Closing summary
An active member of the US air force has died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington over the weekend in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza, the Agence France-Presse news agency quoted the Pentagon as saying.
Israeli officials headed on Monday to Qatar, where Hamas has its political office, to work on terms of a Gaza truce and hostage release deal, a source told Reuters. The source said the Israeli working delegation, made up of staff from the military and the Mossad spy agency, was tasked with creating an operational centre to support negotiations.
Israel mounted airstrikes west of the Lebanese city of Baalbek on Monday, killing at least two Hezbollah members, sources in Lebanon told Reuters. The Israeli military said it was striking Hezbollah targets deep inside Lebanon but provided no further details. Hezbollah said earlier on Monday it had shot down an Israeli Hermes 450 drone over Lebanese territory using a surface-to-air missile, the second time it has announced a downing of this type of unmanned aerial vehicle.
Israel’s military “presented the war cabinet with a plan for evacuating the population from areas of fighting in the Gaza Strip, and with the upcoming operational plan,” a statement from Benjamin Netayahu’s office said. Israel has threatened to launch a full-blown attack on Rafah, the last city at Gaza’s southern edge, despite international pleas - including from its main ally Washington - for restraint. Netanyahu, who has promised “total victory”, said an operation is necessary to root out four battalions of Hamas fighters based there.
The Israeli government has failed to comply with an order by the UN’s top court to provide urgently needed aid to desperate people in the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch said. “The Israeli government is starving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, putting them in even more peril than before the World Court’s binding order,” Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said. “The Israeli government has simply ignored the court’s ruling, and in some ways even intensified its repression, including further blocking lifesaving aid.”
At least 29,782 Palestinians have been killed and 70,043 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said. In the past 24 hours, 90 Palestinians were killed and 164 injured in Israeli strikes, the ministry said.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has criticised the UN security council for failing to adequately respond to Israel’s war in Gaza and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which he said had “perhaps fatally” undermined its authority. He also said that a full-scale Israeli assault in Rafah would have devastating consequences. “An all-out Israeli offensive on the city would not only be terrifying for more than a million Palestinian civilians sheltering there, it would put the final nail in the coffin of our aid programmes,” the UN chief said in a speech.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, told a press conference that he submitted his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas. Shtayyeh, an academic economist who took office in 2019, said he was resigning to allow for the formation of a broad consensus among Palestinians about political arrangements following Israel’s war in Gaza.
Israeli forces killed more than 30 Palestinian gunmen in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district, more than 10 in the central Gaza Strip and others in the southern city of Khan Younis, the military said on Monday in a summary of the last 24 hours’ operations.
Updated
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Federation of Arab Journalists are marking 26 February as the International Day in support of Palestinian Journalists.
In a press release, the IFJ said:
One hundred journalists were killed in four months, the equivalent of seven per week. This massacre is a terrible and unjustified tragedy.
The needs of our colleagues working in Gaza have become critical. In the middle of winter, our sisters and brothers and their families lack everything and especially the essentials: clothes, blankets, tents, food, water... The scarcity of these basic necessities in this small territory of 40km long and 5km wide, that is subject to a blockade, results in a surge in prices. Basic goods, where they are available, are no longer affordable.
The IFJ is also alarmed by the poor international coverage of the conflict, resulting from the world media’s exclusion from the enclave by Israel. All over the world we deserve to know what is going on in Gaza. This deliberate denial of the right to report is an abuse of media freedom.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House and other groups said in a letter to the US president, Joe Biden, in January that more media workers have been killed in the conflict since the Hamas attack on 7 October than in any single country over an entire year.
The letter urged Biden to “abjure the indiscriminate and deliberate killing of journalists, promptly and thoroughly investigate all attacks on journalists, and hold accountable individuals found to be responsible for them”.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has accused the Israeli military of targeting journalists and their families in Gaza. Israel denies that it targets journalists, saying it only targets Hamas.
Key event
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said it has successfully evacuated 24 people from al-Amal Hospital, including 18 patients and injured people, eight of whom needed urgent surgery.
The PRCS also said in its post on X that logistical supplies, food, and water were delivered to the hospital, located in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
The PRCS wrote:
Despite pre-coordination by the United Nations convoy team and their escort, the occupation obstructed the convoy’s passage for approximately 7 hours at the military checkpoint west of the al-Amal neighbourhood.
