Summary of the day so far
We’ll be closing the blog now, thank you for following. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he will not accept any ceasefire deal that requires the departure of Israeli troops from Gaza or the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners. Netanyahu poured cold water on any deal that required Israeli soldiers to leave Gaza permanently without a clear military victory, saying the war in Gaza was not “another round” with Hamas and he would not end it without achieving Israel’s goals.
The Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said he was willing to travel to Cairo to discuss proposals for a potential new deal. Haniyeh said the group’s aim remained to end Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and secure a full pullout of Israeli forces from the territory. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad secretary general, Ziad al-Nakhala, ruled out the group engaging in any ceasefire that does not involve the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
Egypt, Qatar and the US are hoping to see if the two sides can be persuaded to accept a ceasefire lasting at least a month, which would offer the chance for almost all the hostages to be released. The proposal, described as a framework, was hammered out during talks in Paris. Leaks suggest the first phase of the proposed ceasefire would include the release of about 35 hostages including civilian women, older men and hostages who are ill or injured, in return for a six-week pause of the fighting. The second stage would be focused on male and female soldiers, and the third stage would see the release of the bodies of dead hostages.
Joe Biden has said he has decided how to respond to a drone attack on a US service base on Sunday that killed three US service personnel and injured dozens in Jordan. The US president did not elaborate on his decision but said he wasn’t looking for a wider war in the Middle East. The US could opt for a tiered response involving “multiple actions”, the White House’s national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said Israel intends to retain military control of Gaza after the war and run it in the same way it runs the occupied West Bank. Addressing members of the Knesset on Tuesday, Gallant said the work inside the Gaza Strip, where Israel claims to be clearing out Hamas terror infrastructure, was “finite” and was making progress despite challenges.
Israeli forces dressed in doctors’ scrubs and women’s clothes killed three Palestinian militants in an undercover operation in a hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. The units entered Ibn Sina hospital on the outskirts of the city’s refugee camp early on Tuesday, CCTV footage of the aftermath of the operation showed. The hospital’s medical director said the three killed were “executed in cold blood”.
The Israel Defense Forces denied reports that its forces stormed al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, or that it ordered people inside to evacuate at gunpoint. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) on Tuesday said Israeli forces had demanded displaced people and its teams to evacuate the building “under the threat of arms”. A later update said Israeli tanks were stationed in the front yard of the hospital as Israeli forces were firing live ammunition and smoke grenades at displaced individuals and its staff. The PRCS said a woman was killed and nine others injured by shrapnel from Israeli tank fire near al-Amal hospital and its headquarters.
The Israeli military said it had channelled seawater into Gaza’s tunnels in an effort to destroy the sprawling underground network used by Hamas militants. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statement said it was “part of a range of tools deployed by the IDF to neutralise the threat of Hamas’s subterranean network of tunnels.” Israeli officials have said Hamas’s underground system has been key to its operations on the battlefield.
A total of 26,751 Palestinians have now been killed and 65,636 wounded by Israeli military action in Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures from the Gaza health ministry on Tuesday. The figures include 114 Palestinians killed and 249 injured in the past 24 hours. Israel claims it has killed about 9,000 enemy combatants while losing 221 of its own forces in the ground campaign inside the territory.
Israel has handed over to Palestinian authorities the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in recent weeks, health officials in the Palestinian territory have said. The bodies, which had been held in Israel, were handed over on Tuesday through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing and would be buried in mass graves in the city of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip, the officials said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged donors not to suspend funding to the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA after Israel accused some of its workers of taking part in Hamas’s 7 October attack. “Cutting off funding will only hurt the people of Gaza who desperately need support,” the WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. International aid agencies have said they are “deeply concerned and outraged” at the “reckless” decision by major donors to cut funding to a UN Palestinian aid agency, which provides aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.
Protesters gathered at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza for the seventh consecutive day aiming to block trucks carrying humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. The group, including family members of some of those being held hostage, said “no aid should pass until the last of the hostages returns”.
Britain will consider recognising a Palestinian state as part of concerted efforts to bring about an “irreversible” peace settlement, the foreign secretary, David Cameron, has said. Cameron will this week make his fourth visit to the Middle East since being appointed foreign secretary in November as he presses for a de-escalation of tensions. The UK government has not changed its policy on the best timing to recognise Palestine as an independent state but wishes to give Palestinians a sense of a political horizon by highlighting the possibility is part of UK thinking, the Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said after Cameron’s comments.
The UK said it was “alarmed” by a conference held in Jerusalem on Sunday calling for Israeli resettlement of the Gaza Strip and “voluntary migration” of the Palestinian population elsewhere, which was attended by several Israeli cabinet ministers. “The UK’s position is clear: Gaza is occupied Palestinian territory and will be part of the future Palestinian state,” the UK Foreign Office said on Tuesday.
Yemen’s Houthis are ready for a “long-term confrontation” with the US and UK, a commander has said. “The Americans, the British and those who coordinated with them must realise the power of the sovereign Yemeni decision and that there is no debate or dispute over it,” Mohamed al-Atifi said.
Updated
Dozens of protesters gathered outside the offices of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Beirut on Tuesday after more than 10 western countries said they would suspend funding after Israel accused some of its workers of taking part in Hamas’ 7 October attack.
“We are afraid for the future of UNRWA,” Abu Mohammed, 65, a Palestinian refugee, told AFP as he urged countries to “reverse their decision”.
All our children study in UNRWA schools and most of our medical care is covered by the agency … The suspension of aid would be catastrophic from a social and humanitarian perspective.
UNRWA, formed in 1949 after the creation of Israel, supports more than 5.6 million Palestinians in the occupied territories, including Jerusalem, and refugees and their descendants in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
Lebanon hosts an estimated 250,000 Palestinian refugees, most of whom live in poverty.
“Even though I have a job, UNRWA helps me pay my rent and buy food,” said Dima Dahouk, 40, the sole breadwinner for her four children. “The situation is terrible,” she added.
Updated
The UN’s coordinator for Gaza aid has said no organisation can “replace or substitute” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), after Israeli allegations that some employees were involved in the 7 October Hamas attacks.
Sigrid Kaag said:
There is no way that any organization can replace or substitute [the] tremendous capacity, the fabric of UNRWA – [its] ability and their knowledge of the population in Gaza.
As we reported earlier, the World Health Organization has urged donors not to suspend funding to UNRWA, arguing that doing so “will only hurt the people of Gaza who desperately need support”.
International aid agencies have said they are “deeply concerned and outraged” at the “reckless” decision by major donors to cut funding to the aid agency.
Sweden on Tuesday became the latest country to announce it will pause funding for UNRWA, joining the US, UK, Germany and others.
Updated
UK 'alarmed' by conference in Jerusalem calling for Israeli resettlement of Gaza
The UK has said it was “alarmed” by a conference held in Jerusalem on Sunday calling for Israeli resettlement of the Gaza Strip and “voluntary migration” of the Palestinian population elsewhere, which was attended by several Israeli cabinet ministers.
A statement from the UK Foreign Office reads:
The UK’s position is clear: Gaza is occupied Palestinian territory and will be part of the future Palestinian state.
Settlements are illegal. No Palestinian should be threatened with forcible displacement or relocation.
Sunday’s event, called the “Victory of Israel Conference: Settlement Brings Security”, hosted speeches by well-known extremists in Netanyahu’s cabinet including the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.
