Closing summary
It’s 4.20 in Gaza City and Tel Aviv and we’re about to close this blog. Our live coverage of the Middle East crisis will resume later in the day. Here’s a rundown on the latest key developments. Thanks for reading.
The US president, Joe Biden, has said the creation of an independent state for Palestinians is not impossible while Benjamin Netanyahu is still in office, following a call with the Israeli prime minister on Friday. The US president said he spoke with Netanyahu about possible solutions for the creation of such a state, noting that not all countries have their own militaries. Biden said Netanyahu was not opposed to all two-state solutions, and there were a number of types possible.
The US central command said its forces conducted strikes against three Houthi anti-ship missiles that were aimed into the Southern Red Sea and were prepared to launch. The US has been launching strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, and this week returned the Iran-backed Yemen-based group to a list of “terrorist” groups. The Houthis said earlier today that they do not intend to expand their attacks on shipping in and around the Red Sea, beyond their stated aims of blockading Israel and retaliating against the US and Britain for airstrikes.
As Israeli forces have moved further into southern Gaza, airstrikes and close-combat fighting are approaching areas crowded with more than a million people seeking refuge from the destruction across the rest of the territory. The prospect of major operations taking place in territory with such a dense and vulnerable population is “deeply concerning”, say aid officials, who fear Gaza’s largest remaining hospital may have to be closed or evacuated.
Gaza’s main internet provider, Paltel, has announced that communication services across the Palestinian territory are gradually returning after a nearly eight-day outage, the longest blackout since the war began. In a statement, Paltel said two of its technical team members lost their lives as a result of “direct shelling” during recent repair operations, bringing the total number of its employees killed to 14 since the start of the conflict.
A senior minister in the Israeli war cabinet has said that only a ceasefire deal can win the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, and that Israel is unlikely to achieve its aim of “total victory” over the militant Islamist group. Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces, launched a blistering attack on Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the campaign against Hamas and failure to take responsibility for the failures that led to the Palestinian militant group’s bloody attack on Israel in October.
Health services in Gaza are “decimated”, with medical staff exhausted after three months of war forced to extract shrapnel without adequate pain relief, conduct amputations without anaesthetics and watch children die of cancers due to a lack of facilities and medicine.
Pakistan’s political and military leaders have moved to de-escalate tensions with Iran, after trading deadly airstrikes on militant targets in each other’s territory this week. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Jalil Abbas Jilani, spoke to his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, by phone where they agreed “close coordination on counter-terrorism and other aspects of mutual concern should be strengthened”, according to a readout by Islamabad’s foreign ministry.
Hezbollah’s number two leader has warned Israel against expanding the conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border, where there have been near daily exchanges of cross-border fire between the Israeli army and the Iran-backed militant group. Naim Qassem said in a statement on Friday: “If Israel decides to expand its aggression, it will receive a real slap in the face in response.” Any restoration of stability on the border was contingent on “the end of the aggression in Gaza”, he added.
Leading progressive and Jewish members of Congress have criticised the US’s “unconditional support” for Israel after Benjamin Netanyahu declared bluntly that he was opposed to a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza and directly rejected American policy. Meanwhile, 60 of President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats have signed a letter urging his administration to reaffirm that the US strongly opposes “the forced and permanent displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza.
The White House has said it was “seriously concerned” about reports that a Palestinian-American teenager had been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank. US-born 17-year-old Tawfiq Ajaq was killed by Israeli security forces in Al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya, east of Ramallah, according to reports.
Palestinian detainees in Gaza described being “beaten, humiliated, subjected to ill-treatment, and to what may amount to torture” said the spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, Ravina Shamdasani. Shamdasani said what detainees told her was consistent with reports her office has been gathering of the detention of Palestinians on a broad scale.
The European Union has added six individuals to an asset freeze and visa ban blacklist for financing Hamas. The new EU sanctions framework targets “any individual or entity who supports, facilitates or enables violent actions by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad”, a statement said.
EU foreign ministers will hold a series of meetings on Monday with counterparts from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and key Arab nations about the war in Gaza and prospects for a future peace settlement. The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, and his Palestinian counterpart, Riyad al-Maliki, are not expected to meet each other.
Swiss prosecutors have confirmed that Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, is the subject of “criminal complaints” filed during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos. A statement allegedly issued by the people behind the complaint said the plaintiffs were seeking a criminal prosecution in parallel to a case brought before the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) by South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has accused the Israeli government of financing Hamas in an effort to weaken the Palestinian Authority. Benjamin Netanyahu has denied accusations by his opponents in Israel and some global media who have accused his government of spending years actively boosting Hamas, including by allowing Qatari financing of Gaza.
Updated
Here’s more on the White House saying Israel will allow shipments of flour for Palestinians through the Israeli port of Ashdod, north of Gaza.
The move comes after the US president, Joe Biden, and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke for the first time in nearly a month and follows the UN calling on Israel to allow access to the port for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid for besieged Gaza, Agence France-Presse reports.
Biden welcomed the Israeli decision on the port, the White House said, adding that US teams would “separately work on options for more direct maritime delivery of assistance into Gaza”.
Three UN agencies – the World Food Programme (WFP), Unicef and the World Health Organisation – pushed for the opening of Ashdod in a joint statement on Monday.
The use of Ashdod, about 40km (25 miles) north of the Gaza border, was “critically needed by aid agencies”, they said, while calling for a “fundamental step change in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza”.
The Israel-Hamas war has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe for Gaza’s 2.4 million people, who are struggling to get food, water, fuel and medical care.
Opening the Ashdod port would reduce the time it took to transport food from the north to Palestinians in Gaza, WFP’s regional director for the Middle East, Corinne Fleischer, said this month.
Hezbollah warns Israel of 'slap in face' if cross-border strikes escalate
A leader in the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has warned that Israel would “receive a real slap in the face” if it expanded the conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border.
Since Hamas’s deadly 7 October attack on Israel there have been near daily exchanges of cross-border fire between the Israeli army and Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian militants.
Hezbollah’s number two, Naim Qassem, said in a statement on Friday:
If Israel decides to expand its aggression, it will receive a real slap in the face in response.