All medics were forced out of their vehicles and made to sit on the ground, while three of them were detained and taken to an unknown location after being stripped of their clothes.
The occupation released one of them after midnight, while the detention of medics Jihad Aslim and Ramadan Ashour has continued since yesterday evening.
US air force member dies after setting himself on fire outside Israeli embassy
An active member of the US air force has died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington over the weekend in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency quotes the Pentagon as saying (see earlier post at 07.43 for more details).
Emergency responders rushed to the scene just before 1pm EST (6pm GMT) on Sunday in response to a “call for person on fire outside the Israeli embassy,” according the Washington DC fire department. They arrived to find that US secret service officers had already extinguished the fire.
The man had filmed himself shouting “Free Palestine” as he lit himself on fire, according to footage shared on social media. He was initially transported to hospital with “critical life-threatening injuries,” the fire department said.
On Monday, a US air force spokesperson told AFP the “individual involved in yesterday’s incident succumbed to his injuries and passed away last night”. She said: “We will provide additional details 24 hours after next-of-kin notifications are complete.”
A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy said no staff were injured in the incident, and that the man was “unknown” to them.
Updated
After surviving on bitter loaves made from animal feed instead of proper flour, three young brothers who fled their home in Gaza City for a tent further south were tucking into a tub of halawa, a sweet crumbly paste, when they spoke to journalists from the Reuters news agency.
Seraj Shehada, aged eight, and his brothers Ismail, nine, and Saad, 11, said they had run away in secret to take refuge with their aunt in her tent in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, because there was nothing to eat in Gaza City. Seraj Shehada said:
When we were in Gaza City, we used to eat nothing. We would eat every two days.
Referring to loaves made from grains and seeds meant for animal consumption, he said:
We would eat bird and donkey food, just anything. Day after day, not this food.
Food shortages have been a significant problem across the Palestinian enclave since the start of the war, but are particularly acute in northern Gaza, where aid deliveries have been rarer for longer.
Updated
Israeli delegation heads to Qatar for ceasefire deal push - report
Israeli officials headed on Monday to Qatar, where Hamas has its political office, to work on terms of a Gaza truce and hostage release deal, a source told Reuters.
Israel is under pressure from its main ally, the US, to agree a truce soon, to head off a threatened Israeli assault on Rafah, the last city at Gaza Strip’s southern edge where over half the enclave’s 2.3 million people are sheltering.
The source said the Israeli working delegation, made up of staff from the military and the Mossad spy agency, was tasked with creating an operational centre to support negotiations.
Its mission would include vetting proposed Palestinian militants that Hamas wants freed as part of a hostage release deal.
But Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip and triggered the current war by attacking southern Israel on 7 October, says it will not free more than 100 hostages it is still holding unless Israel promises to withdraw from Gaza and end the conflict.
Israel, on the other hand, says it will negotiate only a temporary pause in hostilities to free hostages, will not fully halt the war until Hamas is eradicated, and wants overall security control for Gaza indefinitely.
Summary of the day so far...
Israel mounted airstrikes west of the Lebanese city of Baalbek on Monday, killing at least two Hezbollah members, sources in Lebanon told Reuters. The Israeli military said it was striking Hezbollah targets deep inside Lebanon but provided no further details. Hezbollah said earlier on Monday it had shot down an Israeli Hermes 450 drone over Lebanese territory using a surface-to-air missile, the second time it has announced a downing of this type of unmanned aerial vehicle.
Israel’s military “presented the war cabinet with a plan for evacuating the population from areas of fighting in the Gaza Strip, and with the upcoming operational plan,” a statement from Benjamin Netayahu’s office said. Israel has threatened to launch a full-blown attack on Rafah, the last city at Gaza’s southern edge, despite international pleas - including from its main ally Washington - for restraint. Netanyahu, who has promised “total victory”, said an operation is necessary to root out four battalions of Hamas fighters based there.
The Israeli government has failed to comply with an order by the UN’s top court to provide urgently needed aid to desperate people in the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch said. “The Israeli government is starving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, putting them in even more peril than before the World Court’s binding order,” Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said. “The Israeli government has simply ignored the court’s ruling, and in some ways even intensified its repression, including further blocking lifesaving aid.”