In their remarks, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich called for the re-establishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza and the north of the West Bank, known to some Israelis as Samaria.
The conference was attended by approximately 1,000 people, including 11 cabinet ministers and 15 members of the Knesset, some of them members of the prime minister’s Likud party.
Updated
Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, met visiting Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in Washington earlier today to discuss ongoing efforts to secure a new hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas, the White House’s national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said.
Sullivan will also be meeting later today at the White House with several family members of hostages still being held in Gaza, Kirby told reporters.
Updated
US could respond with 'multiple actions' to Jordan drone attack, says White House
The US could have a tiered response to the drone strike that killed three American service personnel and wounded dozens others, the White House has said.
The White House’s national security spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters that the US response could involve multiple actions rather than a single action. Kirby said:
It’s fair for you to expect that we will respond in an appropriate fashion and it is very possible that what you’ll see is a tiered approach here, not just a single action, but essentially multiple actions.
His comments came after Joe Biden said he had made up his mind on how to respond to the drone attack in Jordan.
The Israeli military said it has channelled seawater into Gaza’s tunnels in a bid to destroy the sprawling underground network used by Hamas militants.
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statement said it had “implemented new capabilities to neutralise underground terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip by channelling large volumes of water into the tunnels”. It added:
It is part of a range of tools deployed by the IDF to neutralise the threat of Hamas’s subterranean network of tunnels.
A Wall Street Journal report in December said the Israeli army had begun pumping seawater from the Mediterranean into Hamas’s underground tunnels in Gaza.
There were 1,300 tunnels over 500km in Gaza at the start of the war in October, according to a study from the US military academy West Point.
Israeli officials have said Hamas’s underground system has been key to its operations on the battlefield. Israel believes that many of the hostages taken by Hamas during the 7 October attacks have been or continue to be held in the vast network of tunnels.
Experts have warned that flooding the tunnel network with seawater risks “ruining the basic conditions for life in Gaza”, one of the elements of the crime of genocide.
Updated
Israeli tanks are stationed in the front yard of al-Amal hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has said.
In an update posted to social media, the organisation said Israeli forces are firing live ammunition and smoke grenades and displaced individuals and its staff. It said:
Fires have broken out in tents within the confines of the PRCS Headquarters.
The post added that it was deeply worried about the safety of its teams, the wounded and thousands of displaced people in the building.
Israeli tanks are currently stationed in AL-Amal hospital front yard, firing live ammunition and smoke grenades at the displaced individuals and PRCS staff.
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) January 30, 2024
We deeply worry for the safety of our teams, the wounded, the sick, and thousands of displaced people in the building. 🔥…
The framework for a deal that could lead to a ceasefire and the release of hostages held in Gaza was discussed by Israel’s war cabinet on Monday evening.
The proposal for a deal was hammered out between Egypt, Qatar, the US and Israel on Sunday in talks in Paris. The location of the talks meant that Hamas negotiators could not be present.
Described as a framework, the proposal has not yet been put to a vote in the Israeli war cabinet, a senior Israeli official told NBC on Tuesday.
The last deal was approved first by the Israeli war cabinet, then by the larger security cabinet, and finally by the full government. The official told the outlet that any future deal would likely go through the same process.
They noted that a major sticking point remains the duration of a pause in fighting. Israel has said it would only be temporary, Hamas has demanded a permanent ceasefire. The Israeli official said:
If there’s going to be a deal, there will have to be a meeting of minds. We won’t agree to an end to the hostilities. It’s clear from our perspective it has to be a time out in the fighting.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he will not accept any ceasefire deal that requires the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners or the departure of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s secretary general Ziad al-Nakhala has ruled out the group engaging in any ceasefire that does not involve the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
Updated
Canada has announced a new C$40m (£23.5m) funding to provide food, water and other humanitarian assistance after pausing funding for the UN’s relief agency in the region.
Canada has suspended “additional funding” for UNRWA following allegations by Israel that some of its staff were involved in the Hamas attacks on 7 October.
The bulk of the new funding will go to the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.
Updated
Iran has summoned the British ambassador, state media reported, a day after the UK and US announced sanctions on a network purportedly involved in targeting Iranian dissidents and opposition activists for assassination.
Simon Shercliff, the British ambassador in Tehran, was summoned to the Iranian foreign affairs ministry and “informed of our country’s strong protest” following the “continuation of the British regime’s accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran”, Iranian state news agency reported.
It comes after Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said on Monday he “absolutely condemned” the drone strike on a US military base in Jordan, which the US president, Joe Biden, said had been carried out by Iran-backed militants.
On the same day, the UK and US imposed sanctions on a network of people accused of being directed by Iran’s ministry of intelligence and security, who they said had carried out assassinations and kidnappings aiming to silence Tehran’s perceived critics.
Britain imposed sanctions on Iranian officials it said were involved in threats to kill journalists on British soil, and others it said were part of international criminal gangs linked to Iran.
Updated
Israel denies its forces are storming Gaza's al-Amal hospital
An Israeli military spokesperson has said its forces are not storming al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
As we reported earlier, the Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli forces recently stormed the hospital building’s front yard and demanded displaced individuals and its teams to evacuate.
Reuters reported that the Israeli military spokesperson said:
There’s no storming of the hospital, entry into it or any ordering of people to leave at gunpoint.
Updated
Here’s more from Joe Biden, who has said he has decided how to respond to the drone strike that killed three US troops and injured dozens in Jordan.
Asked if he had decided how to respond to the attacks, Biden replied “yes” as he was leaving the White House on a campaign trip to Florida.
The US president did not elaborate on his decision, which came after he held meetings with his national security team. He said:
I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for.
Asked if Iran was responsible for the drone attack, Biden said:
I do hold ….them responsible in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.
Reporter: “Have you made a decision about how to respond to the attack [on U.S. service members in Jordan]?”
— The Recount (@therecount) January 30, 2024
President Biden: “Yes.” pic.twitter.com/jeuWujvPAR
In a statement on Sunday, Biden said the US would hold all those responsible to account “at a time and in a manner of our choosing”.
Updated
We reported earlier that Israeli protesters and relatives of hostages gathered at the Kerem Shalom border crossing on Tuesday aiming to block trucks carrying humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.
A statement from the protest organisers, the Tzav 9 movement (Order 9), urges that “no aid should pass until the last of the hostages returns”. It continues:
There is no logic in having the trucks enter directly into the hands of Hamas terrorists.
Dozens of others headed to the Nitzana border crossing in Gaza’s north.
Updated
Israeli forces storm al-Amal hospital in Gaza, says Palestine Red Crescent
‘Update: Israel has denied this claim’
Israeli forces have stormed al-Amal hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis “under the threat of weapons, gunfire and shelling”, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has said.
In a social media post, the organisation said displaced people and its teams “are being demanded to evacuate the building under the threat of arms”.
It said its teams and displaced individuals are currently “in severe danger”.
🚨 Urgent: Occupying forces recently stormed the PRCS and Al-Amal Hospital building front yard in #KhanYunis under the threat of weapons, gunfire, and shelling.
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) January 30, 2024
⭕️Displaced individuals and PRCS teams are being demanded to evacuate the building under the threat of arms, coupled…
Updated
Biden says he has decided how to respond to Jordan drone strike
Joe Biden has said he has decided how to respond to a drone attack on a US service base on Sunday that killed three US service personnel.
