Closing summary
It is 4.15pm in Gaza and 5.15pm in Tel Aviv and Beirut. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Here is a recap of the latest developments:
Aid shipments to Gaza are expected to resume soon from Cyprus, officials said on Wednesday. The US plans to set up a dock, with a target date of 1 May, on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast that will enable aid deliveries which will be pre-screened in Cyprus, with Israeli oversight. With that jetty in place, Cyprus expects aid to resume soon, Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides said.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated on Wednesday a promise to retaliate against Israel over the killings of Iranian generals in Syria. Israel has not acknowledged its involvement. Khamenei spoke at a prayer ceremony, saying the airstrike that demolished Iran’s consulate in Syria earlier this month was “wrongdoing” against a diplomatic post that is considered Iranian territory. “The evil regime must be punished, and it will be punished,” he said.
Israel’s foreign minister threatened on Wednesday that its country’s forces would strike Iran directly if the Islamic Republic launched an attack from its territory against Israel. “If Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will respond and attack in Iran,” Israel Katz said in a post on X in both Farsi and Hebrew.
Israel said it was moving aid into Gaza more quickly in the as a result of international pressure, but the figures have been disputed. Israel said 468 aid trucks were moved into Gaza on Tuesday, the highest since the conflict began. That followed 419 on Monday. But the Red Crescent and UN have given much lower figures, with the UN saying many trucks were only half full because of Israeli inspection rules.
US president Joe Biden said Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach on Gaza was a “mistake” and urged Israel to call for a ceasefire, in an interview that aired on Tuesday. “I think what he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” Biden told Univision, a US Spanish-language TV network, when asked about Netanyahu’s handling of the war.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez warned on Wednesday that Israel’s “disproportionate response” in the Gaza war with Hamas risks “destabilising the Middle East, and as a consequence, the entire world”. Sánchez also insisted that the recognition of a Palestinian state, long resisted by Israel and its key allies, is “in Europe’s geopolitical interests”.
Eid al-Fitr was observed by Muslims across the world on Wednesday, including in Gaza, where Eid prayers were held outside the ruins of a mosque in Rafah to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Some displaced worshippers knelt on plastic tarpaulin outside tents where they are living after Israeli offensives destroyed their homes and infrastructure.
The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, confirmed the government will not suspend arms exports to Israel after the killing of seven aid workers in an airstrike on Gaza last week, as he insisted the UK would continue to act within international law. Cameron said that he had reviewed the most recent legal advice about the situation on the ground but this left the UK’s position on export licences “unchanged”.
A vigil for the more than 100 people who remain unaccounted for after being kidnapped by Hamas in October took place in central London on Tuesday. The event, which was organised by groups including the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, was addressed by family members of the hostages and Jewish religious figures.
The commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (Unifil), Aroldo Lazaro, said on Wednesday the danger of escalation on the Lebanon-Israel border was real. “Unifil calls for a return to the cessation of hostilities, and a move towards a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution to the conflict,” Lazaro said in a statement.
Israeli forces kept up combat operations and airstrikes on Gaza on Wednesday, reported AFP, a day after Netanyahu vowed no let up in the campaign to destroy Hamas and bring home the hostages. Netanyahu insisted on that “no force in the world” would stop Israeli troops from entering Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah which is packed with displaced Palestinians.
A residential home was hit overnight by an Israeli airstrike that killed 14 people, mostly women and children, and seriously injured 30 others, Dr Khalil Al-Dikran, the spokesperson of the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital told CNN.
Israel has agreed in ceasefire talks in Egypt to concessions about the return of Palestinians to the north of Gaza, but believes Hamas does not want to strike a deal, Israeli officials told Reuters on Wednesday. Two officials with knowledge of the talks told the news agency that under a US proposal for a truce, Israel would allow the return of 150,000 Palestinians to north Gaza with no security checks. In return, they said, Hamas would be required to give a list of female, elderly and sick hostages it still holds alive. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment.
According to the UN, 95% of pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza are not getting adequate food or nutrition. In a release published by the UN’s Population Fund (UNFPA), that was updated on 2 April, the UN agency warned that about 155,000 pregnant women and new mothers were “struggling to survive”. It said they were “suffering from hunger and the diseases … amid life-threatening shortages of food, water and medical care”.
