, under a deal reached with the Saudi-backed government in Aden, the head of the Houthi negotiating delegation at prisoners swap talks in Muscat, told Reuters on Wednesday.
Updated
Hezbollah confirm top commander killed in reported Israeli strike in Lebanon
A Hezbollah statement has identified the commander that was killed in the Israeli strike reported earlier outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre (see 13.11 BST).
Reuters reports that the militant group named him as Mohammed Nasser, declaring him a martyr without providing further details. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military to Reuters.
Reuters’ sources said Nasser was responsible for a section of Hezbollah’s operations at the frontier, where the sides have been waging their worst conflict since a war in 2006.
He was killed in an Israeli strike outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, the sources said. One of the sources said a second Hezbollah fighter and a civilian were also killed.
They said Nasser was of the same rank and importance to the group as Taleb Abdallah, a top commander who was killed by an Israeli strike in June, prompting Hezbollah to fire its largest barrages of drones and rockets yet in retaliation.
Updated
Settlement-tracking group says Israel has made largest West Bank land seizure in three decades
Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, a settlement tracking group said on Wednesday, reports the Associated Press (AP).
Authorities recently approved the appropriation of 12.7 square kilometers (nearly 5 square miles) of land in the Jordan Valley, according to a copy of the order obtained by the AP. The news agency says that data from Peace Now, the tracking group, indicate it was the largest single appropriation approved since the 1993 Oslo accords at the start of the peace process.
According to the PA, the land seizure was approved late last month but only publicised on Wednesday. It comes after the seizure of 8 square kilometers (roughly 3 square miles) of land in the West Bank in March and 2.6 square kilometers (1 square mile) in February.
That makes 2024 by far the peak year for Israeli land seizure in the West Bank, Peace Now said.
The AP reports that the parcels are contiguous and located north-east of the West Bank city of Ramallah, where the western-backed Palestinian Authority is headquartered. By declaring them state lands, the Israeli government has opened them up to being leased to Israelis and prohibited private Palestinian ownership, writes the AP.
Prominent human rights organisations have pointed to Israel’s rule over the West Bank in accusing it of the international crime of apartheid, allegations Israel rejects as an attack on its legitimacy.
The AP reports that Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich has turbocharged land seizure and settlement construction since being granted expanded powers over Israel’s administration of the occupied territory under the current governing coalition.
Smotrich laid out his plans for the West Bank at a conference for his ultranationalist Religious Zionism party last month, a recording of which was obtained by Peace Now. He said he intended to appropriate at least 15 square kilometers (nearly 6 square miles) of land in the West Bank this year.
He also promised to expand the establishment of farming outposts, which hard-line settlers have used to extend their control of rural areas, and to crack down on Palestinian construction.
The declaration published on Wednesday was signed under the authority of Hillel Roth, a deputy Smotrich appointed earlier this year to boost settlement expansion and state land declarations in the West Bank, Peace Now said. The Ap reports that the declaration came a day after Peace Now said Israeli authorities were scheduled to approve or advance construction of more than 6,000 new settlement homes in the occupied West Bank in the coming days.
The AP reported that Cogat, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs in the West Bank, was not immediately available for comment.
Updated
Summary of the day …
A senior field commander in Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was reportedly been killed in an Israeli strike outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre. Saudi media identified the person killed as Abu Ali Nasser, head of one of three Hezbollah regional divisions in south Lebanon
Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant has said the country will reach a state of full readiness to take any action required in Lebanon. He said Israel would prefer to reach a negotiated agreement, but if not, the country knows how to fight. Earlier it was reported that Lebanon’s foreign minister had sent a message to his Israeli counterpart saying the country was seeking peace, not war, in a rare diplomatic engagement between the two nations, who have no formal diplomatic ties
The New York Times reported Joe Biden’s envoy Amos Hochstein was in Paris today to talk to French officials about a pathway to defuse tensions in northern Israel and southern Lebanon
A man has been killed in a stabbing attack at a shopping mall in Karmiel in northern Israel which left another person injured. The suspect was shot and killed on the scene. Three members of the suspect’s family have been arrested by Israeli police
More than 37,953 Palestinians have been killed and 87,266 have been wounded in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. Over the same period, Israel says 320 of its troops have been killed during ground operations in the territory. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict. Israel continued to carry out multiple strikes on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday
Associated Press reports that some of the Palestinian people killed in airstrikes Tuesday by Israel had followed Israeli military instructions to flee their homes, only to be targeted in an area which had been designated as a safe area. Nine members of the Hamdan family were killed
Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that at least 20 Palestinians have been detained by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank. Most of the detentions were in the Hebron region
Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant has said the country will reach a state of full readiness to take any action required in Lebanon. He said Israel would prefer to reach a negotiated agreement, but if not, the country knows how to fight, Reuters reports.