The US president, speaking to reporters on as he left the White House on Tuesday, did not elaborate, Reuters reported.
He also said the US did not need a wider war in the Middle East.
Biden faces a balancing act, blaming Iran and looking to strike back in a forceful way without causing any further escalation of the Gaza conflict. Republicans have suggested they would use Iran as a test of Biden’s strength ahead of the US elections.
The president’s comments came a day after his defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, vowed to take “all necessary actions” to defend US troops, while the White House’s national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, insisted the US was not interested in a war with Iran.
The Pentagon has named the three troops killed in the attack as army reservists Sgt William Jerome Rivers, Spc Breonna Alexsondria Moffett and Spc Kennedy Sanders.
Updated
Gaza population 'at the border of famine', warns WHO
Despite the efforts of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) and other humanitarian partners operating in Gaza, many people are “at the border of famine” after nearly four months of war, the World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said.
Speaking at a briefing in Geneva, he said a convoy had tried to reach Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, this morning, “with patients, healthcare staff, everybody there needing food, but the very needy population already before basically took the supplies”.
The incident “shows how dire the needs are”, he said, adding:
The population is really at the border of famine … It’s getting worse by the day.
Lindmeier also warned that disease among Gaza’s malnourished population “can just spread like wildfire and that’s on top of the bombing and the shelling and the collapsing buildings”.
Updated
The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged donors not to suspend funding to the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA after Israel accused some of its workers of taking part in Hamas’s 7 October attack.
Now was not the time to abandon the people of Gaza, the WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
As the largest humanitarian agency in the territory, UNRWA provides lifesaving aid to more than 2 million civilians in Gaza amid ongoing Israeli bombardment, and aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. Lindmeier told journalists:
The shelters, the health centres and everything else is provided in Gaza through UNWRA.
More than 10 western countries including the US, UK and Germany said they would suspend funding to UNRWA after the agency said it had launched an investigation into 12 staff members who allegedly took part in abductions and killings on 7 October. The UN in New York has also launched a high-level investigation into the alleged acts, which its secretary general, António Guterres, described as “abhorrent”.
Lindmeier appealed to donors not to suspend funding to UNWRA “at this critical moment”, adding:
Cutting off funding will only hurt the people of Gaza who desperately need support.
“Criminal activity can never go unpunished,” he said, but he added that the discussion was “a distraction from what’s really going on every day, every hour, every minute in Gaza”.
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
It is 5pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here are the headlines …
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel would not withdraw forces from the Gaza Strip or free thousands of what he described as Palestinian security prisoners, pushing back against media reports on some conditions of a possible truce deal with Hamas. Media reports had suggested that the outlines of a deal between Israel and Hamas that would involve a ceasefire of up to six weeks had been drawn up in Paris. Earlier today Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the group had received a ceasefire proposal and that he would visit Cairo to discuss it.
Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, has told members of the Knesset that Israel intends to retain military control of Gaza after the war, and run it in the same way it runs the occupied West Bank. Gallant said the work inside the Gaza Strip, where Israel claims to be clearing out Hamas terror infrastructure, is “finite” and was making progress despite challenges.
Israeli forces dressed in doctors’ scrubs and women’s clothes have killed three Palestinian militants in an undercover operation in a hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. A border police counter-terrorism unit made their way to a room on the third floor and shot all three men in the head using pistols fitted with silencers, in an attack that took less than 10 minutes from start to finish, Israeli media said.
Israel said the dead men were Mohammad Jalamana, a spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing, Basel Ghazawi, of Islamic Jihad, and his brother Mohammed. All three were allegedly active in the umbrella force known as the Jenin Battalion. The medical director of the West Bank hospital said they were “executed in cold blood”.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has reported that a woman has been killed and nine others injured by shrapnel from Israeli tank fire near al-Amal hospital and its headquarters in Khan Younis.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that 100 bodies returned to Gaza by Israeli authorities have been buried in a mass grave in Rafah.
A total of 26,751 Palestinians have now been killed and 65,636 wounded by Israeli military action in Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said. Israel claims it has killed about 9,000 enemy combatents, while losing 221 of its own forces in the ground campaign inside the territory.
Protesters have been at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza for the seventh consecutive day. The group, including family members of some of those being held hostage, is seeking to block the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
Rockets fired by separatist insurgents killed a police officer and wounded a dozen other people overnight in south-western Pakistan. The attack has been claimed by the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army, which said two of its fighters had been killed.
Yemen’s Houthis are ready for a “long-term confrontation” with the US and UK, a commander said in a statement.
A Guardian investigation has detailed the mass destruction of buildings and land in three neighbourhoods in Gaza. Entire buildings have been levelled, fields flattened and places of worship wiped off the map.
Yemen’s Houthis are ready for a “long-term confrontation” with the US and UK, a commander has said.
Reuters quotes Mohamed al-Atifi saying:
We are prepared for a long-term confrontation with the forces of tyranny. The Americans, the British, and those who coordinated with them must realise the power of the sovereign Yemeni decision and that there is no debate or dispute over it.
Updated
The Palestinian Authority’s health minister has spoken in a television interview warning of the health danger posed by bodies decaying under rubble in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian news agency Wafa quotes Mai al-Kaila as saying:
There are 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip, 14 of which are partially operating – nine in the south and five in the north. There are 325 shelter centres, 150 of which have one health point, and the remaining 175 centres do not have a health point.
She said bodies under the rubble constituted an environmental disaster that helped spread epidemics, and warned of a severe shortage of health personnel, equipment, and medicines.
The Palestinian Authority does not control the healthcare provision in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has been in power since 2007.
Updated
Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s secretary-general Ziad al-Nakhala has ruled out the group engaging in any ceasefire that does not involve the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
Earlier today, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ruled out removing troops as any part of a deal with Hamas.
Updated
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has reported that a woman has been killed and nine others injured by shrapnel from Israeli tank fire near al-Amal hospital and its headquarters in Khan Younis.
People are continuing to flee the area, heading for overcrowded Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip, which has also been subjected to Israeli bombing today.
Updated
Netanyahu rules out Gaza Strip withdrawal and large-scale prisoner releases
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel would not withdraw forces from the Gaza Strip or free thousands of what he described as Palestinian security prisoners, pushing back against media reports on some conditions of a possible truce deal with Hamas.
In remarks aired by Israeli TV, Reuters reports Netanyahu said:
We will not end this war short of achieving all of its objectives. That means eliminating Hamas, returning all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel.
Media reports had suggested that the outlines of a deal between Israel and Hamas that would involve a ceasefire of up to six weeks had been drawn up in Paris.
Earlier today Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the group had received a ceasefire proposal and that he would visit Cairo to discuss it.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet, earlier hinted in a post on social media that he would quit the national unity government and war cabinet if there was a “reckless deal” with Hamas.
By contrast, opposition leader Yair Lapid, a frequent critic of Netanyahu’s government, has said his party will back “any deal that brings the hostages home”.
Israeli media had suggested a deal could be outlined in three phases, with the release from captivity in Gaza of women, children and elderly hostages part of the first phase.
Updated
Gallant: Israel plans to run post-war Gaza in same military style as occupied West Bank
Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, has told members of the Knesset that Israel intends to retain military control of Gaza after the war, and run it in the same way it runs the occupied West Bank.