At least 29,782 Palestinians have been killed and 70,043 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said. In the past 24 hours, 90 Palestinians were killed and 164 injured in Israeli strikes, the ministry said.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has criticised the UN security council for failing to adequately respond to Israel’s war in Gaza and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which he said had “perhaps fatally” undermined its authority. He also said that a full-scale Israeli assault in Rafah would have devastating consequences. “An all-out Israeli offensive on the city would not only be terrifying for more than a million Palestinian civilians sheltering there, it would put the final nail in the coffin of our aid programmes,” the UN chief said in a speech.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, told a press conference that he submitted his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas. Shtayyeh, an academic economist who took office in 2019, said he was resigning to allow for the formation of a broad consensus among Palestinians about political arrangements following Israel’s war in Gaza.
Israeli forces killed more than 30 Palestinian gunmen in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district, more than 10 in the central Gaza Strip and others in the southern city of Khan Younis, the military said on Monday in a summary of the last 24 hours’ operations.
Updated
The League of Arab States has called Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories an “affront to international justice,” saying failure to end it amounted to “genocide”.
The International Court of Justice entered its last day of week-long hearings after a request from the UN, with an unprecedented 52 countries giving their views on Israel’s occupation.
“This prolonged occupation is an affront to international justice,” the 22 Arab-country bloc’s representative told judges in The Hague.
“The failure to bring it to an end has led to the current horrors perpetrated against the Palestinian people, amounting to genocide,” Abdel Hakim El-Rifai said.
Israel strikes deeper into Lebanon in attack against Hezbollah targets in Baalbek - sources
Israel mounted airstrikes west of the Lebanese city of Baalbek on Monday, killing at least two Hezbollah members, sources in Lebanon told Reuters.
The Israeli military said it was striking Hezbollah targets deep inside Lebanon but provided no further details. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group.
The strikes hit an area some 18 km (11 miles) from the city of Baalbek, which is known for its ancient ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Part of the Bekaa Valley region bordering Syria, the area is a political stronghold of the Shi’ite group Hezbollah. The sources said Israel had carried out two simultaneous strikes.
Hezbollah has been waging attacks on Israeli positions at the Lebanese-Israeli frontier since the 7 October attack on Israel by its Palestinian ally Hamas, in what it has described as a campaign to support Palestinians under fire from Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah said earlier on Monday it had shot down an Israeli Hermes 450 drone over Lebanese territory using a surface-to-air missile, the second time it has announced a downing of this type of unmanned aerial vehicle (see earlier post at 09.09)
Israel’s military “presented the war cabinet with a plan for evacuating the population from areas of fighting in the Gaza Strip, and with the upcoming operational plan,” a statement from Benjamin Netayahu’s office said on Monday.
Israel has threatened to launch a full-blown attack on Rafah, the last city at Gaza’s southern edge, despite international pleas - including from its main ally Washington - for restraint.
People who have fled to Rafah, where an estimated 1.5 million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter, from elsewhere say there is nowhere left to go.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said earlier this month that the Israel Defense Forces were planning operations in Rafah targeting Hamas fighters, command centres and tunnels, though gave no timeline for the campaign.
Updated
Human Rights Watch says Israeli government is blocking 'lifesaving aid' into Gaza and is 'starving' Palestinians
The Israeli government has failed to comply with an order by the UN’s top court to provide urgently needed aid to desperate people in the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch has said.
In its ruling last month, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to follow six provisional measures, including taking “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.
Human Rights Watch said Israel was not adhering to the court’s order on aid provision, citing a 30% drop in the daily average number of aid trucks entering Gaza in the weeks following the court’s ruling.
It said Israel was not adequately facilitating fuel deliveries to hard-hit northern Gaza and blamed Israel for blocking aid from reaching the north, where the World Food Program said last week it was forced to suspend aid deliveries because of increasing chaos in the isolated part of the territory.
