Closing summary
Hamas said it had received the Israeli response to a US ceasefire proposal, which it said “fails to meet any of the just and legitimate demands of our people”, including an immediate cessation of hostilities and an end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Hamas official Basem Naim said the Israeli response “fundamentally seeks to entrench the occupation and perpetuate policies of killing and starvation, even during what is supposed to be a period of temporary de-escalation”. However, he said Hamas’ leadership was carrying out a “thorough and responsible review of the new proposal”.
Israel has accused French president Emmanuel Macron of undertaking a “crusade against the Jewish state” after he called for European countries to harden their stance on Israel if the humanitarian situation in Gaza did not improve. “There is no humanitarian blockade. That is a blatant lie,” Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement, defending its efforts to allow in aid. “But instead of applying pressure on the jihadist terrorists, Macron wants to reward them with a Palestinian state. No doubt its national day will be October 7.”
Israeli airstrikes killed at least 14 people in the Gaza Strip, AP reports, citing hospital officials. Officials at Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza said the bodies of 12 people, including three women, were brought from the nearby Jabalia refugee camp. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said the bodies of two people as well as nine others who were wounded were taken to Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City.
Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz vowed to build a “Jewish Israeli state” in the illegally occupied West Bank, a day after Israel announced the creation of 22 new illegal settlements in the territory. “This is a decisive response to the terrorist organisations that are trying to harm and weaken our hold on this land – and it is also a clear message to Macron and his associates: they will recognise a Palestinian state on paper – but we will build the Jewish Israeli state here on the ground.”
Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir said it was time to use “full force” in Gaza, after Hamas said a new US-backed truce proposal failed to meet its demands. Ben Gvir said on his Telegram channel: “The confusion, the shuffling and the weakness must end. We have already missed too many opportunities. It is time to go in with full force, without blinking, to destroy, and kill Hamas to the last one.”
The UN’s Palestinian aid agency, UNRWA said that it has enough supplies to help 200,000 people for a month sitting across the border in Jordan, a three-hour drive from Gaza. “Flour, food parcels, hygiene kits, blankets and medical supplies are ready to be delivered. Gaza needs aid at scale – an unhindered, uninterrupted flow of supplies must be allowed in.”
At about 3pm last Friday, Dr Alaa al-Najjar, a paediatrician at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, received the charred remains of seven of her 10 children, killed in an Israeli airstrike. The bodies of two others were buried beneath the rubble.
A few miles away, 11-year-old Yaqeen Hammad, known as Gaza’s youngest social media influencer, was killed after a series of heavy Israeli airstrikes hit the house where she lived with her family. She was watering flowers in a tiny patch of greenery eked out of a displacement camp when she died. Her cousin, 16-year-old Eyad, was gravely wounded.
Even by the terrible standards of the Gaza conflict, the deaths had the power to shock. But they were also a reflection of a daily reality in the territory: the killing and maiming of its very youngest citizens and the destruction of a young generation.
According to local health officials, whose estimates have generally been found to be accurate by the global humanitarian community, more than 16,500 children have been killed in the 19 months since the war began – a figure almost 24 times higher than the number of children killed in Ukraine, where the population is 20 times bigger, since Russia’s invasion. The World Health Organization tally for child deaths stands at 15,613.