In a meeting of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defence committee, the Times of Israel reports Gallant said:
After the war, when it’s over, I think it’s completely clear that Hamas won’t control Gaza. Israel will control militarily but won’t control it in a civilian sense.
When we’re talking about military freedom of operation, look what happened tonight in Jenin. This is military freedom of operation at the highest level, and yet we don’t control the area in a civilian sense.
Gallant was referring to the raid into Jenin’s Ibn Sina hospital, in which Israeli forces disguised as civilians and medics sotrmed the hospital and killed three people it suspected of being Islamist militants.
It is also reported that Gallant said the work inside the Gaza Strip, where Israel claims to be clearing out Hamas terror infrastructure, is “finite” and was making progress despite challenges.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Updated
UK government says it has not changed policy on recognition of Palestinian state, despite Cameron's words
Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor
The UK government has not changed its policy on the best timing to recognise Palestine as an independent state, but wishes to give Palestinians a sense of a political horizon by highlighting the possibility is part of UK thinking, the Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell has said.
He was speaking after some Conservative MPs expressed concern the UK was preparing to reward Hamas by granting unilateral recognition to Palestine early.
They were reacting to the foreign secretary David Cameron telling a reception of Arab ambassadors on Monday night: “We should be starting to set out what a Palestinian state would look like; what it would comprise; how it would work. As that happens, we, with allies, will look at the issue of recognising a Palestinian state, including at the UN. This could be one of the things that helps to make this process irreversible.”
Mitchell said “the UK has always made it clear that we intend to recognise a Palestinian state when the timing is right”.
He said: “Lord Cameron’s remarks did not deviate from that policy but he is pointing out how important it is to ensure that people can see when a political track gets going real progress can be made.”
He added recognition would be offered when it serves the interest of peace and when the timing is right, but did not regard it as something the UK would do bilaterally, but instead would be in the mix when negotiations reached the relevant point.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said Labour policy for a decade had been that recognition of Palestine was not a gift, and Israel cannot have a veto over a UK decision to recognise Palestine.
Although it is unusual for the UK to highlight the possibility of full recognition, Cameron’s remarks open the possibility that recognition might be offered before the end of any negotiations on a two-state solution.
Palestine has had non-member observer status at the UN since November 2012.
Updated
The head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, Husam Zomlot, has reacted to foreign secretary David Cameron’s comments that the UK might recognise a Palestinian state, describing the words as “historic”.
On social media, Zomlot said:
This is historic. It is the first time a UK foreign secretary considers recognising the state of Palestine, bilaterally and in the UN, as a contribution to a peaceful solution rather than an outcome. A UK recognition is both a Palestinian right and a British moral, political, legal, and historical responsibility. If implemented, the Cameron declaration would remove Israel’s veto power over Palestinian statehood, would boost efforts toward a two state outcome, and would begin correcting the historic injustice inflicted on the Palestinian people by colonial Britain’s Balfour declaration.
The full story on Cameron’s comments is here: UK will consider recognising Palestinian state, says David Cameron
Updated
China supports the legitimate government of Yemen and a political solution to solve the Yemeni issue, Chinese vice-foreign minister Deng Li told his Yemeni counterpart in China on Tuesday.
China supports Yemen in safeguarding its sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity, the Chinese foreign ministry cited Deng as saying in a statement, Reuters reports.
Updated
The medical director of the West Bank hospital where three suspected Palestinian militants were killed in a dramatic raid by Israeli forces has said they were “executed in cold blood”.
The Palestinian health ministry said Israeli forces opened fire inside the wards of the Ibn Sina hospital in the city of Jenin. The Israeli military identified one of the Palestinians as a Hamas member. The second Palestinian killed was a member of the Hamas-allied Islamic Jihad and the third belonged to a group of Jenin-based militants, an Israeli military statement said.
“They executed the three men as they slept in the room. They executed them in cold blood by firing bullets directly into their heads inside the room where they were being treated,” Niji Nazzal, the hospital’s medical director, told Reuters.
Hospital sources told Reuters one of the men, Basel Ghazawi, had been paralysed when he was wounded by shrapnel during a clash between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in October, and was in a wheelchair.
The Palestinian health minister, Mai al-Kaila, described the incident as a war crime.
Israel’s military said one of the men, Mohammed Jalamneh was planning a terror attack in the “immediate future”. “For a long time, wanted suspects have been hiding in hospitals and using them as a base for planning terrorist activities and carrying out terror attacks,” said the Israeli statement. “This is another example of the cynical use of civilian areas and hospitals as shelters and human shields by terrorist organisations.”
Updated
A far-right partner in Israel’s coalition government threatened to quit over any attempt to enter a “reckless” deal with Hamas to retrieve hostages held by the Palestinian militants, Reuters reports.
“Reckless deal = dismantling of the government,” Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party posted on X, amid media reports that Israel was considering a pause, brokered by Qatar and Egypt, to its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that military pressure improves the chances of recovering 132 hostages taken during the 7 October attack by Hamas. But at least one member of Netanyahu’s decision-making war cabinet – former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, whose own son and nephew died fighting in Gaza – has cast doubt on the prospects for rescue missions.
That has set off speculation that Netanyahu is under pressure from both his left- and rightwing flanks, spelling a potentially wider shakeup and perhaps even a snap election.
Jewish Power accounts for six of the 64 seats that Netanyahu’s religious-rightist coalition held in the 120-seat parliament before the Gaza war. He has since brought Eisenkot’s 12-seat centrist party National Unity into an emergency cabinet.
Ben-Gvir and another ultranationalist coalition partner, the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism party, have been critical about their exclusion from the war cabinet.
Updated
The Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, says the group has received a ceasefire proposal put forward after talks in Paris and that he will visit Cairo to discuss it, Patrick Wintour reports.
Haniyeh said the group’s aim remained to end Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and secure a full pull-out of Israeli forces from the territory.
Israel would struggle to accept such terms, but Qatar, the US and Egypt are hoping to see if the two sides can be persuaded to accept a ceasefire lasting at least a month, during which thousands of Palestinian prisoners would be released in return for the release of a large group of hostages.
The proposal, described as a framework, was hammered out between Egypt, Qatar, the US and Israel on Sunday in talks in Paris. The location of the talks meant that Hamas negotiators could not be present.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may be willing to accept a drawback in troops in Gaza during a ceasefire or humanitarian pause, but is unlikely to accept any permanent ceasefire that leaves Hamas military forces intact and capable of mounting a further threat to Israel. Previously, he has said he is prepared to accept a lengthy ceasefire, but on the condition there is no requirement to end hostilities.
Haniyeh said: “Our response to the proposal will be on the basis that the priority is stopping the aggression against Gaza and withdrawing the occupation forces from the Strip.”
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A journalist at the centre of an Iranian plot to kill two UK-based TV presenters has said sanctions won’t stop Iran from targeting people on UK soil, reports Deepa Parent.
The UK and US governments sanctioned Iranian officials with travel bans and an asset freeze on Monday over the targeting of Sima Sabet and Fardad Farahzad, who worked for the TV news station Iran International based in London.
The plot to kill the two presenters was just one of at least 15 credible threats to kill or kidnap British nationals and others living in the UK since the beginning of 2022, according to UK officials.