Israel and anti-Israeli forces inside Lebanon, including the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, have been exchanging near constant fire since 7 October.
Earlier it was reported that Lebanon’s foreign minister had sent a message to his Israeli counterpart saying the country was seeking peace, not war, in a rare diplomatic engagement between the two nations, who have no formal diplomatic ties.
Haaretz reports that Israeli security forces blindfolded and arrested the mother, brother and sister of the suspect killed by police after a stabbing attack killed one person in the Israeli city of Karmiel.
It cited the local police chief, Yitzhak Abuhatzira, who said the three family members had arrived at the scene after recognising the suspect from pictures shared on social media. Police earlier said the suspect was an Arab-Israeli from Nahf.
Two men in their 20s were injured in the attack, one of whom has subsequently died.
Israel kills senior Hezbollah commander in drone strike outside Tyre – reports
Reuters is reporting that security sources have told it that a senior field commander in Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed in the Israeli strike reported earlier outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre.
Earlier Lebanon’s national news agency reported that there were two people injured as ambulances attended the scene.
Emanuel Fabian, military correspondent at the Times of Israel, posted on social media to state Saudi media has identified the person killed as Abu Ali Nasser. Fabian says he was “the head of the terror group’s Aziz unit, one of three regional divisions in south Lebanon The unit is responsible for the eastern district on the Israel-Lebanon border.”
Lebanese media report an Israeli drone strike on a vehicle near the Italian Hospital in the coastal city of Tyre. pic.twitter.com/nrbCa9vq9t
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) July 3, 2024
Over 400 people have been killed inside Lebanon by Israeli forces since 7 October, including at least 80 civilians. Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced from their homes in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.
According to Hezbollah’s own military media figures, about 330 of its fighters have been killed by Israel. On the Israeli side of the UN-drawn blue line that separates the two countries there have been about 10 civilians and 18 Israeli troops killed.
Israeli media is reporting that Lebanon’s foreign minister Abdullah Bou Habib has sent a message to his Israeli counterpart Israel Katz saying “We are interested in peace, we do not want war”.
Israel and Lebanon do not have direct diplomatic relations, and the message was conveyed via Azeri foreign minister Jeyhun Bayramov.
Lebanon’s national news agency reports that ambulances are at the scene of a suspected Israeli drone strike on a vehicle near Tyre. Two people were reported to be injured.
More details soon …
Haaretz reports that one of the people stabbed in a suspected terror attack in a shopping mall in the Israeli city of Karmiel has died. Two men in their 20s were said to be the victims of the attack. Police said the suspect, who was killed at the scene, was an Arab-Israeli from Nahf.
More details soon …
More than 37,953 Palestinians have been killed and 87,266 have been wounded in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
Over the same period, Israel says 320 of its troops have been killed during ground operations in the territory.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that at least 20 Palestinians have been detained by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank. Most of the detentions were in the Hebron region.
Local media sources are reporting that Israel has launched another strike on the Shejaiya area of eastern Gaza City, with videos being shared on social media showing a large plume of smoke over the city.
The New York Times is reporting that Joe Biden’s envoy Amos Hochstein will be in Paris today to talk to French officials about a pathway to defuse tensions in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, where Israel and anti-Israeli forces have been exchanging almost constant fire since 7 October.
Ten of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese civilians have had to flee their homes on either side of the UN-drawn blue line which separates the two countries. Hezbollah, working inside Lebanon, has said it is fighting to support Palestinians in Gaza while Israel’s assault on the territory continues.
Associated Press reports that some of the Palestinian people killed in airstrikes yesterday by Israel had followed Israeli military instructions to flee their homes, only to be targeted in an area which had been designated as a safe area.