Any restoration of stability on the border was contingent on “the end of the aggression in Gaza”, he added, in comments reported by Agence France-Presse.
The enemy must know the party is ready, that we are preparing based on the principle that an endless aggression can happen, just like our will to push back the aggression is infinite.
His remarks came after Israeli airstrikes “completely destroyed” at least three houses in southern Lebanon on Friday, the official Lebanese news agency NNA and the mayor of the affected border community said.
The Israeli army said on Friday it had “conducted air strikes and carried out artillery and tank fire against Hezbollah observation posts and terrorist infrastructure” in the Kfar Kila sector.
On Friday afternoon, Hezbollah claimed three attacks, including two against “deployments of soldiers of the Israeli enemy” on the border, including using Burkan missiles, which can carry a large explosive payload.
Since 7 October, Israel has repeatedly bombarded Lebanese border villages, with the violence killing more than 195 people in Lebanon, including at least 142 Hezbollah fighters, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, 15 people have been killed, of whom nine were soldiers and six civilians, according to the Israeli army.
Updated
An American drone crashed north of Baghdad, a US defence official said, after Iran-backed militants claimed they fired on an unmanned aircraft flying over Iraq.
“A US UAV crashed near Balad airbase, Iraq” on Thursday night local time, the official told Agence France-Presse, without identifying the type of drone that was lost.
Iraqi security forces recovered the aircraft. There were no injuries reported.
The official also said an investigation into the cause of the crash was under way.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of Iran-linked armed groups that oppose US support for Israel, said on Friday that it fired on a US MQ-9 – a type of drone that can be used for both surveillance and strikes - which was operating over Iraq the day before.
“Mujahideen yesterday targeted... an MQ-9 drone belonging to the American occupation,” the group said in a statement.
US and allied forces in Iraq and Syria have been hit by about 140 attacks since mid-October, according to the Pentagon – many of which have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. Washington has carried out retaliatory strikes in both countries.
On 4 January, a US strike in central Baghdad killed a pro-Iran commander who Washington said was involved in attacks on American troops – a move that infuriated the Iraqi government.
The prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, whose government is backed by Tehran-aligned parties, has called for the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group to depart the country.
Updated
Democrats urge US to reaffirm opposition to 'forced' Gaza displacements
Dozens of President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats have signed a letter urging his administration to reaffirm that the US strongly opposes “the forced and permanent displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza.
The letter to the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, led by US representatives Ayanna Pressley and Jamie Raskin, was signed by 60 Democratic members of the House of Representatives, reflecting concern – especially on the left – over the steep toll on Palestinian civilians of Israel’s campaign against Hamas, Reuters reports.
The letter said:
We urge you to continue to reiterate the United States’ firm commitment to this position and ask that you provide clarification regarding certain provisions of the administration’s supplemental humanitarian and security funding request
A State Department spokesperson said the department did not typically comment on congressional correspondence. But on the broader issue of displacement, the spokesperson said in an email:
We have been clear. There must be no enduring forced displacement of Palestinians, whether inside of Gaza or outside.
The spokesperson said the state department had rejected statements by some Israeli officials calling for resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza and understood from the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that was not the Israeli government’s policy.
Earlier, we reported that leading progressive and Jewish members of Congress have criticised the US’s “unconditional support” for Israel after Netanyahu declared bluntly that he was opposed to a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza and directly rejected American policy.
This is Adam Fulton picking up our live coverage. It’s just passed 2.10am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv
Updated
Summary of the day so far
Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
Joe Biden has said that the creation of an independent state for Palestinians was not impossible while Benjamin Netanyahu was still in office, following a call with the Israeli prime minister on Friday. The US president said he spoke with the Israeli prime minister about possible solutions for creation of an independent state for Palestinians, noting that not all countries have their own militaries. Biden said Netanyahu was not opposed to all two-state solutions, and there were a number of types possible.
The US central command said its forces conducted strikes against three Houthi anti-ship missiles that were aimed into the Southern Red Sea and were prepared to launch. The US has been launching strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, and this week returned the Iran-backed Yemen-based group to a list of “terrorist” groups. The Houthis said earlier today that they do not intend to expand their attacks on shipping in and around the Red Sea, beyond their stated aims of blockading Israel and retaliating against the US and Britain for airstrikes.
Gaza’s main internet provider, Paltel, has announced that communication services across the Palestinian territory are gradually returning after a nearly eight-day outage, the longest blackout since the war began. In a statement, Paltel said two of its technical team members lost their lives as a result of “direct shelling” during recent repair operations, bringing the total number of its employees killed to 14 since the start of the conflict.
As Israeli forces have moved further into southern Gaza, airstrikes and close-combat fighting are approaching areas crowded with more than a million people seeking refuge from the destruction across the rest of the territory. The prospect of major operations taking place in territory with such a dense and vulnerable population is “deeply concerning”, say aid officials, who fear Gaza’s largest remaining hospital may have to be closed or evacuated.
Health services in Gaza are “decimated”, with medical staff exhausted after three months of war forced to extract shrapnel without adequate pain relief, conduct amputations without anaesthetics and watch children die of cancers due to a lack of facilities and medicine.
Pakistan’s political and military leaders have moved to de-escalate tensions with Iran, after trading deadly airstrikes on militant targets in each other’s territory this week. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Jalil Abbas Jilani, spoke to his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, by phone where they agreed “close coordination on counter-terrorism and other aspects of mutual concern should be strengthened”, according to a readout by Islamabad’s foreign ministry.
Leading progressive and Jewish members of Congress have criticized the US’s “unconditional support” for Israel after Benjamin Netanyahu declared bluntly that he was opposed to a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza and directly rejected American policy.
The White House has said it was “seriously concerned” about reports that a Palestinian-American teenager had been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank. US-born 17-year-old Tawfiq Ajaq was killed by Israeli security forces in Al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya, east of Ramallah, according to reports.
A senior minister in the Israeli war cabinet has said that only a ceasefire deal can win the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, and that Israel is unlikely to achieve its aim of “total victory” over the militant Islamist group. Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, launched a blistering attack on Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the campaign against Hamas and failure to take responsibility for the failures that led to the bloody attack into Israel in October.