Iran is increasingly targeting people outside its borders in a tactic known as transnational repression, which aims to stifle debate or criticism.
BBC staff in London have told the Guardian that they fear walking outside alone after being harassed by the Iranian authorities, after allegedly being warned: “We can do whatever we want in London.”
Read the full story:
Air raid sirens have sounded in Nahal Oz, near Gaza. The Times of Israel reports that similar alerts have recently been activated after mortar fire towards IDF troops inside the Gaza Strip. There are no immediate further details.
Hamas has said it wants a permanent ceasefire, which can be achieved in stages. The group’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh has said he will visit Cairo to discuss a three-phase proposal formulated in Paris, with the initial phase being the release of women, children and the elderly being held hostage in Gaza in return for a six-week ceasefire.
“We told the mediators a permanent ceasefire is our goal, but we can do it in the second or third stages of an agreement,” a senior member of Hamas, Mohammad Nazzal, told Al Jazeera. “Without an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, we can’t accept this new proposal.”
“We are looking to release all captives from both sides, but of course it needs a negotiation to reach this point. A permanent ceasefire is useful for both sides, otherwise the war between us and the Israeli troops will continue. We are ready to achieve this in stages.”
Here is a video report on the Israeli raid on a hospital in Israeli-occupied Jenin, during which it killed three men it suspected of being militants.
The hospital spokesperson, Tawfiq al-Shobaki, said there was no exchange of fire and the three were killed by Israeli forces in a targeted killing. He said the Israelis attacked doctors, nurses, and hospital security during the raid.
“What happened is a precedent,” he said. “There was never an assassination inside a hospital. There were arrests and assaults, but not an assassination.”
Updated
The Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that 100 bodies returned to Gaza by Israeli authorities have been buried in a mass grave in Rafah.
Updated
Summary of the day so far …
It has just gone 1pm in Gaza City, Tel Aviv and Cairo, 2pm in Doha, 2.30pm in Tehran, and 4pm in Islamabad. Here are the headlines …
Israel’s border police said three Palestinians were killed in an operation by the force’s undercover unit inside Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. CCTV footage appears to show Israeli forces pacing through a hospital corridor with rifles. Hamas has said one of those killed was a member, and that Israel’s “crimes will not go unanswered”.
Qatar-based Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh has said he will visit Cairo for discussions on a ceasefire proposal formulated in Paris. The Jerusalem Post has reported that the plan envisages three phases, with the initial phase being the release of women, children and the elderly being held hostage in Gaza in return for a six-week ceasefire.
Hamas militants have returned to northern Gaza, where they are mobilising against Israeli forces and rebuilding a system of governance, aid officials, Gaza residents, analysts and Israeli officials say. Elsewhere in Gaza, Hamas administrators and police maintain firm control of the south, where much of the population is concentrated, though civil order is breaking down in central regions. The apparent resurgence of Hamas in areas seized and cleared by Israeli troops during the nearly four-month offensive underlines the difficulties Benjamin Netanyahu faces in meeting his pledge to “crush” the militant group.
The Wafa Palestinian news agency reports that “dozens of Palestinian civilians” have been killed today by Israeli airstrikes, including “intense and fierce airstrikes at the city of Rafah”. Wafa reports there have also been airstrikes in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip and in Khan Younis. On Friday 26 January, the international court of justice in The Hague told Israel it must “take all measures within its power” to desist from killing Palestinians in contravention of the genocide convention.
A total of 26,751 Palestinians have now been killed and 65,636 wounded by Israeli military action in Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said. Israel claims it has killed about 9,000 enemy combatents, while losing 221 of its own forces in the ground campaign inside the territory. Israel has handed over to Palestinian authorities the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in recent weeks.
International aid agencies have said they are “deeply concerned and outraged” at the “reckless” decision by major donors to cut funding to a UN Palestinian aid agency after Israel accused some of its workers of taking part in Hamas’s 7 October attack. More than 10 western countries including the US, UK and Germany said they would suspend funding to UNRWA, which provides aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, after the agency said it had launched an investigation into 12 staff members who allegedly took part in abductions and killings.
Protesters have arrived at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza for the seventh consecutive day. The group, including family members of some of those being held hostage, is seeking to block the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
Knesset speaker, Amir Ohana, will visit the US next week, having been invited by Republican house speaker, Mike Johnson. On the trip he will be accompanied by nine-year-old freed hostage Emily Hand.
The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, is to start his fourth trip to the Middle East since taking up the role, opening with talks in Oman that will include Muscat’s role in mediating a proposed peace settlement inside Yemen.
Rockets fired by separatist insurgents killed a police officer and wounded a dozen other people overnight in south-western Pakistan. The attack has been claimed by the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army, which said two of its fighters had been killed.
A Guardian investigation has detailed the mass destruction of buildings and land in three neighbourhoods in Gaza. Entire buildings have been levelled, fields flattened and places of worship wiped off the map.
Updated
Palestinian death toll inside Gaza since 7 October now stands at 26,751 – ministry
A total of 26,751 Palestinians have been killed and 65,636 wounded by Israeli military action in Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
Reuters reports that the ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, said 114 Palestinians were killed and 249 injured in the past 24 hours.
OCHA, the UN human rights body, has additionally recorded 367 Palestinians killed, including 94 children, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank over the same period.
Israel claims to have killed 9,000 enemy combatants inside Gaza.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
Reuters reports that Israel claims its forces have killed about 9,000 Palestinian combatants in Gaza since 7 October, and that 221 of its own soldiers have been killed in the fighting.
The charity Islamic Relief has said that suspending the funding of UNRWA, as several major donors have done, is “collective punishment” of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and amounts to a “death sentence”.
In its statement, it said:
Suspending aid to civilians in Gaza at this critical time would be collective punishment and a death sentence for some of the most vulnerable people.
The ongoing Israeli bombardment and siege has created an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe, with Gaza on the brink of a mass famine. Children are at risk of starving to death and almost all families are going hungry. Diseases are spreading in overcrowded shelters and families are sleeping in flooded streets.
Despite this, the amount of food, shelter, fuel, medicine and other vital aid getting into Gaza is a tiny drop in the ocean compared to what’s needed.
Donor governments have an urgent responsibility to ensure that Palestinian civilians in Gaza are getting the aid they need.
The allegations against staff working for UNRWA should be treated extremely seriously, but this must not be used to justify cutting aid to civilians in Gaza.
In its latest update on the situation in the Gaza Strip, the UN Office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha) has said Israeli military evacuation orders have covered 41% of the territory, affecting 1.38 million people.
OCHA says “humanitarian partners continue to observe an increasing trend in denied and restricted access to the northern and central areas of Gaza” by Israeli forces. It cites “excessive delays for humanitarian aid convoys before or at Israeli checkpoints and heightened military activity in central Gaza”.
Updated
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has said it still has no contact with an ambulance team that had been dispatched yesterday to rescue six-year-old Hind Rajab from a vehicle in Gaza City.
🚨As of now, contact is still lost with the ambulance team 🚑that departed yesterday on the mission to rescue the 6-year-old girl Hind Rajab from #Gaza City. Information about them remains unknown, and we feel extremely concerned about their fate and whether they succeeded in… pic.twitter.com/qZPvvClWV0
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) January 30, 2024
Yesterday, the society said Rajab was trapped in a vehicle in which everybody else had been killed. It said:
For more than three hours, the PRCS team maintained communication with the six-year-old girl Hind, soothing her amidst her continuous pleas for evacuation from the vehicle.
