Closing summary
Diplomatic efforts increased on Sunday to reach a long sought-after truce and hostage-release deal in Gaza. The World Economic Forum (WEF) summit opened in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, which US secretary of state Antony Blinken and high-ranking officials from other countries trying to broker a ceasefire are also due to attend. While there is no Israeli participation, the other key players will discuss Israel’s war in Gaza, WEF president Borge Brende has said.
Speaking at the WEF summit, Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, said only the US could stop Israel attacking Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, where more than 1 million people are sheltering. Abbas added that he expected an assault on the city in the next days. “We call on the United States of America to ask Israel to not carry on the Rafah attack. America is the only country able to prevent Israel from committing this crime,” he was quoted as saying. “What will happen in the coming few days is what Israel will do with attacking Rafah because all the Palestinians from Gaza are gathered there,” Abbas said. He added that only a “small strike” on Rafah would force the Palestinian population to flee the Gaza Strip. “The biggest catastrophe in the Palestinian people’s history would then happen,” Abbas warned.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby later said that Israel had agreed to listen to US concerns and thoughts before it launches an invasion of Rafah. “They’ve assured us that they won’t go into Rafah until we’ve had a chance to really share our perspectives and our concerns with them,” Kirby told ABC. “What we’re hoping is that after six weeks of a temporary ceasefire, we can maybe get something more enduring in place,” Kirby said. “The Israelis have started to meet the commitments that (US) President (Joe) Biden asked them to meet,” he said. Biden has previously said that Israel should not go into Rafah without credible plans to protect civilians.
At least 34,454 Palestinian people have been killed and 77,575 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement. An estimated 66 people have been killed and 138 others injured over the past 24 hours, the ministry said.
A Hamas delegation will arrive in Egypt on Monday to deliver the group’s response to Israel’s new hostage and truce counterproposal, a senior official of the Palestinian militant group told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Hamas has previously insisted on a permanent ceasefire – a condition that Israel has rejected. However, the Axios news website, citing two Israeli officials, reported that Israel’s latest proposal includes a willingness to discuss the “restoration of sustainable calm” in Gaza after hostages are released.
During a visit to the headquarters of the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, said that Paris had been making proposals to “avoid war in Lebanon”. “I will head to Beirut to meet political authorities to … make proposals,” he said. “Our responsibility is to mitigate escalation, and that is also our role in UNIFIL. We have 700 soldiers here.” Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group have exchanged near-daily fire since Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed.
We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Updated
Here are the quotes from White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, about Israel having apparently agreed to listen to US concerns before it launches its planned invasion of Rafah (see earlier post at 14.43).
Washington has said it could not support a Rafah operation without an appropriate and credible humanitarian plan.
“They’ve assured us that they won’t go into Rafah until we’ve had a chance to really share our perspectives and our concerns with them,” Kirby told ABC.
“What we’re hoping is that after six weeks of a temporary ceasefire, we can maybe get something more enduring in place,” said Kirby, who also noted that the number of aid trucks into the north of Gaza was starting to increase.
“The Israelis have started to meet the commitments that (US) President (Joe) Biden asked them to meet,” he said.
A Democratic senator has questioned whether the Joe Biden administration has been properly assessing whether Israel was complying with international law, following a Reuters report that stated some senior US officials did not find the country’s assurances credible.
“This reporting casts serious doubt on the integrity of the process in the Biden administration for reviewing whether the Netanyahu government is complying with international law in Gaza,” Senator Chris Van Hollen said in a statement.
The Reuters report found that some senior state department officials have advised secretary of state Antony Blinken that they do not find “credible or reliable” Israel’s assurances that it is using US-supplied weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law.
Blinken must tell Congress by 8 May whether he finds Israel’s assurances credible. According to an internal state department memo, several bureaus within the agency did not find Israel’s statements credible, citing military actions that raised questions about potential violations of international humanitarian law, according to Reuters.
Van Hollen said the Reuters report had found that the recommendations of those bureaus “were swept aside for political convenience”.
“The determination regarding compliance with international law is one of fact and law. The facts and law should not be ignored to achieve a pre-determined policy outcome. Our credibility is on the line,” he said.
Updated
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “couldn’t have done things worse” in the war in Gaza, according to a former speaker of the US House of Representatives.
Speaking on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Nancy Pelosi said she is “not a big fan” of Netanyahu and that he “has never been an agent for peace”.
In the interview, the former speaker said the war is challenging “the conscience of the world”, that the impact of famine on children in Gaza is “almost unforgivable” and criticised the death toll.