Palestinian detainees in Gaza described being “beaten, humiliated, subjected to ill-treatment, and to what may amount to torture” said the spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, Ravina Shamdasani. Shamdasani said what detainees told her was consistent with reports her office has been gathering of the detention of Palestinians on a broad scale.
The European Union has added six individuals to an asset freeze and visa ban blacklist for financing the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The new EU sanctions framework targets “any individual or entity who supports, facilitates or enables violent actions by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad”, a statement said.
EU foreign ministers will hold a series of meetings on Monday with counterparts from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and key Arab nations about the war in Gaza and prospects for a future peace settlement. The Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz and his Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Maliki are not expected to meet each other.
Swiss prosecutors have confirmed that Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, is the subject of “criminal complaints” filed during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos. A statement allegedly issued by the people behind the complaint said the plaintiffs were seeking a criminal prosecution in parallel to a case brought before the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) by South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has accused the Israeli government of financing Hamas in en effort to weaken the Palestinian Authority. Benjamin Netanyahu has denied accusations by his opponents in Israel and some global media who have accused his government of spending years actively boosting Hamas, including by allowing Qatari financing of Gaza.
16,000 women and children killed in Gaza, including two mothers every hour, says UN
An estimated 16,000 women and children have been killed in Gaza since the war began, including about two mothers every hour, a UN agency has said.
In a report released on Friday on “The Gendered Impact of the Crisis in Gaza,” UN Women estimated that at least 3,000 women may have become widows and heads of households since 7 October. At least 10,000 children may have lost their father, it said.
Of the territory’s 2.3 million population, 1.9 million are displaced and “close to one million are women and girls” seeking shelter and safety in a territory where no place is safe, it said.
Sima Bahous, UN Women’s executive director, said in a statement:
We have seen evidenced once more that women and children are the first victims of conflict and that our duty to seek peace is a duty to them … That failure, and the generational trauma inflicted on the Palestinian people over these 100 days and counting, will haunt all of us for generations to come.
The blistering attack by Gadi Eisenkot, a senior minister in the Israeli war cabinet, on Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the campaign against Hamas was the latest sign of deep disagreement among political and military leaders over the direction of Israel’s offensive.
Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, said late on Thursday that only a ceasefire deal can win the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, and that Israel was unlikely to achieve its aim of “total victory” over the militant Islamist group.
Central to the disputes inside the war cabinet is the question of how to free the more than 130 hostages who remain in Gaza. Not all of them are believed to be alive and there is a growing sense in Israel that time is running out.
The arguments are mirrored in wider Israeli society. Lilach Shoval in Israel Hayom, a rightwing newspaper, wrote:
Fifteen weeks have elapsed since Hamas forced this war on Israel on that Black Saturday of October 7, and Israel remains far from achieving the goals it set for itself: toppling Hamas’s military and governing ability, and returning the captives, not necessarily in that order.
Others have described a “quagmire”. Mairav Zonszein, an Israel analyst with the International Crisis Group, said:
There is no lack of support for the war but it is increasingly clear that the release of the hostages is in conflict with other goals.
A poll published in Ma’ariv newspaper found that if elections were held now, Netanyahu’s Likud party would be reduced to 16 of the 120 seats in the national assembly, the Knesset.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images from Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Yemen.
Here’s some more detail on Joe Biden’s remarks to reporters after his call with Benjamin Netanyahu.
The US president said he spoke with the Israeli prime minister about possible solutions for creation of an independent state for Palestinians, noting that not all countries have their own militaries.
Asked if he would reconsider conditions on US military aid to Israel given Netanyahu’s comments rejecting a two-state solution, Biden said:
I think we’ll be able to work something out ... I think there’s ways in which this could work.
Asked if he believed Netanyahu would ever support a two-state solution, Biden replied “Yes, given the right one,” a CNN reporter said.
Reporters asked President Joe Biden at the White House if he believed Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu would ever support two-state solution.
— DJ Judd (@DJJudd) January 19, 2024
"Yes, given the right one," Biden told @albamonica.
I asked if he thought he'd be able to convince Netanyahu-- he told me, "Yes." pic.twitter.com/pBKQrPCG6I
Netanyahu not opposed to two-state solution, says Biden
Joe Biden has said that the creation of an independent state for Palestinians was not impossible while Benjamin Netanyahu was still in office.
The US president spoke with the Israeli prime minister for the first time in nearly a month on Friday about Israel’s ongoing strikes in Gaza and differences over a future Palestinian state. According to the White House, Biden had been trying to schedule the call “for quite a bit of time”.
Asked if a two-state solution was “impossible” while Netanyahu was in office, Biden said, “No, it’s not”, Reuters reported. The US president said Netanyahu was not opposed to all two-state solutions, and there were a number of types possible.
The two leaders discussed efforts to secure the remaining hostages held by Hamas, and Israel’s shift to more “targeted” operations in Gaza to allow more humanitarian assistance to come through, the White House’s John Kirby said after the call.
A readout of the call from the White House said:
The president also discussed his vision for a more durable peace and security for Israel fully integrated within the region and a two state-solution with Israel*s security guaranteed.
US says it conducted strikes against three Houthi missiles
The US central command said its forces conducted strikes against three Houthi anti-ship missiles “that were aimed into the Southern Red Sea and were prepared to launch”.
In a statement posted to social media, the US central command said US forces had identified the missiles in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and “determined that they presented an imminent threat” to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region. The statement continues:
U.S. forces subsequently struck and destroyed the missiles in self-defense. This action will make international waters safe and secure for U.S. navy vessels and merchant vessels.
U.S. CENTCOM Destroys Three Houthi Terrorists' Anti-Ship Missiles
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) January 19, 2024
As part of ongoing efforts to protect freedom of navigation and prevent attacks on maritime vessels, U.S. Navy ships are present in the Red Sea. On Jan. 19 at approximately 6:45 p.m. (Sanaa time), U.S. Central… pic.twitter.com/vPYUaIvvA5
Updated
The White House has said it was “seriously concerned” about reports that a Palestinian-American teenager had been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank.