Coordination was established through the Palestinian coordination and liaison Office with Israeli authorities to dispatch a PRCS ambulance to the location.
Around 6pm, our teams reached the area where Hind was trapped inside the vehicle, which had been shot near the Fares petrol station in Gaza. Since then, we lost contact with the team, and as of now, we are uncertain if our teams successfully reached the girl.
Updated
The British government is being urged by aid charities to ensure humanitarian assistance can continue to be delivered via UNRWA in Gaza after a decision by the US, UK and other western nations to freeze funding for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees/
The call by Bond, the UK network for over 350 NGOs and humanitarian agencies, comes as aid groups are also pressing the government behind the scenes to agree that new funding commitments will not stall in the weeks and months ahead.
Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland have joined the US, Australia and Canada in pausing funding after UNRWA, the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, revealed an investigation had been launched into 12 members of staff who allegedly took part in the 7 October attack led by Hamas that killed 1,140 people.
Romilly Greenhill, CEO of Bond, said: “UNRWA is the main provider of humanitarian assistance to millions of displaced Palestinians already in desperate need and at risk of famine, as well as millions of people across the Middle East.”
“No other local or international organisation has the same level of reach or can provide the same level of support, which means withdrawing funding risks collectively punishing large swathes of people by removing lifesaving basics such as food, vaccinations, and freshwater.”
The Qatar-based Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh has said he will visit Cairo for discussions on a ceasefire proposal formulated in Paris.
The Jerusalem Post has reported that the plan envisages three phases, with the initial phase being the release of women, children and the elderly being held hostage in Gaza in return for a six-week ceasefire.
The second phase would involve the release of men and soldiers being held, and the third phase the release of the bodies of those who have been kidnapped and then killed while in captivity. The releases would be accompanied by ceasefires and the release of Palestinians being detained by Israel.
Reuters quotes Haniyeh saying Hamas has received the proposals, and that its priority is for ending the Israeli military offensive and for Israel’s troops to pull out of Gaza.
Israel’s government has repeatedly said it seeks to destroy Hamas and that the group will play no role in the governance of the territory when the war has ended.
About 136 Israelis are still believed held in captivity in Gaza as hostages, however it is believed that some of them have been killed since being abducted on 7 October.
Updated
Israel hands over bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed by its forces in Gaza to health ministry
Israel has handed over to Palestinian authorities the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in recent weeks, health officials in the Palestinian territory have said.
The bodies, which had been held in Israel, were handed over on Tuesday through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing and would be buried in mass graves in the city of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip, the officials said.
Reuters reports the health ministry in Gaza did not immediately say how many bodies had been handed over.
At least 26,637 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and a further 65,387 injured by Israeli military action since 7 October, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas.
The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in the casualty figures, and it has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the numbers.
Updated
CCTV footage shows Israeli security forces engaged in Jenin hospital raid that killed three Palestinians
Hamas has confirmed that one of the three people killed by Israeli forces during a raid on Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was a member. Islamic Jihad claimed the other two.
Israel’s border police said the three Palestinians were killed in an operation by the force’s undercover unit. CCTV circulated online appeared to show around a dozen undercover troops pacing through a hospital corridor with rifles.
Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, reposted the clip on social media, congratulated the forces who carried out the raid, and added: “Let all our enemies know that our forces will operate everywhere and by all means to protect and protect our citizens and the state of Israel.”
מברך ומחזק את כוחות ימ"מ של משטרת ישראל על הפעילות ההרואית אמש בשיתוף פעולה עם כוחות צה"ל ושב"כ במחנה הפליטים ג׳נין, שהובילה לחיסולם של שלושה מחבלים - ידעו כל אויבינו שכוחותינו יפעלו בכל מקום ובכל האמצעים כדי להגן ולשמור על אזרחי מדינת ישראל. pic.twitter.com/F2lneogCEZ
— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) January 30, 2024
In a statement, Israel’s military named the men killed as Mohammed Jalamneh, Mohammed Ghazawi and his brother Basel Ghazawi. It claimed:
Jalamneh planned to carry out a terror attack in the immediate future and used the hospital as a hiding place and therefore was neutralized. Israeli security forces will continue to act against any threat that would endanger the security of Israeli civilians.
For a long time, wanted suspects have been hiding in hospitals and using them as a base for planning terrorist activities and carrying out terror attacks, while they assume that the exploitation of hospitals will serve as protection against counter-terrorism activities of Israeli security forces. This is another example of the cynical use of civilian areas and hospitals as shelters and human shields by terrorist organisations.
Hamas said Israel’s “crimes will not go unanswered” and that its fighters “will not be intimidated by assassinations or weakened by the crimes of the cowardly enemy”.
Mai al-Kaila, the health minister of the Palestinian Authority, called on international bodies to prevent Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and to provide protection for ambulance crews.
Updated
The Times of Israel reports that the Knesset speaker, Amir Ohana, will visit the US next week, having been invited by Republican house speaker, Mike Johnson. On the trip he will be accompanied by nine-year-old Emily Hand, who was held captive by Hamas from 7 October until the end of November.
Updated
Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor
The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, is to start his fourth trip to the Middle East since taking up the role, opening with talks in Oman that will include Muscat’s role in mediating a proposed peace settlement inside Yemen.
The Foreign Office said his focus would be on the continued Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea as well as the US and UK naval ships seeking to provide protection.
There are signs that violence is spreading within Yemen as forces backing the UN recognised government in Aden clash with Houthi fighters. The unrest and the imminent designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group by the US is likely to exacerbate efforts by aid groups to ensure humanitarian goods reach Yemen.
On his visit, the former UK prime minister will also test the mood on whether a breakthrough is imminent on an extended ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, leading to large-scale hostage releases and a significant increase in aid.
Despite a UN resolution and an international court of justice order requiring an immediate increase in aid, UN agencies do not report improved cooperation by Israel. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly said, including after the international court of justice ruling, that only a minimal amount of aid is required to enter Gaza.
Cameron’s previous regional visit was to Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Turkey and Qatar. On his latest trip he will also reiterate with regional leaders the UK’s call for an immediate pause in the conflict in Gaza to allow significantly more aid in and hostages out, then progress towards a sustainable ceasefire.
Updated
A Guardian investigation has detailed the mass destruction of buildings and land in three neighbourhoods in Gaza.
Using satellite imagery and open-source evidence, the investigation found damage to more than 250 residential buildings, 17 schools and universities, 16 mosques, three hospitals, three cemeteries and 150 agricultural greenhouses.
Entire buildings have been levelled, fields flattened and places of worship wiped off the map.
The destruction has not only forced 1.9 million people to leave their homes but also made it impossible for many to return. This has led some experts to describe what is happening in Gaza as “domicide”, defined as the widespread, deliberate destruction of the home to make it uninhabitable, preventing the return of displaced people.