The Hamdan family – around a dozen people from three generations – fled their home in the middle of the night after the Israeli military ordered an evacuation from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
They found refuge with extended relatives in a building further north, inside an Israeli-declared safe zone. But hours after they arrived, an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday afternoon hit their building in the town of Deir al-Balah, killing nine members of the family and three others.
In all, five children and three women were among the dead, according to hospital records and a relative who survived.
Israel’s police have issued a statement about the stabbing in Karmiel, writing:
Initial report of a suspected terror stabbing attack in the city of Karmiel, resulting in two men being injured, one seriously and one lightly (according to medical sources). The attacker has been neutralized at the scene, and significant police forces from the northern district are currently on location.
Hebrew media outlet Ynet has an updated report on the suspected stabbing attack in Karmiel.
It cited Eli Bin, head of the Magen David Adom emergency services as saying that police defined the incident as a “suspected attack” and neutralised the attacker on the scene. First aid is being carried out on the wounded at the scene.
Karmiel is in northern Israel, to the north-west of the sea of Galilee.
Updated
A stabbing attack in a shopping centre in the Israeli city of Karmiel has left two people wounded, and the suspect has been killed, Israeli media is reporting. Police have said it is a suspected terror attack. Israeli Emergency Services have said one of the people wounded is in a serious condition.
More details soon …
Reuters is carrying more details of the casualties in Gaza today after further military action by Israel.
In Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, two Israeli airstrikes killed five Palestinians, health officials said. In Shejaiya, an eastern suburb of Gaza City, an airstrike killed four and wounded 17, medics said.
Another airstrike hit a car in the southern city of Deir al-Balah, killing three people, health officials said.
Reuters reports Deir Al-Balah is crowded with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forced to flee homes elsewhere in Gaza, and residents complain of acute shortages of drinking water and inflated prices for basic foodstuff.
“There is no clean water to drink. We are forced to buy salty or unclean water at a high price,” said Shaban, 47, a father of five.
“Most of the displaced suffer from abdominal pains and diseases such as because of the unhealthy water, the lack of decent food and the pollution as many live near sewage pools,” he told Reuters via a chat app.
Pictures are coming over the news wires showing the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes being brought to the Aqsa Martyrs hospital for funeral prayers and burial in the Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera is reporting that “at least four people have been killed and 17 injured in Israeli bombardment in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighbourhood”.
More details soon …
Updated
Yehuda Cohen, whose son Nimrod is one of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, has said he will follow Benjamin Netanyahu to the US in order to continue protesting against the lack of progress on a deal to free the hostages.
The Times of Israel quotes Cohen saying “Netanyahu will cushion himself with sympathy in the US, and we cannot stand by. Without Netanyahu disappearing from the political map, there will be no progress.”
Cohen was also critical of the release earlier this week of about 50 Palestinian prisoners, saying “They talk, but nothing happens. The Israeli government gives prisoners, so why should they release hostages?”
Lebanon’s national news agency is reporting further Israeli attacks inside the country. It says that artillery shells were fired at the town of Kfarkela, which is adjacent to the UN-drawn blue line which separates Lebanon from Israel.
Overnight in the US news network CNN, citing a White House official, has reported that US president Joe Biden and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will probably meet when Netanyahu is in Washington towards the end of the month.
“They will likely see each other when the prime minister is here over the course of that week. But we have nothing to announce at this time,” the official told the network.
In its latest operational update, Israel’s military has claimed to have “eliminated terrorists, located weapons, and dismantled terror infrastructure sites” inside the Gaza Strip. It says troops “continue operational activities in central Gaza” and are carrying out “targeted, intelligence-based operational activity in the Rafah area”.
The claims have not been independently verified.
320 Israeli soldiers have been killed during its ground operation inside Gaza since 7 October. The health authority in the territory has said that nearly 38,000 people have been killed by the Israeli military assault.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
Israeli police clashed with Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank as they dismantled an illegal settler outpost early on Wednesday.
Video seen by Reuters showed police excavators destroying makeshift structures at the outpost. Settlers sat down across a small road to block access for the police, but officers dragged them out of the way.
Haaretz, citing an Israeli civil administration official, reported that stone-throwing by the settlers damaged a vehicle. It reported “settlers set fire to tires and vehicles and threw stones at police, who used crowd dispersion means against demonstrators.”