As we reported earlier, US-born 17-year-old Tawfiq Ajaq was killed by Israeli security forces in Al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya, east of Ramallah, according to reports.
The White House’s national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters:
We’re seriously concerned about these reports. The information is scant at this time; we don’t have perfect context about exactly what happened.
A 10-month-old baby who was rescued from rubble created by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in southern Gaza has died, according to a report.
An NBC News team witnessed the dramatic rescue of Tala Rouqah on 28 December after an airstrike ripped through Rafah, killing more than 20 people, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Tala was found unconscious but breathing under rubble covered by a mattress and trapped by debris, near the body of her mother. Tala’s father, Ahmad Rouqah, was rescued. At least 10 members of their family were killed that night, he said.
Rouqa told the outlet on Thursday that Tala has died, nearly three weeks after she was rescued. “To this moment, I am shocked,” he said.
I had a glimmer of hope. I hoped that she would remain with me in this life. As a memory of her mother and her siblings, her aunts and her uncles. But praise Allah, she died. She is with God; it’s better than anything.
He told the outlet that he hoped no other family has to endure such loss:
I have lost the most precious thing I have. I don’t want others to lose their children, to lose themselves, because war is destruction. We are the victims in every way. The people, we are the victims.
A Médecins Sans Frontières medic who spent weeks in the Gaza Strip has described witnessing unparalleled conditions in the Palestinian territory.
It’s “a context that no one saw before”, Enrico Vallaperta said at a press conference in Cairo on Friday after leaving Gaza the day before, AFP reported.
He described seeing oversaturated hospitals and minimal supplies amid ever-closer bombardment, and having to treat a large number of child casualties. He said:
If you compare to Ukraine, after a short time, women and kids were sent to safer areas. In Gaza, they can’t.
He said medical staff were using the minimum medication in order to manage supplies, adding:
What we are doing is almost nothing given the needs. Our impact is very low, it is a drop in the ocean.
Updated
Leading progressive and Jewish members of Congress have criticized the US’s “unconditional support” for Israel after Benjamin Netanyahu declared bluntly that he was opposed to a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza and directly rejected American policy.
Pramila Jayapal, the US representative who heads the influential Congressional Progressive caucus, on Friday issued one of the sharper responses to Netanyahu, saying in a video that the Israeli prime minister’s stance “should cause us to reset our relationship of unconditional support to [his] government”.
“These are policies that are diametrically opposed to the US’s stated goals,” Jayapal said about Netanyahu’s calls for the permanent expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
Meanwhile, 15 Jewish members of the House released a statement Friday saying they “strongly disagree with the prime minister” of the predominantly Jewish nation.
“A two-state solution is the path forward,” said the statement, whose signatories included Jerry Nadler, Jamie Raskin, Adam Schiff and Elissa Slotkin. They were joined by 11 fellow House Democrats: Jake Auchincloss, Rebecca Balint, Suzanne Bonamici, Steve Cohen, Daniel Goldman, Seth Magaziner, Mike Levin, Dean Phillips, Jan Schakowsky, Kim Schrier and Bradley Sherman.
Updated
Communication services gradually returning in Gaza after week-long blackout, says provider
Gaza’s main internet provider, Paltel, has announced that communication services across the Palestinian territory are gradually returning after a nearly eight-day outage, the longest blackout since the war began.
Telecommunication services have completely dropped at least seven times since the war began on 7 October, the provider said.
In a statement posted to social media, Paltel said its teams have worked relentlessly to repair “numerous major damages and malfunctions” that it blamed on the “ongoing aggression” in Gaza.
It said two of its technical team members lost their lives as a result of “direct shelling” during recent repair operations, bringing the total number of its employees killed to 14 since the start of the conflict.
The Palestinian Telecommunication Company - Jawwal:
— Paltel (@Paltelco) January 19, 2024
We would like to announce the gradual restoration of communication services in various areas of Gaza Strip.
Updated
UK Foreign Office legal advisers were unable to conclude that Israel was in compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) in its bombardment of Gaza, court documents reveal.
After reviewing specific potential breaches of IHL cited in a report by Amnesty International, the Foreign Office initially concluded it had “serious concerns” about breaches.
The UK Department for Business and Trade is being challenged by the Global Legal Action Network in a judicial review over its decision not to revoke arms export licences to Israel.
The evidence presented by the business department in its defence, prepared by Sir James Eadie KC, shows a far more intensive investigation was under way inside the government about Israel’s compliance with international law than suggested by the foreign secretary, David Cameron. Giving evidence to the foreign affairs select committee a fortnight ago, he said no special internal review had been made.
The evidence shows there were four separate assessments, one of which prompted the receipt of assurances from the Israeli embassy.
Soon after Israel attacked Gaza, an internal stocktake of 28 existing licences and 28 pending applications began, leading to an initial assessment on 10 November, followed by further reviews completed on 27 November, 8 December and 29 December.
The 27 November Foreign Office internal assessment unit concluded “the volume of strikes, total death toll as proportion of those who are children raise serious concerns”.
While the US does not support a ceasefire, over 150 countries have previously supported a ceasefire via a UN resolution in December.
From the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington:
The United States was looking increasingly isolated on the world stage on Tuesday after a resounding vote at the UN general assembly calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
Cheers and clapping echoed around the general assembly chamber in New York as the emergency vote was announced. A thumping 153 member states out of the 193 total membership backed the resolution, with only 10 including the US, Israel and Austria voting against, and 23 – including the UK and Germany – abstaining.
The Palestinians had been hoping for an emphatic result as a demonstration of the unequivocal global desire for an end to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza – and they got it. By contrast, the previous UN resolution calling for a “humanitarian truce” on 27 October attracted 120 votes in favor, 14 against, with 45 abstentions.
The vote highlighted the stiffening consensus around the world for the need for a stop to Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza which has left more than 18,000 Palestinians dead. Reports indicate that up to 70% of the fatalities have been women and children.
Read the full article here.
US says 'we don't support a ceasefire at this time'
The US still opposes a ceasefire in Gaza, the White House said on Friday.