You can view the investigation here: How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation
In addition to the investigation itself, the Guardian has published an opinion piece by Ammar Azzouz, who writes: As a Syrian I feel the pain of Palestinians as their homes and lives are destroyed. This is domicide
Protesters have arrived at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza for the seventh consecutive day. The group, including family members of some of those being held hostage by Hamas, is seeking to block the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
The Times of Israel reports a statement from the Tzav 9 organization who are behind the protests. It said:
There is no logic in having the trucks enter directly into the hands of Hamas terrorists. We are prepared for this trying time together with thousands of supporters who demand that the supplies to Hamas be halted. No aid should pass until the last of the hostages returns.
On 7 October an estimated 240 people were seized and abducted from southern Israel during the surprise Hamas attack. About 136 of them are believed to still be in captivity inside the Gaza Strip.
In its statement about the raid Israel’s military carried out inside a hospital in Jenin which reportedly killed three Palestinians, the IDF said it had responded to “the cynical use of civilian areas and hospitals as shelters and human shields by terrorist organisations” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. [See 5.46 GMT]
A series of images released from the hospital show blood-stained scenes, and a chair and a bed with bullet holes. Images have also been released of the corpses of three men in the hospital morgue.
The Wafa news agency identified the three men killed as “siblings Mohammad and Basil Ayman Al-Ghazawi, and Mohammad Walid Jalamna”. It noted that Basil Ayman Al-Ghazawi had been in hospital since mid-October.
It reported:
Sources from inside the hospital explained that about ten members of undercover special forces, disguised in civilian clothes, dressed as doctors and nurses, broke into the hospital, headed to the third floor, and assassinated the three young men using silenced pistols.
The IDF statement also named Mohammed Jalamneh as a target, accusing him of having “contacts with Hamas headquarters abroad” and the al-Ghazawi brothers, who it claimed were involved with the Jenin Battalions and Islamic Jihad.
Associated Press reports that rockets fired by separatist insurgents killed a police officer and wounded a dozen other people overnight in south-western Pakistan. The attack has been claimed by the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army, which said two of its fighters had been killed.
The group had threatened to launch attacks on security forces after Pakistan’s strikes on their camps in Iran on 18 January , which killed at least nine people. Those strikes were made in response to an Iranian strike in Pakistan that appeared to target a different Baloch militant group with similar separatist goals.
Yesterday Iran’s foreign minister met his counterpart in Islamabad as well as Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister in a show of rapprochement after the two countries had exchanged harsh words and broken off diplomatic ties in the immediate aftermath of the airstrikes.
Updated
The Wafa Palestinian news agency reports that “dozens of Palestinian civilians” have been killed today by Israeli airstrikes, including “intense and fierce airstrikes at the city of Rafah”, which is in the south of the Gaza Strip and is one of the areas Israel’s military has repeatedly told Palestinians to flee to for safety.
Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah for Al Jazeera, said the strike in Rafah caused “a great deal of panic and concern as people believe the military operation is expanding step by step”. He said a house was destroyed and a number of people were reported dead, as “the Israeli military continues bombing, killing and maiming Palestinians across Gaza”.
Wafa reports there have also been airstrikes in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip and in Khan Younis.
On Friday 26 January, the international court of justice in The Hague told Israel it must “take all measures within its power” to desist from killing Palestinians in contravention of the genocide convention.
Updated
If you would like something to listen to, today’s edition of our Today in Focus podcast asks whether the ICJ ruling will change anything in Gaza. You can listen to it here.
Updated
As the US considers its next steps, Agence France-Presse says that the killing of three US troops is “dragging the US further into a proxy war with Iran that President Joe Biden had hoped to avoid and that he still hopes can be contained.”
Here’s some more of their analysis:
After years of trying to ease tensions with Iran through dialogue, and then months seeking to keep the Israel-Hamas war from escalating, the drone strike by Iranian-backed militants on US forces in Jordan crossed an unstated red line for the Biden administration.
The US has already been hitting another Iranian-backed group, Yemen’s Huthi rebels. The strikes come after warnings failed to dissuade Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, which the insurgents say are acts of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza being bombarded by US ally Israel.
The White House has promised a “very consequential” response to the Jordan attack, which comes at the start of an election year in which Biden’s Republican rivals are going on the offensive and urging direct attacks on Iran.
But the Biden administration has already stated that it does not want war with Iran – where officials have sought to distance themselves from the attack.
“It’s a fork-in-the-road moment,” said Alex Vatanka, founding director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute.
Here’s one of the latest images of the US president, Joe Biden, being briefed on the attack on US soldiers in Jordan.
Updated
Hamas militants have returned to northern Gaza, where they are mobilising against Israeli forces and rebuilding a system of governance, aid officials, Gaza residents, analysts and Israeli officials say.
Elsewhere in Gaza, Hamas administrators and police maintain firm control of the south, where much of the population is concentrated, though civil order is breaking down in central regions.
The apparent resurgence of Hamas in areas seized and cleared by Israeli troops during the nearly four-month offensive underlines the difficulties Benjamin Netanyahu faces in meeting his pledge to “crush” the militant group.
Eyal Hulata, who until January 2023 was the head of Israel’s national security council, said: “We are hearing more, unfortunately, of the recovery of [an] insurgency in both central and northern Gaza … We’re hearing more and more that Hamas are doing policing in northern Gaza and governing trade, and that is a very bad outcome.”
Read the rest of Jason Burke’s reporting from Jerusalem here:
Updated
Let’s look at where events are at since that drone strike on US troops in Jordan.
The United States has vowed to take “all necessary actions” to defend American forces after a drone attack killed three US troops, while Qatar says it hopes US retaliation will not damage regional security or undercut progress towards a new Gaza hostage-release deal.
White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday the United States did not want a wider war with Iran or in the region, “but we got to do what we have to do.”
Meanwhile, US forces may have mistaken an enemy drone for an American one and let it pass unchallenged into the desert base in Jordan, officials said on Monday.
As the enemy drone was flying in at a low altitude, a US drone was returning to the small installation known as Tower 22, according to a preliminary report cited by two officials, who were not authorised to comment and insisted on anonymity, Associated Press (AP) reports.
As a result, there was no effort to shoot down the enemy drone that hit the outpost. Apart from the soldiers killed, the Pentagon said more than 40 troops were wounded in the attack, according to AP.
Asked if the failure to shoot down the enemy drone was “human error,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh responded that US Central Command is still assessing the matter.
International aid agencies have said they are “deeply concerned and outraged” at the “reckless” decision by major donors to cut funding to a UN Palestinian aid agency after Israel accused some of its workers of taking part in Hamas’s 7 October attack.
“We are shocked by the reckless decision to cut a lifeline for an entire population by some of the very countries that had called for aid in Gaza to be stepped up and for humanitarians to be protected while doing their job,” the coalition of 21 agencies, including Oxfam, Save the Children and ActionAid, said in a statement on Monday.
More than 10 western countries including the US, UK and Germany said they would suspend funding to UNRWA, which provides aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, after the agency said it had launched an investigation into 12 staff members who allegedly took part in abductions and killings on 7 October.
The agency has sacked nine of those accused. Two others are missing and one is dead. The UN in New York has also launched a high-level investigation into the alleged acts, which its secretary general, António Guterres, described as “abhorrent”.
In their Monday statement, the aid agencies noted that 2 million civilians, more than half of them children, rely on UNRWA aid in Gaza. “The population faces starvation, looming famine and an outbreak of disease under Israel’s continued indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate deprivation of aid in Gaza,” they said.
