Closing summary
It is 6pm in Gaza and in Tel Aviv. 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:
A UN agency said on Thursday that rebuilding Gaza will cost an estimated $30bn to $40bn and require an effort on a scale unseen since the second world war. “The scale of the destruction is huge and unprecedented,” UN assistant secretary general Abdallah al-Dardari told a press conference in Amman, Jordan.
Hamas confirmed that the group will visit Egypt for further ceasefire talks in the Gaza war. A statement by the group added that Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh had affirmed the group’s “positive spirit in studying the ceasefire proposal” in a phone call with Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel. Speaking to Reuters, a Palestinian official close to the mediation said the Hamas delegation’s visit could take place in the next two days.
Israel’s president on Thursday criticised US universities for campus unrest over Israel’s war in Gaza, saying these institutions were “contaminated by hatred and antisemitism”. Isaac Herzog said in a special broadcast that he was issuing an urgent message of support to Jewish communities amid a “dramatic resurgence in antisemitism and following the hostilities and intimidation against Jewish students on campuses across the US in particular”.
Israel’s war cabinet will meet at 6.30pm [3.30pm GMT] tonight to discuss “the next steps in negotiations to achieve a hostage deal”. The full security cabinet will meet afterwards. Earlier this week, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would launch a ground operation in Rafah regardless of whether there was a deal or not.
A senior Hamas official overnight has told the AFP news agency that at the moment the group’s response to the proposed truce deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar was “negative”, but that discussions were still under way. The official said Hamas “cannot under any circumstances raise the white flag or surrender to the conditions of the Israeli enemy.”
The outline of the hostage release programme that has been proposed is believed to be a 40 day pause in fighting while initially female hostages are released in batches of three every three days in return for Palestinian detainees. Hamas and other groups are believed to have seized and abducted about 250 people on 7 October from inside southern Israel, with 133 of them thought still held captive, not all of whom are believed to be alive.
At least 34,596 Palestinians have been killed and 77,816 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, according to new figures released by the Hamas-led health ministry. During the same period 474 Palestinians including 116 children, have been killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem by either Israeli security forces or settlers. Israel says 263 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza since it launched its ground offensive. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
Two people have been arrested after shouting verbal abuse and throwing stones and eggs at a demonstration being held by relatives of those held hostage in Gaza which was attempting to block a highway in Tel Aviv.
More than 1,600 people have been arrested at 30 schools in the US in the last couple of weeks during the protests about the Israel-Gaza conflict. You can follow our live coverage of that here.
Paris’s Sciences Po university has rejected demands by protesters to review its relations with Israeli universities, its interim director Jean Bassères said on Thursday, prompting some students to say they would start a hunger strike in protest. “I clearly refused to set up a working group on our relations with Israeli universities and partner companies,” Bassères told reporters after a townhall meeting with students and staff. Dozens of students promptly started a sit-in inside the university to protest Bassères decision.
The EU has offered Lebanon a financial package of €1bn (£855m / $1.07bn) which among other measures includes supporting Lebanon’s armed forces with equipment and training for border management.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, has issued a statement after speaking to the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell. He said there was a “need to end the Israeli regime’s crimes and genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, without delay and precondition”.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Thursday that the first baby has been born after the reopening of the maternity ward at the al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis. The child is named Muhammad Luay al-Raqab.
The risk of exposure to unexploded ordnance in Gaza is at its “most dangerous stage”, the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) has warned. Highlighting the warning in its flash update, the UN humanitarian agency (OCHA), reported that a 14-year-old boy was seriously injured and had to undergo limb amputations after opening a booby-trapped can of food in Khan Younis.
Organisers of the Eurovision song contest in Sweden have said they will not allow people to bring in or display Palestinian flags at the event, in which Israel is competing.
A British police officer pleaded guilty on Thursday to terror charges for showing support on social media for Hamas, which is designated a terror group and banned in the UK. The West Yorkshire constable admitted sharing two images on WhatsApp supporting the group three weeks after the 7 October attack.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that several Palestinian civilians were killed on Thursday morning by Israeli airstrikes which targeted residential buildings and also the “lands and tents of the displaced people east of the city of Rafah”. It reported that “six citizens were killed in an Israeli bombing of the city of Al-Zahraa, north of Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip” and that one person was killed near Khan Younis, and two were killed when Israel bombed “a residential building owned by Ishteiwi family in Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, south of Gaza City” where it said “a number of missing people are still under the rubble.” The claims have not been independently verified.
UN estimates rebuilding Gaza will cost $30bn to $40bn
A UN agency said on Thursday that rebuilding Gaza will cost an estimated $30bn to $40bn and require an effort on a scale unseen since the second world war, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“The United Nations Development Programme’s initial estimates for the reconstruction of … the Gaza Strip surpass $30bn and could reach up to $40bn,” said UN assistant secretary general Abdallah al-Dardari.
“The scale of the destruction is huge and unprecedented … This is a mission that the global community has not dealt with since the second world war,” Dardari told a press conference in the Jordanian capital Amman.
According to AFP, he added that if Gaza’s reconstruction were to be carried out through the normal process, “it could take decades, and the Palestinian people do not have the luxury of waiting for decades”.
He told the press conference:
It is therefore important that we act quickly to re-house people in decent housing and restore their lives to normal – economically, socially, in terms of health and education.
This is our top priority, and it must be achieved within the first three years following the cessation of hostilities.”
He estimated the total rubble from bombardment and explosions at 37m tonnes.
“We are talking about a colossal figure, and this figure is increasing every day,” he said. “The latest data indicates that it is already approaching 40m tonnes.”
The UN official also said “72% of all residential buildings have been completely or partially destroyed”.
“Reconstruction must be planned carefully, efficiently and with extreme flexibility because we do not know how the war will end” and what type of postwar governance will be established in the Gaza Strip, he added.
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