Kirby said that the US still opposes a ceasefire, believing that such a move would help Hamas militants.
“We do support humanitarian pauses, as I said, to try to get hostages out and more aid in, but we don’t support a ceasefire at this time,” Kirby said during a news briefing on Friday.
“I think it’s important to remember that there was ceasefire in place on 6 October,” Kirby added.
Updated
Joe Biden said that a two-state solution is still possible in the Middle East, the White House said on Friday.
White House national security adviser John Kirby reaffirmed Biden’s belief in a two-state solution while speaking with reporters on Friday.
Biden also has embraced Israel’s decision to allow flour shipments into Gaza, Kirby added.
Netanyahu has rebuffed the notion of a Palestinian state.
Updated
Summary of the day so far
Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
A senior minister in the Israeli war cabinet has said that only a ceasefire deal can win the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, and that Israel is unlikely to achieve its aim of “total victory” over the militant Islamist group. Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, launched a blistering attack on the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the campaign against Hamas and failure to take responsibility for the failures that led to the bloody attack into Israel in October.
As Israeli forces have moved further into southern Gaza, airstrikes and close-combat fighting are approaching areas crowded with more than a million people seeking refuge from the destruction across the rest of the territory. The prospect of major operations taking place in territory with such a dense and vulnerable population is “deeply concerning”, say aid officials, who fear Gaza’s largest remaining hospital may have to be closed or evacuated.
Palestinians inside Gaza have endured a “near-total” communications blackout for more than a week, the longest blackout since the start of the war, according to an internet monitor on Friday. The UN has warned that the blackouts are worsening the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, making it much more difficult for the agency to distribute aid and leaving civilians unable to call for help.
Health services in Gaza are “decimated”, with medical staff exhausted after three months of war forced to extract shrapnel without adequate pain relief, conduct amputations without anaesthetics and watch children die of cancers due to a lack of facilities and medicine.
A Palestinian-American teenager was killed by Israeli security forces on Friday in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials said. The US-born 17-year-old was named as Tawfik Ijak by Israeli media.
Unicef described the Gaza Strip as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child” in a statement released after a visit to the area by its deputy executive director Ted Chaiban. Of the nearly 25,000 people reported to have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the escalation in hostilities, up to 70% are reported to be women and children, he said, calling the conditions faced some of the “most horrific” he had ever seen.
Palestinian detainees in Gaza described being “beaten, humiliated, subjected to ill-treatment, and to what may amount to torture” said the spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, Ravina Shamdasani. Shamdasani said what detainees told her was consistent with reports her office has been gathering of the detention of Palestinians on a broad scale. She also described the situation in Gaza as a “massive human rights crisis” and a “major, human-made, humanitarian disaster”.
The European Union has added six individuals to an asset freeze and visa ban blacklist for financing the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The new EU sanctions framework targets “any individual or entity who supports, facilitates or enables violent actions by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad”, a statement said.
EU foreign ministers will hold a series of meetings on Monday with counterparts from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and key Arab nations about the war in Gaza and prospects for a future peace settlement. The Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz and his Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Maliki are not expected to meet each other.
The UK is looking into different ways of shipping additional humanitarian aid from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip more directly, the UK’s defence secretary, Grant Shapps, has said. Aid “could go to Israel directly” from where it could enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, instead of through Egypt, Shapps said after talks with the Cypriot president, Nikos Christodoulides, on Friday.
Israel’s emergency government is “close to collapse” as Gaza war continues, with “the question no longer being whether an election will take place in 2024”, but rather when in 2024, according to a report. “The Americans have realised that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is incapacitated because of the political situation he is in,” a senior official from one of Israel’s opposition parties told the Jerusalem Post.
Swiss prosecutors have confirmed that Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, is the subject of “criminal complaints” filed during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos. A statement allegedly issued by the people behind the complaint said the plaintiffs were seeking a criminal prosecution in parallel to a case brought before the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) by South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has accused the Israeli government of financing Hamas in en effort to weaken the Palestinian Authority. Benjamin Netanyahu has denied accusations by his opponents in Israel and some global media who have accused his government of spending years actively boosting Hamas, including by allowing Qatari financing of Gaza.
Yemen’s Houthis have said they do not intend to expand their attacks on shipping in and around the Red Sea, beyond their stated aims of blockading Israel and retaliating against the US and Britain for airstrikes. The group had no plans to target its longstanding foes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam said in an interview on Friday.
Pakistan’s political and military leaders have moved to de-escalate tensions with Iran, after trading airstrikes on militant targets in each other’s territory this week that killed at least 11 people. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Jalil Abbas Jilani, spoke to his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, by phone where they agreed “close coordination on counter-terrorism and other aspects of mutual concern should be strengthened”, according to a readout by Islamabad’s foreign ministry.
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As Israeli forces have moved further into southern Gaza, airstrikes and close-combat fighting are approaching areas crowded with more than a million people seeking refuge from the destruction across the rest of the territory.
The prospect of major operations taking place in territory with such a dense and vulnerable population is “deeply concerning”, say aid officials, who fear Gaza’s largest remaining hospital may have to be closed or evacuated.
Witnesses reported the sound of ground combat and explosions throughout Friday in western Khan Younis, the main city in the south of Gaza, where Israel says many members and leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas are hiding.
Medical staff said the fighting had come within metres of Nasser hospital, the biggest hospital still partly working in Gaza, over the past week. The facility has been receiving hundreds of wounded patients every day since the fighting shifted to the south last month. There are fears that it could be forced to close because of Israeli bombardments and evacuation orders.
Witnesses reported automatic weapons fire, an orange fireball above rooftops in the afternoon, and smoke above much of the city.
Israeli officials said soldiers in Khan Younis had “eliminated dozens of terrorists in close-quarters combat and with the assistance of tank fire and air support”.
Read the full story: Alarm as Israeli forces move closer to crowded areas in southern Gaza
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Pakistan and Iran agree to 'de-escalate' after trading air strikes
Pakistan’s political and military leaders have moved to de-escalate tensions with Iran, after trading airstrikes on militant targets in each other’s territory this week that killed at least 11 people.