The outpost, in a rural area, is illegal under Israeli and international law, but in many cases the police do not enforce the law.
Senior figures in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have backed the settlement of the occupied West Bank. Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich recently told colleagues that he was “establish[ing] facts on the ground in order to make Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the occupied West Bank] an integral part of the state of Israel”.
“We will establish sovereignty … first on the ground and then through legislation. I intend to legalise the young settlements [illegal outposts],” Smotrich said in comments reported by Haaretz. “My life’s mission is to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
In January the Israeli military quietly handed over significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants working for Smotrich.
Palestinian news agency Wafa has reported that “a number of Palestinian were killed and injured at dawn” by Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Its correspondents reported “violent explosions, artillery shelling, and gunfire from military vehicles, quadcopter drones, and an Apache helicopter” in the Shejaiya area.
It reported that paramedics retreived the bodies of seven people from under the rubble of one building, and that search and rescue operations continue.
Al Jazeera is reporting that one of the people killed by Israeli attacks this morning was a doctor.
Here are the fuller quotes from Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, about the prospect for peace across the UN-drawn blue line that separates Israel and Lebanon.
He told Associated Press:
If there is a ceasefire in Gaza, we will stop without any discussion. If the war stops, this military support [by Hezbollah for Palestinians in Gaza] will no longer exist.
If what happens in Gaza is a mix between ceasefire and no ceasefire, war and no war, we can’t answer now, because we don’t know its shape, its results, its impacts.
Israel can decide what it wants: limited war, total war, partial war. But it should expect that our response and our resistance will not be within a ceiling and rules of engagement set by Israel. If Israel wages the war, it means it doesn’t control its extent or who enters into it.
Overnight Israel’s military has claimed to have struck at multiple targets inside Lebanon. It says that “Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure sites”, “military structures” and “threats” were targeted in six different places.
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider crisis in the Middle East.
The Israeli prime minister and a top military chief have insisted that the war with Hamas would be a “long campaign”, rejecting reports that generals could wind down operation in Gaza before achieving all of their aims.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country would not give in to the “winds of defeatism”, after The New York Times quoted Israeli security officials as saying top generals see a truce as the best way to secure the release of remaining hostages, even if that means not achieving all of the war goals.
“I am here to make it unequivocally clear: This will not happen,” Netanyahu said, adding “we will not capitulate to the winds of defeatism, neither in The New York Times nor anywhere else. We are inspired by the spirit of victory.”
“This is a long campaign, with determination and perseverance we are accomplishing our missions and wearing down the other side,” a top army commander told troops after touring Israel’s operations in southern Gaza.
More on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.
Hundreds of Palestinians were fleeing Khan Younis in southern Gaza after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) once again bombarded the largely ruined city and ordered a mass evacuation of residents. Witnesses reported strikes on Tuesday in and around the city, where eight people were killed and more than 30 were wounded, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent and a medical source, Agence France-Presse said
The United Nations said that the order to evacuate was the largest such edict in the Gaza Strip since 1.1 million people were told to leave the north of the territory in October. UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said “an evacuation of such a massive scale will only heighten the suffering of civilians and drive humanitarian needs even higher.”
The deputy leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has said the only sure path to a ceasefire on the Lebanon-Israel border is a full ceasefire in Gaza. “If there is a ceasefire in Gaza, we will stop without any discussion,” Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, said in an interview with The Associated Press. But, he said, if Israel scales back its military operations without a formal ceasefire agreement and full withdrawal from Gaza, the implications for the Lebanon-Israel border conflict are less clear.
French president Emmanuel Macron urged Benjamin Netanyahu to prevent a “conflagration” between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, during a telephone call between the two leaders. Macron “reiterated his serious concern over a deepening of tensions between Hezbollah and Israel … and underscored the absolute need to prevent a conflagration that would harm the interests of Lebanon as well as Israel,” the French presidency said in a statement.
Far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich protested against an Israeli decision to increase the electricity supply to Gaza. Defense minister Yoav Gallant has described the work, which will enable a desalination plant in Gaza to produce more water, as “a basic humanitarian need” but Smotrich has called it a “folly”, asking prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene
The mother of rescued hostage Noa Argamani died in Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv, Israeli media reports. Liora Argamani, who was 61, had been terminally ill, and was reunited with her daughter last month