Israel is not complying w @CIJ_ICJ binding order in genocide case—starving Gaza's 2.3 million ppl more harshly than before—@hrw finds. Its disregard for the World Court is a challenge to rules-based int’l order. Time for sanctions to press Israel to comply https://t.co/DwF4QVRXfQ pic.twitter.com/z16lzFaOu6
— Omar Shakir (@OmarSShakir) February 26, 2024
“The Israeli government is starving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, putting them in even more peril than before the World Court’s binding order,” Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said.
“The Israeli government has simply ignored the court’s ruling, and in some ways even intensified its repression, including further blocking lifesaving aid.”
Israel denies it is restricting the entry of aid and has instead blamed humanitarian organisations operating inside Gaza, saying hundreds of trucks filled with aid sit idle on the Palestinian side of the main crossing. The UN says it can’t always reach the trucks at the crossing because it is at times too dangerous.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s office also said on Monday the war cabinet had approved a plan to deliver humanitarian aid safely into Gaza in a way that would “prevent the cases of looting”. It did not disclose further details.
Updated
Turkey’s deputy foreign minister, Ahmet Yildiz, told judges at the International Court of Justice on Monday that Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is the root cause of conflict in the region.
“The unfolding situation after October 7 proves once again that, without addressing the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there can be no peace in the region,” he was quoted by Reuters as saying on the sixth day of hearings.
“The real obstacle to peace is obvious. The deepening occupation by Israel of the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, and failure to implement the two-state vision,” he added.
The UN’s top court is hearing arguments from more than 50 states following a request by the UN general assembly in 2022 to issue a non-binding opinion on the legal consequences of the Israeli occupation.
The UN rights chief has decried disinformation and other attacks that aim to “undermine the legitimacy” and work of the UN and other institutions, describing them as “profoundly destructive”.
Speaking at the opening of the UN human rights council’s main annual session, Volker Turk criticised widespread “disinformation that targets UN humanitarian organisations, UN peacekeepers and my office”.
Turk said:
The UN has become a lightning rod for manipulative propaganda and a scapegoat for policy failures.
This is profoundly destructive of the common good, and it callously betrays the many people whose lives rely on it.
During his opening speech, the UN high commissioner for human rights stressed that the UN was “uniquely equipped to enable states to discuss and resolve pressing global issues”.
“This convening power is particularly vital now, when the magnitude of conflict, planetary peril and digital transformation requires urgent solutions,” he said, in quotes carried by AFP.
Turk pointed to “the pain and the slaughter of so many people in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, Haiti and so many other places around the world,” which he described as “unbearable”.
Updated
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said on Monday it had downed an Israeli Hermes 450 drone over Lebanese territory with a surface-to-air missile, the second time it has announced bringing down this type of unmanned aerial vehicle.
Reuters reports:
The Hermes 450 is an Israeli multi-payload drone made by Elbit Systems, an Israel-based weapons manufacturer.
The Israeli military said on Monday that two missile launches had targeted an Israeli Air Force UAV operating over Lebanon.
The first, it said, was intercepted by Israel’s ‘David’s Sling’ aerial defence system but the drone “fell inside Lebanese territory” after a second launch.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, has said it has downed or seized control of several Israeli drones in the months since it began exchanging fire with the Israeli military across Lebanon’s southern border.
Updated
Death toll in Gaza reaches 29,782, says health ministry
At least 29,782 Palestinians have been killed and 70,043 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
In the past 24 hours, 90 Palestinians were killed and 164 injured in Israeli strikes, the ministry added.
Most of the casualties have been women and children, the ministry has said, and thousands more bodies are likely to remain uncounted under rubble across Gaza.
Full-scale Israeli offensive in Rafah would be 'final nail in the coffin' of aid programmes, says UN chief
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has described Rafah in southern Gaza as the core of the humanitarian aid operation in the Palestinian enclave, and warned that an “all-out” Israeli offensive in the city could put an end to the delivery of vital aid programmes there.
Speaking at the opening of the UN human rights council in Geneva, the UN chief said a full-scale Israeli assault would have devastating consequences.
Guterres, who described Rafah as the core of the humanitarian aid operation in the Palestinian enclave, said: “An all-out Israeli offensive on the city would not only be terrifying for more than a million Palestinian civilians sheltering there; it would put the final nail in the coffin of our aid programmes.”
He also criticised the UN security council for failing to adequately respond to Israel’s war in Gaza and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which he said had “perhaps fatally” undermined its authority.