Pelosi told the BBC that the actions of Hamas on 7 October were “barbaric”.
She continued:
Israel has the right to defend itself – the manner in which they are doing it is really challenging because Netanyahu has never been an agent for peace.
I’m not a big fan of his, but he couldn’t have done things worse than tens of thousands, whatever the figure may be of people dying, children malnourished, and the uncertainty that is there, and that’s what people are speaking out about.
White House: Israel has agreed to listen to US concerns before any Rafah invasion
Israel has agreed to listen to US concerns and thoughts before it launches an invasion of the city of Rafah in Gaza, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby has said.
Kirby, speaking to ABC, also said Israel has started to meet the commitments it made to the US president, Joe Biden, on allowing aid into the north of Gaza.
Israel has signalled it plans to push ahead with a ground operation in southern Rafah, the only part of Gaza where it has not sent in troops. More than half of the Palestinian territory’s population of 2.3 million has sought shelter in Rafah after fleeing Israeli bombardment from elsewhere.
The long-threatened plan to attack the city has drawn intense opposition from Israel’s allies, including the US, which said it would cause thousands of civilian casualties and further disrupt aid deliveries.
Biden has previously warned that Israel should not go into Rafah without credible plans to protect civilians.
Here are some of the latest images coming out from the newswires:
Student protests on US university campuses over Israel’s war on Gaza showed little sign of letting up over the weekend, with protesters vowing to continue until their demands for US educational bodies to disentangle from companies profiting from the conflict are met.
In what is perhaps the most significant student movement since the anti-Vietnam campus protests of the late 1960s, the conflict between pro-Palestinian students and university administrators has revealed an entire subset of conflicts.
After several years of semi-seasonal student marches through the city to voice positions on topics from racial justice to global heating to gun control, protests over the Israel-Gaza war are the latest headache for authorities. New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, blamed the NYU protests on “professional agitators”; the university fenced off the square where students customarily gather.
Several days earlier, and more than 100 blocks uptown, Columbia University officials had warned student members of the Gaza Solidarity encampment on the quadrangle of the Ivy League college that while they had a right to protest, they were not allowed “to disrupt campus life or harass and intimidate fellow students”.
But then, contentiously, the SRG was called in. Officers arrested – and later released – more than 100 students, inflaming a larger political debate surrounding the university president, Minouche Shafik, in the job less than a year. Students demanded Shafik resign because she’d called the police on to campus – actions that supercharged the spirits of student protest nationally – while accusations of antisemitism have mounted, both against protesters and against Shafik for, her critics say, not sufficiently protecting Jewish students.
You can read the full story by my colleague, Edward Helmore, here:
Israeli media has reported that Benjamin Netanyahu is fearful that the international criminal court (ICC) could imminently issue an arrest warrant against him, as well as top Israeli officials and fighters in the Israeli military.
“While decisions made by the court in The Hague will not affect Israel’s actions, they will set a dangerous precedent that threatens soldiers and public figures,” the Israeli prime minister said in a statement.
One of Israel’s leading television news outlets, Channel 12, reported earlier this month that Israel was increasingly worried by the possibility that the ICC would issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and other top officials for alleged violations of international law in Gaza.
The report said that the prime minister’s Office held an “emergency discussion” on the issue.
Israel is not a member of the court, based in The Hague, and does not recognise its jurisdiction, but the Palestinian territories were admitted as a member state in 2015.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan said in October the court had jurisdiction over any potential war crimes carried out by Hamas fighters in Israel and by Israelis in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas delegation to visit Cairo on Monday for Gaza ceasefire talks - official
A Hamas delegation will visit Cairo, the Egyptian capital, on Monday for talks aimed at securing a ceasefire, a Hamas official has told Reuters.
The delegation will reportedly discuss a ceasefire proposal handed by Hamas to mediators Qatar and Egypt, as well as Israel’s response.
Reuter’s source did not disclose details of the latest proposals.
On Friday, senior Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya said the group had received Israel’s response to its ceasefire proposal and was studying it before handing its response to Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
Prior rounds of talks have failed to bridge the gaps in the two sides’ positions. Hamas wants an accord for a permanent end to the war and for Israel to pull its forces out of the Gaza Strip.
Israel has only offered a temporary ceasefire to free about 130 hostages remaining in captivity and to allow the delivery of more humanitarian aid. It has said it won’t end its operations until it has achieved its aim of destroying Hamas.
Israel’s foreign minister said on Saturday that a planned incursion into Rafah, where more than one million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, could be suspended should a deal emerge to release the Israeli hostages.