As we reported earlier, Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, held an emergency security meeting on Friday with military and intelligence chiefs, after Pakistan’s foreign minister, Jalil Abbas Jilani, spoke to his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, by phone.
A statement after the meeting said the leadership discussed the situation after the Iranian airstrikes and praised the “professional, calibrated and proportionate response” by Pakistan’s military.
The committee stressed that existing communication channels between Pakistan and Iran “should be used to address each other’s security concerns in the larger interest of regional peace and stability”, according to the statement.
During their call, the Pakistani and Iranian foreign ministers agreed “close coordination on counter-terrorism and other aspects of mutual concern should be strengthened”, according to a readout by Islamabad’s foreign ministry. “They also agreed to de-escalate the situation,” it added.
After the call, Amir-Abdollahian said “the cooperation of the two countries to neutralise and destroy terrorist camps in Pakistan is essential”.
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Palestinians inside Gaza have endured a “near-total” communications blackout for more than a week, the longest blackout since the start of the war, according to an internet monitor.
Gaza residents have been without internet and mobile service for more than 170 hours, NetBlocks posted in an update on Friday.
The UN has warned that the blackouts are worsening the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, making it much more difficult for the agency to distribute aid and leaving civilians unable to call for help.
In a statement posted shortly after the latest blackout began last Friday, Paltel, Gaza’s main internet provider, blamed “ongoing aggression” for the problem.
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The relatives of a Palestinian couple displaced from their homes in northern Gaza gathered this week to celebrate their wedding in a tent city in Rafah in southern Gaza.
Mohammed al-Ghandour had wanted to give his bride, Shahad, a beautiful wedding ceremony but after war began in Gaza, they were forced to leave Gaza City and flee to Rafah, at the far southern end of the strip next to Egypt.
Instead, the couple married inside a tent decorated with some coloured lights, escorted by a few relatives, Reuters reported. Shahad’s mother led a small group of women ululating in celebration of the marriage and somebody had saved batteries for a small portable music player.
For a wedding feast, the couple had only a few snacks in plastic package, laid out carefully for them in the tent. Ghandour told the news agency:
I wanted a party. I wanted a celebration, a wedding. I wanted to invite my friends, my relatives and my cousins, like anyone would.
The homes of both Ghandour’s family and Shahad’s family were destroyed in Israeli airstrikes, they said. They have lost cousins and other family members in the bombardment, they said. Shahad’s mother, Umm Yahia Khalifa, said:
My dream was to give Shahad the best wedding, the most beautiful in the world. We prepared her wedding things and she was happy. But it is all gone in the shelling. Every time she remembers she starts to cry.
Gaza’s indirect casualties mount as health service decimated
Health services in Gaza are “decimated”, with medical staff exhausted after three months of war forced to extract shrapnel without adequate pain relief, conduct amputations without anaesthetics and watch children die of cancers due to a lack of facilities and medicine.
Dozens of interviews with doctors and medical administrators in Gaza reveal a catastrophic and deteriorating situation as health services struggle to cope with tens of thousands of casualties of the ongoing Israeli offensive in the territory and the effects of the acute humanitarian crisis.
Attention has focused on the direct casualties of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, but medical specialists are increasingly concerned about indirect victims of the war.
Tens of thousands in Gaza with chronic life-threatening illnesses have gone without treatment for months, and are now “without defences”, their bodies’ weakened by malnutrition, cold and fatigue, doctors say. In one incident described to the Guardian a child with a brain condition died hours before a United Nations team arrived with vital medicine.
Cancer specialists told the Guardian they had been unable to treat patients in desperate need, including children with leukaemia or tumours requiring immediate lifesaving surgery.
“We have nothing to give them. We cannot operate and we have no drugs at all,” said Dr Subhi Sukeyk, the director general of oncology in Gaza and of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital in Gaza City.
There are people with cancers that are attacking their liver, bones, lungs. I have to explain their condition to them and that there is nothing we can do. We have leukaemia patients, including lots of children, who have died. They have no defence mechanism, no immune system and in this environment they are very vulnerable.”
Israeli airstrikes “completely destroyed” at least three houses in a village in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel, according to reports.
Four houses were targeted “since this morning by the Israeli air force in Kfar Kila”, official news agency NNA reported. Three were “completely destroyed”, it said.
The mayor of the village, Hassan Chite, told AFP:
There are about 100 residents left in Kfar Kila, but by chance, when the bombings took place, the destroyed homes were empty.
The Israeli army said it had “conducted airstrikes and carried out artillery and tank fire against Hezbollah observation posts and terrorist infrastructure” in the Kfar Kila sector.
On Friday afternoon, Hezbollah claimed three attacks, including two against “deployments of soldiers of the Israeli enemy” on the border.
Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu held a phone call on Friday where they discussed developments in Israel and Gaza, the White House said.
No further details about the call were immediately disclosed, Reuters reported.
Israel financed Hamas to weaken Palestinian Authority, says EU foreign policy chief
The EU’s foreign policy chief has accused the Israeli government of financing Hamas in en effort to weaken the Palestinian Authority.
Josep Borrell, in a speech at the University of Valladolid in Spain on Friday, also said Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had “personally” derailed any attempt to resolve the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He said:
Yes, Hamas was financed by the government of Israel in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah.
Hamas has run the Gaza Strip since 2007 after a brief civil war with forces loyal to the Fatah movement, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, who is based in the West Bank and also heads the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Netanyahu has denied accusations by his opponents in Israel and some global media who have accused his government of spending years actively boosting Hamas, including by allowing Qatari financing of Gaza.
Borrell did not elaborate on his statement, but added that the only peaceful solution included the creation of a Palestinian state. He said:
We only believe a two-state solution imposed from the outside would bring peace even though Israel insists on the negative.
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EU sanctions six individuals linked to Hamas financing
The European Union has added six individuals to an asset freeze and visa ban blacklist for financing the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
In a statement on Friday, the European Council announced a new EU sanctions framework targeting “any individual or entity who supports, facilitates or enables violent actions by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad”.