Read the rest of Helen’s piece here:
Updated
IDF reportedly kills three in raid on West Bank hospital
There are reports Israeli forces have stormed Ibn Sina hospital in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday and reportedly killed three Palestinians.
Voice of Palestine radio has reported the raid, according to the Reuters news agency.
A short time later the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) posted on their Telegram channel saying they had “neutralised” a “Hamas terrorist cell” inside the hospital. The IDF also says that there was a plan to “carry out a terror attack in the immediate period”.
The army statement identified the main target of the overnight raid on Ibn Sina hospital in the city of Jenin as a member of the Islamist militant movement, and the other two as members of Islamic Jihad and a local group of gunmen.
The IDF statement alleges one of the men was planning “a raid attack inspired by the October 7th massacre”.
There was no immediate Palestinian confirmation of their identities, Reuters reports.
The military also declined to say whether the three had been killed according to Reuters, but Voice of Palestine radio reported three Palestinian had been killed at the hospital.
The West Bank has seen a surge of violence since the 7 October attack triggered the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas.
Updated
UN secretary general to meet with key UNRWA donor nations
United Nations secretary general António Guterres is to meet with key UNRWA donor nations in New York on Tuesday, according to his spokesperson.
The meeting takes place after 12 staff with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees were accused by Israel of involvement in the 7 October attacks, Agence France-Presse reports.
Several countries, including the United States, France, Britain, Germany and Japan, have announced the suspension of further funding to the agency.
“The secretary-general is personally horrified by the accusations against employees of UNRWA,” Guterres’s spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Monday.
“But his message to donors – especially those who have suspended their contributions – is to at least guarantee the continuity of UNRWA’s operations, as we have tens of thousands of dedicated staff working throughout the region.”
Guterres has already met with Washington’s representative to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Monday, and “he will be hosting a meeting here in New York with the major donors for UNRWA [Tuesday] afternoon here,” Dujarric said.
“The secretary-general has also been engaging with the UNRWA leadership and donors to UNRWA, as well as regional leaders, such as King Abdullah of Jordan, whom he spoke to a short while ago, and President (Abdel Fattah) al-Sisi of Egypt.”
UNRWA said it has acted promptly over allegations but that cuts in funding will affect ordinary Palestinians.
Updated
Welcome and opening summary
It’s 7:25am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis with me, Reged Ahmad.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres will meet with key donors to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, on Tuesday, after 12 of its staff were accused by Israel of involvement in the 7 October attacks.
His spokesperson says the meeting is to take place in New York.
More on that shortly but first, here’s a summary of the main developments so far:
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the US will respond “decisively” to aggression and hold those responsible for the drone attack on a US military base in Jordan that killed three US troops and wounded dozens more to account. The three US service personnel who were killed in the drone strike have been named by the Pentagon as Sgt William Jerome Rivers, 46, Specialist Kennedy Sanders, 24, and Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23. The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, vowed that the US will take “all necessary actions” to defend its troops, while the Pentagon said it did not believe that Iran is seeking a war with the US, and that Washington doesn’t want a war either.
The enemy drone that was used in the attack on a US base in Jordan may have been confused with an American drone returning to the US installation, according to a report. In describing the drone attack, the two US officials, who were not authorised to comment and insisted on anonymity, said preliminary accounts suggest the enemy drone that struck the installation known as Tower 22 may have been mistaken for an American drone that was in the air at the same time. An Iranian-made drone was used in the deadly attack on Sunday, according to one US official.
The framework for a deal that could lead to a ceasefire and the release of hostages held in Gaza is being put to the Hamas leadership, Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said on Monday. Speaking after talks in Paris between officials from the US, Qatar, Egypt and Israel, he said: “We are in a better place than we were a few weeks ago.” The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, also voiced hope. The US believes talks are “moving in a good direction” but there is no imminent deal, the White House said.
Qatar’s prime minister sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al Thani says he hopes US retaliation for a drone attack that killed three US troops in Jordan won’t undercut progress toward a new Israel-Hamas hostage release deal. “I hope that nothing would undermine the efforts that we are doing or jeopardise the process,” he said. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al Thani was speaking in front of a Washington thinktank audience.
Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine reiterated that Israel must halt its offensive and withdraw from Gaza before any prisoner exchange takes place. Israel remains opposed to a permanent ceasefire and wants to retain a right to recommence hostilities against Hamas – something the Hamas leadership wants ruled out. A senior Hamas official, Taher al-Nunu, said the Palestinian militant group wanted a “complete and comprehensive ceasefire” in Gaza.
The UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has warned it would not be able to continue operations in Gaza and across the region beyond the end of February if funding did not resume. Israel has claimed several UNRWA staff took part in the 7 October attacks or in the aftermath, including a school counsellor who allegedly kidnapped an Israeli woman. A string of western countries including the US and the UK have suspended funding to the agency, which provides aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. The charity ActionAid described the withdrawal of funding for UNRWA as a “death sentence” for the population of Gaza.
At least 26,637 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza and a further 65,387 injured, according to the latest figures by Gaza’s health ministry on Monday. Two hundred and fifteen Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours, the ministry reported.
The surgical ward at al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza has completely halted operations due to oxygen supplies running out, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Monday. Heavy fighting has continued around hospitals in Khan Younis over the past few days, the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said in its latest update on the conflict, noting that only 14 of 36 hospitals in Gaza are now partially functional. Khan Younis’ Nasser hospital, until recently the largest still accepting patients in southern Gaza, is now only “minimally functioning”, OCHA said.
Israel has struck an Iran-linked site south of the Syrian capital, Damascus, killing several people on Monday. Iranian and Syrian official media said the attacks came from the Golan Heights and were attributed to Israel. They have not been regarded as a direct response to the attack on the Tower 22 base on Jordan’s border with Iraq and Syria. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes hit a farm housing members of Lebanon’s Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group and other Iran-backed factions. It said seven people were killed, including four Syrians, one of whom was the bodyguard of a member of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards.
Israeli troops will “very soon go into action” near the country’s northern border with Lebanon, the country’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said. The Israeli minister, addressing troops near the Gaza border on Monday, also warned that the war against Hamas “will take months”, and claimed that quarter of Hamas fighters have been killed and at least another quarter have been wounded. The IDF said it had carried out airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. “The targets included Hezbollah’s infrastructure and an observation post located in the southern Lebanese areas of Markaba, Taybeh, and Maroun al-Ras,” the army said in a statement.
Five Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in four different incidents in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in the past 24 hours, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday. Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that 378 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October.
Israeli politicians and ministers have attended a conference calling for Israeli resettlement of the Gaza Strip and “voluntary migration” of the Palestinian population elsewhere. The prominent role of government figures in the far-right conference on Sunday appears to violate the international court of justice ruling last week that Israel must “take all measures within its power” to avoid acts of genocide in its war in Gaza, including the “prevention and punishment of genocidal rhetoric”. The White House described the comments as “irresponsible, reckless and incendiary”.
The US and the UK announced sanctions against individuals who they said targeted Iranian dissidents and activists for assassination at the direction of the Iranian regime. The UK Foreign Office announced sanctions against seven individuals and one organisation who it said were involved in threats to kill journalists on British soil, and others it said were part of international criminal gangs linked to Iran.
US government employees are planning a “day of fasting for Gaza” this week to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in the territory and to denounce Joe Biden’s policy toward Israel.
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