US news website Axios, citing two Israeli officials, reported that Israel’s latest proposal includes a willingness to discuss the “restoration of sustainable calm” in Gaza after hostages are released.
It is the first time in the nearly seven-month war that Israeli leaders have suggested they are open to discussing an end to the war, Axios said. These reports have not yet been independently verified.
Updated
French foreign minister calls for calm during second visit to Lebanon
France’s top diplomat on Sunday urged calm in Lebanon during his second visit since cross-border tensions with Israel flared on the back of the war in Gaza.
Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group have exchanged near-daily fire since Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October sparked the war in Gaza.
Fighting has intensified in recent weeks, with Israel striking deeper into Lebanese territory, while Hezbollah has stepped up its missile and drone attacks on military positions in northern Israel.
France has for months sought to de-escalate the cross-border tensions, presenting to Lebanon and Israel an initiative in January seeking to end hostilities.
Dans le Sud-Liban, les casques bleus de l’@UNIFIL_ poursuivent l’objectif de paix et de stabilité dans la région. 🇺🇳
— Stéphane Séjourné (@steph_sejourne) April 28, 2024
Une action nécessaire que je tiens à saluer. pic.twitter.com/WkruGLSuio
During a visit to the headquarters of the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), French foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné reiterated that Paris has been making proposals to “avoid war in Lebanon”.
“I will head to Beirut to meet political authorities to … make proposals,” he said. “Our responsibility is to mitigate escalation, and that is also our role in UNIFIL. We have 700 soldiers here.”
A French diplomatic source told AFP that the volume of cross-border attacks had doubled since 13 April.
Séjourné is set to meet Lebanese officials on Sunday afternoon before holding a press conference.
In March, Beirut submitted its response to the French initiative, which was based on a UN resolution barring the presence of any forces other than the Lebanese military and UNIFIL in south Lebanon.
Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati, who heads a caretaker government with reduced powers, on Friday suggested that Paris was reviewing its proposal and would submit a new one to Beirut.
Séjourné’s trip – which will also see him stop in Riyadh for a summit on Gaza – coincides with a visit to Jerusalem by US envoy Amos Hochstein as Washington also pushes for de-escalation along the Israel-Lebanon border.
Updated
Summary of the day so far...
Diplomatic efforts increased on Sunday to reach a long sought-after truce and hostage-release deal in Gaza. The World Economic Forum (WEF) summit opened in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, which US secretary of state Antony Blinken and high-ranking officials from other countries trying to broker a ceasefire are also due to attend. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, chaired a meeting in Riyadh earlier today with representatives from six Arab countries to discuss Israel’s war in Gaza. They reiterated their calls to see Israel’s military offensive in Gaza end and voiced their opposition to Israel’s planned assault on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, the only corner of the strip that has not seen fierce ground fighting and where more than half of the Palestinian territory’s population of 2.3 million has sought shelter.
Speaking at the WEF summit, Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, said only the US could stop Israel attacking Rafah, adding he expected an assault on the city in the next days. “We call on the United States of America to ask Israel to not carry on the Rafah attack. America is the only country able to prevent Israel from committing this crime,” he was quoted as saying. “What will happen in the coming few days is what Israel will do with attacking Rafah because all the Palestinians from Gaza are gathered there,” Abbas said. He added that only a “small strike” on Rafah would force the Palestinian population to flee the Gaza Strip. “The biggest catastrophe in the Palestinian people’s history would then happen.”
At least 34,454 Palestinian people have been killed and 77,575 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement. An estimated 66 people have been killed and 138 others injured over the past 24 hours, the ministry said.
Updated
Peter Beaumont, a senior international correspondent for the Guardian, has an interesting piece about the sense of growing optimism in the truce talks between Hamas and Israel, and explores what the contours of any agreement could look like.
You can read it in full here:
The Gaza health ministry on Sunday reported at least 66 Palestinians had been killed in the past 24 hours.
In central Gaza, Mohammed al-Hattab said he found his one-year-old baby in the rubble after an Israeli airstrike hit the Nuseirat refugee camp over the weekend.
The baby is being treated for a fractured skull, while his two-year-old daughter’s face was “completely disfigured” in the strike, he told AFP.
Israel carried out airstrikes and shelling in Gaza overnight, hitting three houses in the southern city of Khan Younis, an AFP correspondent said on Sunday, also reporting strikes on Gaza City and Rafah.
Hundreds of protesters shouted “Shame on you!” at White House officials, journalists and celebrities as they arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday in Washington DC, condemning Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza and the media’s coverage of it.