The newly sanctioned individuals are:
Sudan-based financier Abdelbasit Hamza Elhassan Mohamed Khair
Owner of ‘Shuman for Currency Exchange SARL’ Nabil Chouman
The former’s son Khaled Chouman
Senior Hamas financier Rida Ali Khamis
Senior Hamas operative Musa Dudin
Algeria-based financier Aiman Ahmad Al Duwaik
A statement by the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, reads:
With today’s decision of a dedicated framework of restrictive measures against supporters of violent actions by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the European Union shows that we are ready to take decisive steps to react to the brutality shown by terrorists on October 7. Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in a just, lasting, and secure peace.
The UK is looking into different ways of shipping additional humanitarian aid from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip more directly, the UK’s defence secretary, Grant Shapps, has said.
Among the options being considered that the aid “could go to Israel directly” from where it could enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, instead of through Egypt, Shapps said after talks with the Cypriot president, Nikos Christodoulides, on Friday.
These options would require “quite a lot of organisation work” but allow large large quantities of aid to be delivered to the people of Gaza more quickly, he said.
Earlier this month, the British Royal Navy ship Lyme Bay delivered 96 tonnes of heating blankets, tents and Cyprus-donated medicine to Egypt’s Port Said, from where it was delivered to Gaza through the Rafah crossing.
A Palestinian-American teenager was killed by Israeli security forces on Friday in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials said.
The US-born 17-year-old was named as Tawfik Ijak by Israeli media.
His uncle told Reuters that the incident occurred during clashes with the Israeli military that included stone-throwing by Palestinians.
The youth had been killed by Israeli gunfire, Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Swiss prosecutors say criminal complaint filed against Israeli president
Swiss prosecutors have confirmed that Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, is the subject of “criminal complaints” filed during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“The criminal complaints will be examined according to the usual procedure,” the office of the Swiss attorney general said. It said it would contact the Swiss foreign ministry to assess the question of immunity of the individual concerned.
The office did not provide details about the nature and number of complaints, nor who they had come from. A spokesperson for Herzog’s office did not comment on the statement.
Herzog returned to Israel on Thursday evening after speaking at the Davos conference earlier that day, where he urged the international community to reject genocide allegations against Israel.
On the stage of the World Economic Forum in Davos, we marked the first birthday of baby Kfir Bibas, who was brutally kidnapped from his home in Nir Oz and held, like his parents Shiri and Yarden, and his brother Ariel, in captivity by the terrorist organization Hamas. We will… pic.twitter.com/6pUZzidFTS
— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) January 18, 2024
A statement allegedly issued by the people behind the complaint, entitled “Legal action against crimes against humanity” and obtained by AFP, said several unnamed individuals had filed charges with federal prosecutors and with cantonal authorities in Basel, Berne and Zurich.
The statement said the plaintiffs were seeking a criminal prosecution in parallel to a case brought before the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) by South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide in its offensive in Gaza.
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Israeli police scuffled with relatives and supporters of Israel’s hostages held in Gaza after they blocked a Tel Aviv highway late on Thursday.
Footage showed demonstrators holding up signs reading “Deal now” as they faced long lines of cars, AP reported. Several people were briefly detained for having “participated in disorderly conduct and unlawful behaviour”, Israeli police said.
Shahar Mor, whose nephew, Avraham, has been held hostage in Gaza, told Israel’s Channel 13 TV he was chased down by rifle-carrying officers and briefly detained.
Mor said the spontaneous protest was an expression of the families’ frustration with what they believe is the Israeli government’s failure to pursue another hostage deal.
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum said it had not organised the protest and did not condone it.
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Houthis claim group is not seeking to expand Red Sea attacks
Yemen’s Houthis have said they do not intend to expand their attacks on shipping in and around the Red Sea, beyond their stated aims of blockading Israel and retaliating against the US and Britain for airstrikes.
In an interview with Reuters, spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam, who is also the chief Houthi negotiator in peace talks over Yemen’s decade-old civil war, said the group had no plans to target its longstanding foes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
“We do not want the escalation to expand. This is not our demand. We imposed rules of engagement in which not a single drop of blood was shed or major material losses,” said Abdulsalam. “It represented pressure on Israel only, it did not represent pressure on any country in the world.”
The Iran-aligned Houthis, who control most of Yemen’s populated areas, have attacked ships at the mouth of the Red Sea since October, in what they say is a show of solidarity with Palestinians by targeting vessels linked to Israel.
“What the Yemeni people did in the beginning was to target Israeli ships heading to Israel without causing any human or even significant material losses, just preventing ships from passing as a natural right,” said Abdulsalam. “Now, when America joined in and escalated the situation further, there is no doubt that Yemen will respond.”
The Houthi attacks have forced international shipping companies to route trade between Europe and Asia around Africa, adding time and costs. The US and Britain bombed Houthi targets last week in what they called an intervention to keep one of the world’s busiest shipping routes open.
“We do not want the conflict to expand in the region and we do not prefer that, and we are still working on non-escalation, but the decision is up to the Americans, as long as they continue to attack,” said Abdulsalam. “Yemen is concerned with responding, and is interested in verifying or maintaining its position by preventing Israeli ships from heading to the occupied Palestinian territories.”
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Summary of the day so far
It is 5.08pm in Gaza City, Tel Aviv and Beirut. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
EU foreign ministers will hold a series of meetings on Monday with counterparts from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and key Arab nations about the war in Gaza and prospects for a future peace settlement. The Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz and his Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Maliki are not expected to meet each other.
There can be “no security and stability in the region” without a Palestinian state, said the spokesperson for the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. The remarks come in response to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection on Thursday of calls by the US to take steps toward the establishment of a Palestinian state after the war.
Only a ceasefire deal can win the release of dozens of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and that those claiming they can be freed through military pressure are spreading illusions, said former army chief and member of Israel’s war cabinet, Gadi Eisenkot. In a thinly veiled criticism of Netanyahu, Eisenkot also said strategic decisions about the direction of the war must be made urgently.
