Summary of the day …
It is approaching 7pm in Beirut, Tel Aviv and Gaza City. Here are the headlines …
The US wants “real and extended pauses” in fighting in Gaza so assistance can get to people who need it, but the best way to help people would be to end the war, US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Wednesday.
Donald Trump has chosen the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as the next US ambassador to Israel. Huckabee has a track record of hardline, pro-Israel rhetoric and has previously said Israel has a rightful claim to the West Bank Palestinian territory which it has occupied since 1967
The Biden administration had said on Tuesday that Israel has made some good but limited progress in increasing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza and will not limit arms transfers to Israel as it had threatened to a month ago
Israeli military strikes killed at least 22 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, and the health ministry in Lebanon said a further 78 people had been killed there in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of people killed by Israel’s military campaign to 3,365
Israel’s plan to ban the UN Palestinian relief agency, Unrwa, within three months is impossible and unrealistic without causing further untold suffering to the Palestinian people, its director of operations in Gaza has warned
The mother of Sasha Troufanov, who was taken hostage during Hamas’s 7 October attack into Israel, has called for his immediate release after the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group released a new video showing him speaking, likely under duress
A man who worked for the US government has been charged with leaking classified information assessing Israel’s earlier plans to attack Iran
An Israeli court has extended the detention of Eli Feldstein, one of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aides, by a further day. Feldstein has been accused of selectively leaking intelligence reports to foreign media in a way that supported Netanyahu’s position on any potential ceasefire or hostage deal with Hamas
UK prime minister Keir Starmer resisted pressure from an independent MP in parliament to describe the war in Gaza as “genocide”
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that his country has cut off all ties with Israel, and urged incoming US president Trump to “take very different steps towards the region”
Reuters reports that Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has arrived in Iran.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA carried a video showing Grossi meeting the spokesperson for Tehran’s state atomic energy agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi, shortly after his arrival.
Iran’s nuclear programme has remained contentious, with the Islamic Republic insisting it is only a peaceful programme for power generation, while many in the international community, particularly the US and Israel, view it as an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons technology.
Tehran is now believed to be enriching uranium to up to 60% fissile purity, close to the roughly 90% required for a nuclear bomb.