Here are some images of the protests:
Death toll in Gaza reaches 34,454, says health ministry
At least 34,454 Palestinian people have been killed and 77,575 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
An estimated 66 people have been killed and 138 others injured over the past 24 hours, the ministry said.
Most of the casualties since October have been women and children, the ministry has said, and thousands more bodies are likely to remain uncounted under rubble across the devastated enclave.
Palestinian president 'expects Israeli assault on Rafah to happen in the next days'
Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, said at a conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh that only the US could stop Israel attacking Rafah, adding he expected an assault on the city in the next days, Reuters reported.
“We call on the United States of America to ask Israel to not carry on the Rafah attack. America is the only country able to prevent Israel from committing this crime,” Abbas told a special meeting of the World Economic Forum.
“What will happen in the coming few days is what Israel will do with attacking Rafah because all the Palestinians from Gaza are gathered there,” Abbas said.
He added that only a “small strike” on Rafah would force the Palestinian population to flee the Gaza Strip. “The biggest catastrophe in the Palestinian people’s history would then happen.”
Israel has signalled it plans to push ahead with a ground operation in southern Rafah, the only part of Gaza where it has not sent in troops. More than half of the Palestinian territory’s population of 2.3 million has sought shelter in Rafah after fleeing Israeli bombardment from elsewhere.
The long-threatened plan to attack the city has drawn intense opposition from Israel’s allies, including the US, which said it would cause thousands of civilian casualties and further disrupt aid deliveries.
The US president, Joe Biden, has said Israel should not go into Rafah without credible plans to protect civilians, and foreign ministers from the G7 countries have said they opposed a full-scale military operation on the grounds it would be catastrophic for people sheltering there.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says four brigades of Hamas fighters are hiding there and must be tackled. His government has vowed to “destroy” the group, after the 7 October cross border attacks when militants killed about 1,200 people inside Israel and took 250 hostage.
Updated
A senior Qatari official has urged both Israel and Hamas to show “more commitment and more seriousness” in ceasefire negotiations in interviews with Israeli media.
The interviews with the newspaper Haaretz and the Israeli public broadcaster Kan were published and aired on Saturday evening.
In the interviews, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said each side has made its decisions based on political interests and not with the good of civilians in mind.
“We were hoping to see more commitment and more seriousness on both sides,” he told Haaretz.
He did not reveal details of the current state of the talks, other than to say they have “effectively stopped”, with “both sides entrenched in their positions”.
“If there is a renewed sense of commitment on both sides, I’m sure we can reach a deal,” he said.
The Israeli journalists conducted the interviews in Qatar, which hosts Hamas headquarters in Doha and has been a key intermediary throughout the war.
Israel and Hamas have been unable to agree on the conditions and length of a truce and the identities and numbers of Israeli hostages to be released in exchange for freeing Palestinians held in Israel jails.
France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, has given some quotes after a visit to the UN peace keeping force in Naqoura, southern Lebanon.
Al Jazeera has quoted him as saying:
If I look at the situation today if there was not a war in Gaza, we could be talking about a war in southern Lebanon given the number of strikes and the impact on the area.
I will pass messages and make proposals to the authorities here to stabilise this zone and avoid a war.
Earlier this year, Séjourné delivered an initiative that proposed Hezbollah’s elite unit pull back 10 km (6 miles) from the Israeli border, while Israel would halt strikes in southern Lebanon.
In its first ever direct attack on Israel, Iran sent a barrage of more than 300 missiles and drones on 13 April in what it said was retaliation for Israel’s suspected deadly strike on its embassy compound in Damascus on 1 April.
Israel and anti-Israeli forces including Hezbollah – a Lebanese Shia Muslim militant group – have frequently exchanged fire over the UN-drawn blue line that divides Israel and Lebanon since 7 October.
Updated
Britain’s defence ministry is considering sending troops into Gaza to escort trucks of aid being driven off a giant floating pier built by the US military, a UK defence source has said.
The pier is due to be completed next month in the eastern Mediterranean, and then it will be pushed towards the Gaza shore. But the US president, Joe Biden, has pledged that American forces managing the project will not set foot on land there.
That means someone else must be found to take responsibility for one of the most challenging parts of a politically contentious aid delivery.
There is “consideration” of a UK role inside the British defence ministry, a source said, although the challenges mean it seems unlikely. “It’s not a done deal, and the mood music is probably not.”