He said:
The council’s lack of unity on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and on Israel’s military operations in Gaza following the horrific terror attacks by Hamas on 7 October, has severely - perhaps fatally - undermined its authority.
The council needs serious reform to its composition and working methods.
The US last week again vetoed a draft UN security council resolution blocking a demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza. It was the third US veto of a draft resolution since 7 October.
Washington was widely lambasted for using its veto again at a time when nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2 million people are under threat of famine.
The US has drafted an alternative resolution, which calls for a temporary ceasefire “as soon as practicable”, and calls on Israel not to proceed with a planned offensive on Rafah, the southernmost Gazan city where more than a million Palestinians have sought refuge.
Explaining the veto, the US envoy, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said that Joe Biden was in the midst of negotiations with Israel, Egypt and Qatar aimed at clinching a comprehensive hostage deal.
Updated
Mohammad Shtayyeh: Palestinian Authority PM submits resignation
The Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, has told a press conference that he submitted his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas.
Shtayyeh, an academic economist who took office in 2019, reportedly submitted his resignation at the opening of a government meeting in Ramallah in the West Bank on Monday.
He said he was resigning to allow for the formation of a broad consensus among Palestinians about political arrangements following Israel’s war in Gaza.
Shtayyeh said the next stage would “require new governmental and political arrangements that take into account the emerging reality in the Gaza Strip, the national unity talks, and the urgent need for an inter-Palestinian consensus”.
In addition, it would require “the extension of the Authority’s authority over the entire land, Palestine”.
The move comes amid growing US pressure on Abbas to shake up the PA as international efforts have intensified to stop the war and begin work on a political structure to govern the enclave afterwards.
Hamas has run Gaza since 2007, when it expelled the PA following its win in elections the previous year, and unlike the PA does not believe in a two-state solution since this would require the recognition of Israel.
The PA in the West Bank does recognise Israel, but is widely seen as in need of reform and democratic accountability.
Updated
Israel’s war in Gaza has displaced the vast majority of the population from their homes and left civilians facing acute shortages of food, water and medicine.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are hungry, some desperately so, and aid agencies describe “pockets of famine” in the territory.
“We have no food or drink for ourselves or our children,” Omar al-Kahlout told AFP, as he waited near Gaza City for aid trucks to arrive.
“We are trapped in the north and there is no aid reaching us - the situation is extremely difficult.”
Three UN agencies - the WFP, the World Health Organization and children’s agency UNICEF - said last week that food and safe water were “incredibly scarce and diseases are rife...resulting in a surge of acute malnutrition” in Gaza.
The food crisis is particularly serious in the north, where in January one in six children under the age of two were reported as acutely malnourished, and where “the situation is likely to be even graver today”, the agencies said.
Aid officials have said that between 1 January and 15 February, 77 missions were planned to deliver aid to the north of the Gaza Strip. Of these, the UN said “12 were facilitated by the Israeli authorities, three were partially facilitated, 14 were impeded, 39 were denied access and nine were postponed”.
Israel, which checks all trucks entering Gaza from both crossings, blames the UN for the fall-off in deliveries, and says it is prepared to speed up the clearance of aid.
The UN says it is becoming more difficult to distribute aid inside Gaza because of the collapse of security inside the strip.
Updated
Al Jazeera has reported from Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest hospital and crucial to the territory’s crippled health services:
Despite the Israeli military’s statement that it has completed operations inside Nasser hospital, snipers are still in the vicinity of the hospital and, tragically, are still shooting at anything moving near it.
There is also still an ongoing blockade of relief convoys, stopping fuel or water supplies from reaching those inside the hospital.
The Israeli military previously conducted mass arrests of about 200 people in or around the hospital, including medical staff and patients. Their fate is unknown. Nobody knows where they are or what’s going to happen to them.
Updated
A man identified as a US air force member was left in a critical condition after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, authorities said, in an apparent act of protest against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Metropolitan police department said it responded to an incident on International Drive around 1pm on Sunday to assist the Secret Service. Fire and emergency services said the man had serious burns.
“An adult male was transported by DC fire and EMS [emergency medical services] to a local hospital where they remain in critical condition,” the police department said on Twitter/X.