At least 33,482 Palestinians have been killed and 76,049 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures from the Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas. It also said 122 Palestinians were killed and 56 injured in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
A Lebanese man under US sanctions for allegedly funnelling money from Iran to Hamas has been killed just outside Beirut, a security source told AFP on Wednesday. The body of Mohammad Sarur was found on Tuesday in a villa in the mountain town of Beit Mery, the source told AFP, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Palestine’s ambassador to Ireland on Wednesday welcomed Dublin’s promise to formally recognise Palestinian statehood and hoped other EU members will follow. “I hope that this recognition by Ireland will be a reality soon, and Ireland will lead other EU states to follow suit,” Dr Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid told RTÉ on Wednesday. “Ireland has always stood on the right side of history, justice, humanity international law – so I expected that Ireland will lead in the recognition of the state of Palestine.” Asked if Ireland should have already done so she said: “Yes.”
Current and former US officials, who have spoken to the BBC, said that the US president’s pressure on Israel after last week’s deadly attack on aid workers did not go far enough. They also said that it would fail to stem the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The Australian foreign minister, Penny Wong, has said a “pathway out of the endless cycle of violence” in the Middle East can only come with recognition of “a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel”. Some commentators have interpreted the speech as a hint that Australia could recognise Palestinian statehood in the near term, although Wong has clarified that the government has made no such decision.
Three people were charged in the UK after a pro-Palestine demonstration outside Labour leader Keir Starmer’s home, the Metropolitan police said on Wednesday. In its statement, the Met said that “two women and a man arrested in Kentish Town on Tuesday 9 April have been charged with public order offences and will appear at Westminster magistrates court”.
Rishi Sunak defended the UK’s decision not to suspend arms sales to Israel, saying “none of our closest allies” have stopped existing export licences but added Netanyahu “needs to do more” to alleviate suffering in Gaza. Sunak made the comments on Wednesday when responding to a caller on his LBC phone-in interview.
Oxfam responded to a press conference on the conflict in Gaza, held in New York, where the UK foreign secretary mentioned having a ‘plan B’ should the conflict escalate into Rafah. “There is no plan B for more than a million desperate people currently sheltering in Rafah – if Israel launches a ground offensive, then the scale of the crisis would be catastrophic,” said Oxfam’s chief impact officer, Aleema Shivji.
The World Health Organization (WHO) teams arrived at Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza on Monday to help identify bodies in the ruins. Motasem Salah, director of the Gaza Emergency Operations Centre, told AFP the scenes on Monday at the sprawling medical centre were “unbearable”. Salah said Gaza lacked the forensic experts needed to help identify the dead or determine what had happened to them. So they are relying on “the expertise of the WHO and OCHA (UN humanitarian office) delegation”, he said.
Updated
Gaza aid shipments to resume soon, Cyprus says, as 1,000 tons of food await delivery
Aid shipments to Gaza are expected to resume soon from Cyprus, officials said on Wednesday, reports Reuters.
According to the news agency, Cyprus has about 1,000 tons of aid destined for starving or severely hungry people in Gaza stored on the island. It is being held there after a decision by World Central Kitchen (WCK) to pause and review activity in the territory after the deaths of its workers on 1 April.
The US plans to set up a dock, with a target date of 1 May, on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast that will enable aid deliveries which will be pre-screened in Cyprus, with Israeli oversight. With that jetty in place, Cyprus expects aid to resume soon, Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides said.
“We are in communication with countries we have worked with from the outset, so that very soon humanitarian aid from Cyprus will resume after the completion of the US project in Gaza,” he said.
The WCK had been operational in Gaza since October, using land, air and more recently the sea, to get aid in to supply its network of more than 60 community kitchens.
Workers were midway into unloading a second shipment of aid through the Cyprus route when their three-vehicle convoy was hit by Israeli strikes.
After WCK announced the pause, a convoy of ships taking part in the mission returned to Cyprus on 3 April 3 with undelivered aid, said Reuters. Initially at anchorage, the ship carrying food was brought to port for offloading after bad weather in Cyprus this week.
“The plan is to store the aid until WCK decides what it wants to do,” a Cypriot official told Reuters.