You can read the full story by my colleagues, Emma Graham-Harrison and Dan Sabbagh, here:
Updated
Israel’s war in Gaza, along with conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere, put “a lot of pressure” on the economic “mood”, Saudi Arabia’s finance minister, Mohammed al-Jadaan, said at one of the first panel discussions of the two-day World Economic Forum (WEF) special meeting in Riyadh.
“I think cool-headed countries and leaders and people need to prevail, and you need to make sure that you actually de-escalate,” Jadaan said.
“The region needs stability.”
The International Monetary Fund has warned that increasing regional instability caused by the war could cause damage to the economies in the Middle East and Africa for a long time to come.
It projected expected growth in the Middle East, north Africa and Pakistan to be a “lacklustre” 2.6% in 2024, down from 3.3% in its previous regional economic assessment forecast.
Updated
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister chairs meeting with Arab countries to discuss war in Gaza – report
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, has chaired a meeting in Riyadh with representatives from six Arab countries to discuss Israel’s war in Gaza, the Saudi Press Agency has reported.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, Palestinian Authority official Hussein Al-sheikh, senior diplomatic adviser to the UAE’s president, Anwar Gargash, and Qatar’s minister of state at the foreign ministry, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, were among those said to be in attendance.
They reiterated their calls to see Israel’s military offensive in Gaza end and voiced their opposition to Israel’s planned assault on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, the only corner of the strip that has not seen fierce ground fighting and where more than half of the Palestinian territory’s population of 2.3 million has sought shelter.
As mentioned in our opening summary, an international summit will take place on Sunday in Saudi Arabia and will have a strong focus on the war, including the humanitarian situation.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will be among leaders attending the World Economic Forum special meeting, organisers said.
Updated
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Middle East crisis.
Israel’s war on Gaza and broader Middle East tensions are expected to get top billing at a Saudi-hosted special meeting of the World Economic Forum that begins on Sunday.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, Palestinian leaders and high-ranking officials from other countries trying to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas are on the guest list for the summit in Riyadh, capital of the world’s biggest crude oil exporter.
Hamas said on Saturday that it was studying the latest Israeli counterproposal regarding a potential ceasefire in Gaza, a day after media reports said a delegation from Egypt, a key mediator in the talks, arrived in Israel in a bid to jump-start stalled negotiations.
Egypt, Qatar and the US have been unsuccessfully trying to seal a new truce deal in Gaza ever since a one-week halt to the fighting in November, when 80 Israeli hostages were exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
There has been “noticeable progress in bringing the views of the Egyptian and Israeli delegations closer”, said al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence services.
But Israel and Hamas have been unable to agree on the conditions and length of a truce and the identities and numbers of Israeli hostages to be released in exchange for freeing Palestinians held in Israel jails.
In other developments:
At least 34,388 Palestinians have been killed and 77,437 others injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Saturday. An estimated 32 people have been killed and 69 others injured over the past 24 hours, the ministry said.
Israel’s foreign minister said on Saturday that a planned incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah could be suspended should a deal emerge to secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Israel Katz told local Channel 12 television: “If there will be a deal, we will suspend the operation.”
Hamas’s armed wing released video on Saturday of two men held hostage in Gaza who are seen alive and urging Israeli authorities to strike a deal for the release of all the remaining captives. Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum identified the two as Keith Siegel and Omri Miran who were abducted by militants during the Hamas attack on southern Israel on 7 October. Siegel also has US citizenship.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement said on Saturday it had targeted northern Israel with drones and guided missiles after cross-border Israeli strikes killed three people, including two of its members. A statement from the group said it “launched a complex attack using explosive drones and guided missiles on the headquarters of the Al Manara military command and a gathering of forces from the 51st Battalion of the Golani Brigade”.
France’s foreign minister will push proposals to prevent further escalation and a potential war between Israel and Hezbollah during a visit to Lebanon on Sunday. Earlier this year, Stéphane Séjourné delivered an initiative that proposed Hezbollah’s elite unit pull back 10 km (6 miles) from the Israeli border, while Israel would halt strikes in southern Lebanon.
Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian men at a military post near the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the army and Palestinian officials reported. The incident occurred when several militants arrived in a vehicle and fired at soldiers stationed at the Salem military post at the entrance to Jenin, the army said in a statement. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli forces withheld their bodies after denying medics access to them, adding two other men had been hospitalised after being injured.
Some senior US officials have advised secretary of state Antony Blinken that they do not find “credible or reliable” Israel’s assurances that it is using US-supplied weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law, according to an internal state department memo reviewed by Reuters. Blinken must report to Congress by 8 May whether he finds credible Israel’s assurances that its use of US weapons does not violate US or international law.
Updated