#Incident: MPD responded to the 3500 block of International Drive, NW, at approximately 1:00 p.m., to assist the United States Secret Service after an individual set themselves on fire in front of an embassy in the block. (1/3)
— DC Police Department (@DCPoliceDept) February 25, 2024
A video posted online showed a man in a uniform shouting “Free Palestine” as he burned while identifying himself as an active air force member.
The man was reportedly on fire for about a minute before law enforcement put it out.
You can read the full story here:
Updated
Netanyahu’s comments show he is ‘not concerned’ about ceasefire deal, says Hamas official
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday that it was not clear yet whether a hostage deal would materialise from ongoing talks, declining to discuss specifics, but said Hamas needed to “come down to a reasonable situation”.
“They’re in another planet. But if they come down to a reasonable situation, then yes we’ll have a hostage deal. I hope so,” he told CBS’ Face the Nation.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Netanyahu’s comments cast doubt over Israel’s willingness to secure a deal.
“Netanyahu’s comments show he is not concerned about reaching an agreement,” Abu Zuhri told Reuters, accusing the Israeli leader of wanting “to pursue negotiation under bombardment and the bloodshed (of Palestinians)”.
Negotiators from Israel, Qatar, Egypt and the US have agreed the “basic contours” of an arrangement during weekend talks in Paris, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN, but the final details still have to be hammered out.
Israeli media reported that the prospective deal would allow for the release of 30 or 40 hostages in exchange for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners, and a ceasefire lasting up to six weeks.
Both sides would continue negotiations during the pause for further releases and a permanent ceasefire, an Egyptian official told the Associated Press.
The break in fighting would cover the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts around 10 March this year, and the deal would include an increase in desperately needed aid.
After initial talks in Paris, follow-up discussions will be held in Doha and Cairo, Egyptian security sources told Reuters.
Opening summary
We are restarting our live coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza and the wider Middle East crisis.
Senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, has said comments by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu cast doubt over Israel’s willingness to secure a ceasefire deal.
On Sunday, Netanyahu spoke to US media and said a deal would only delay Israel’s planned assault on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where an estimated 1.5 million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter.
More on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.
US Central Command (Centcom) said that the Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile that likely targeted a US-flagged owned and operated tanker in the Gulf of Aden on Saturday evening. It said the missile missed and landed in the water, therefore not causing any damage or injuries. “Earlier in the evening, at about 9pm (Sanaa time), US Centcom forces shot down two one-way attack unmanned aerial vehicles over the southern Red Sea in self-defence. A third UAV crashed from an assessed in-flight failure,” it added in a post on X.
Israeli forces killed more than 30 Palestinian gunmen in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district, more than 10 in the central Gaza Strip and others in the southern city of Khan Younis, the military said on Monday in a summary of the last 24 hours’ operations.
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said that the “looming famine” and the blockage of food aid into parts of Gaza was a “man made disaster”. He said the last time the UNRWA was able to deliver food aid to northern Gaza was on 23 January. “Our calls to send food aid have been denied & have fallen on deaf ears. This is a man made disaster. The world committed to never let famine happen again. Famine can still be avoided, through genuine political will to grant access & protection to meaningful assistance,” Lazzarini wrote on X.
Benjamin Netanyahu convened the war cabinet late on Saturday for a briefing with negotiators who had been at ceasefire talks in Paris. This week, it will meet again to discuss preparations for an assault on Rafah. A deal might delay that operation, but would not prevent it, Netanyahu said in an interview with CBS.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN that negotiators from the US, Egypt, Qatar and Israel came to an understanding on the basic contours of a hostage deal during talks in Paris. The deal is still under negotiation, said Sullivan, who added there will have to be indirect discussions by Qatar and Egypt with Hamas.
The death toll in Gaza is likely to pass the grim milestone of 30,000 this week. Israeli strikes have killed 29,692 Palestinians in Gaza since October, two-thirds of them women and children, and injured 69,879, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Iran condemned the latest strikes by the US and the UK on Yemen, saying they were seeking to “escalate tensions and crises” in the region.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has been forced to “stretch every dollar” and juggle its finances in order to continue work in Gaza after 18 donor countries suspended funding over allegations of links to Hamas. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is facing a shortfall of $450m from a budget of $880m.
Updated
