It’s just after 6.30am in Tel Aviv and Gaza and we’re pausing the blog here. We’ll be back soon with all the latest news. In the meantime, here are the key developments:
Israeli officials said that the ceasefire and hostage deal will not come into effect until Friday at the earliest, dashing the hopes of families who had hoped to see loved ones earlier. In a statement released on Wednesday night, Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said talks on the deal were continuing and that the hostage release “will begin according to the original agreement between the parties, and not before Friday.”
Multiple news outlets later cited anonymous Israeli officials as saying that the halt in fighting would also not begin on Thursday, as had been widely expected. Israel’s public broadcaster Kan, citing an unidentified Israeli official, reported there was a 24-hour delay because the agreement was not signed by Hamas and mediator Qatar. The official said they were optimistic the agreement would be carried out once it was signed.
Under the agreement, Hamas will free at least 50 of the more than 240 mostly Israeli hostages they took on 7 October. In turn, Israel will release at least 150 Palestinian prisoners and allow up to 300 trucks of humanitarian aid into Gaza after more than six weeks of bombardment, heavy fighting and a crippling blockade of fuel, food, medicine and other essentials.
The deal, struck after lengthy and complex talks mediated by Qatar, the US and Egypt, comes more than six weeks after the conflict began on 7 October, when Hamas launched attacks from Gaza into southern Israel, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 240 people hostage. The Israeli offensive has killed between 13,000 and 14,000 people, thousands of them children, according to Palestinian officials.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned that “the war continues” despite the deal for a temporary ceasefire and release of some hostages. At a briefing on Wednesday, he also said part of the deal with Hamas stipulates that representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will be allowed to visit the hostages that remain in Gaza after some of them are returned. The ICRC earlier on Wednesday said it had “not been made aware of any agreement…related to visits by the ICRC to the hostages”.
A coalition of aid agencies have warned that the four-day ceasefire left almost no time to provide effective humanitarian relief to Gaza’s 2.3 million people. In a briefing on Wednesday, they argued the only effective response would be a permanent or durable end to the war and that it remained unclear if there would be sufficient access, particularly to the north of the strip, to allow anything beyond cursory relief.
Palestinian and Israeli officials have published the names of 300 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons, at least some of whom are expected to be released in an exchange with Hamas in Gaza for dozens of Israeli hostages seized by the militant group on 7 October.
The families of hostages held in Gaza have said they are living in a “nightmare” as they endure an agonising wait to see if their loves ones are among those freed. The relatives of some of the 240 hostages in Gaza have said they were in the dark about who would be released and when. Meanwhile, excitement is also growing for Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank that their imprisoned loved ones may also be coming home.
More than 100 Palestinians in Gaza – including 50 from one family – were reported killed on Wednesday as Israeli forces continued attacking across the strip from land, sea and air. Wafa, a Palestinian news agency, said 81 people had been killed since midnight as houses were targeted in the centre of the strip. A further 60 were believed to be dead after bombing in and around the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north.
The head of the UN children’s agency (Unicef) has called the Gaza Strip “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child” and said that the temporary ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas is “far from enough”. Catherine Russell, addressing the UN security council on Wednesday, also said that “all children inside the territory” were facing “what could soon become a catastrophic nutrition crisis”.
The number of journalists killed in the Israel-Hamas conflict since 7 October has increased to at least 53, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The funerals were held in Beirut on Wednesday for Al Mayadeen’s reporter Farah Omar and camera operator Rabih al Mamari who were both killed by an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Tuesday.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement officially confirmed that five of its fighters, including the son of a senior lawmaker, have been killed, amid skirmishes at the Israel-Lebanon border, according to AFP. Abbas Raad, son of the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc Mohammed Raad, was “martyred on the road to Jerusalem”, the group said in a statement – the phrase it has been using to announce the death of its members due to Israeli fire since the war started on 7 October.
Israel’s military has said it intercepted a cruise missile near the southern port city of Eilat. Eilat is in the south of Israel at the northern tip of the Red Sea, and has previously been targeted during the conflict both by long range fire from the Gaza Strip and by Yemen’s Houthi forces.
The western powers on the UN security council face a choice of either demanding Israel lift its stranglehold on humanitarian aid into Gaza or being complicit in Israeli war crimes and collective punishment, foreign ministers from Arab and Muslim countries said on a visit to London on Wednesday.
Pope Francis has faced criticism for allegedly drawing equivalence between Israel and Hamas. During a general audience after meeting with Israeli and Palestinian delegations at the Vatican, the pope reportedly remarked: “They suffer so much, I heard how they both suffer.” He went on: “Wars do this, but here we have gone beyond war: this is not war, it is terrorism.”
US Central Command says one of its destroyers shot down multiple drones launched from Houthi controlled areas of Yemen early on Thursday.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, central command said the drones were shot down “while the US warship was on patrol in the Red Sea”. No damage or injuries were reported to the ship or its crew.
Houthi rebels seized a cargo ship in the Red Sea earlier this week and have previously launched drones that were also shot down by US forces.
On the morning (Yemen time) of November 23, the USS Thomas Hudner (DDG 116) shot down multiple one-way attack drones launched from Houthi controlled areas in Yemen. The drones were shot down while the U.S. warship was on patrol in the Red Sea. The ship and crew sustained no… pic.twitter.com/TqXuaKsgwe
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) November 23, 2023
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