Unicef described the Gaza Strip as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child” in a statement released after a visit to the area by its deputy executive director Ted Chaiban. Of the nearly 25,000 people reported to have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the escalation in hostilities, up to 70% are reported to be women and children, he said, calling the conditions faced some of the “most horrific” he had ever seen.
Detainees in Gaza described being “beaten, humiliated, subjected to ill-treatment, and to what may amount to torture” said the spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, Ravina Shamdasani. She said there had also been reports of men who were subsequently released in “only diapers”. Reporting from Rafah, the UN envoy described the situation in Gaza as a “massive human rights crisis” and a “major, human-made, humanitarian disaster”.
The WHO said overnight it had counted 24 cases of hepatitis A and “thousands” of cases of jaundice likely linked to the spread of the viral liver infection in Gaza. The WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the health crisis in the Palestinian territory as “explosive”
Israeli shelling has killed two people in the Abasan area of Khan Younis, bringing the number killed in the city to 10 since last night. Al Jazeera reported that Israeli forces were continuing to shell Khan Younis while bringing in reinforcements to the area. The death toll from Thursday night’s strike on a home in western Khan Younis rose to eight, while 15 people were killed by an Israeli airstrike that hit an apartment block near the Gaza City health facility. Another strike in the northern city’s Sabra neighbourhood had also injured several civilians, Al Jazeera said, citing the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Israeli gunboats are hitting coastal areas of Gaza City, which has also been the site of heavy airstrikes. At least 12 people have been killed and several have been injured from a strike that hit a residence near the city’s al-Shifa hospital. Reporting from Tulkarm refugee camp in the West Bank, Al Jazeera’s reporter Hoda Abdel-Hamid said the “mood is one of anger” and that “the raid lasted nearly 40 hours, one of the longest we have seen in the occupied West Bank since 7 October”.
Israeli forces have advanced further into southern Gaza’s main city, pounding areas near the Nasser hospital (the territory’s biggest hospital still partially working) sparking fears it could be forced to close due to Israeli bombardments and evacuation orders.
A Hamas delegation has visited Moscow, says the Russian foreign ministry. During the talks, the Russian side emphasised the need for Hamas to release Israeli hostages and condemned the “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
Essential aid including food and medical supplies are being prevented from entering Gaza, says the charity ActionAid UK, criticising “confusing and arbitrary rules about the type of aid permitted to enter Gaza”. The charity says it had resulted in thousands of essential items being stopped at border crossings as well as increasing the time spent on screening trucks, leading to a backlog at the border.
The IDF appeared to confirm reports that its soldiers had dug up graves in a Gaza cemetery, explaining that it took the action in order to verify that the bodies of hostages were not buried there, reports the Times of Israel. Responding to a query from US outlet NBC, the IDF said in a statement that it is “committed to fulfilling its urgent mission to rescue the hostages and find and return the bodies of hostages that are held in Gaza”.
Pakistan’s prime minister held an emergency security meeting on Friday with military and intelligence chiefs after trading deadly airstrikes with Iran on militant targets this week.
Thousands of Houthi supporters took to the streets in Sana’a, Yemen on Friday to express their solidarity with Palestinians, protest against US air raids and to denounce the US labeling of Houthis as a ‘specially designated global terrorist’ group.
Demonstrators in Amman, Jordan carried flags and signs reading: ‘100 days of resilience, sacrifice, heroism and pride’ during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza on Friday.
A senior Houthi official promised safe passage for Russian and Chinese vessels through the Red Sea, where the Iran-backed Yemeni militant group has been carrying out attacks on commercial ships in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel’s emergency government is “close to collapse” as Gaza war continues, with “the question no longer being whether an election will take place in 2024”, but rather when in 2024, reports The Jerusalem Post.
Belgium will supply a vessel to an EU mission to protect shipping from attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia in the Red Sea, the Belgian broadcaster VRT reports, citing government sources. The Netherlands and Germany have also said they are willing to contribute ships to mission.
Some cruise operators have cancelled or adjusted their itineraries to avoid the Red Sea due to attacks on ships by Houthi militia. Royal Caribbean said it had cancelled two voyages so far: one from Muscat to Dubai and another from Dubai to Mumbai. The Swiss-Italian operator MSC Cruises said on Wednesday it had cancelled three trips in April from South Africa and the United Arab Emirates to Europe due to the Red Sea crisis.
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My colleague, the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent Lisa O’Carroll, has more on the news about next week’s meeting of EU ministers, leaders from across the Middle East and a representative from Israel:
Leaders from across the Middle East and a representative from Israel will meet EU foreign ministers on Monday.
It is understood EU ministers will convey their strong opposition to the Israeli representative to Benjamin Netanyahu after yesterday’s declaration that he rejects any moves to establish a Palestinian state when Israel ends its war on Gaza.
But their main mission is to progress the so-called “day after” plan to rebuild Gaza physically and politically when the war is over.
Attending the meetings will be the Palestinian foreign minister and the prime ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the secretary general of the Arab League as well as the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell.
Financial sanctions against Hamas are also expected to be agreed at the meeting of EU foreign ministers along with the final touches to a new deal with Eygpt on investment, water supplies and migration.
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EU ministers to meet Israeli and Palestinian top diplomats on Monday
EU foreign ministers will hold a series of meetings on Monday with counterparts from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and key Arab nations about the war in Gaza and prospects for a future peace settlement, reports AFP citing official sources.
The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, and his Palestinian counterpart, Riyad al-Maliki, are not expected to meet each other.
The foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia will also meet European ministers in Brussels. According to AFP, European diplomats said their aim is to sound out each side over ways to end the violence on the ground and the next steps towards a longer-term solution.
The EU has struggled for a united stance on the conflict in Gaza as staunch backers of Israel such as Germany have rejected demands for an immediate ceasefire from the likes of Spain and Ireland.
EU officials have sketched out broad demands for “the day after” the current war ends in Gaza, calling for no long-term Israeli occupation, an end to Hamas’s rule and a role for the Palestinian Authority in running the territory.
The 27-nation bloc, along with the US, believes the creation of a Palestinian state remains the only viable way to secure a lasting peace. But Israel’s rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Thursday flatly rejected that suggestion.
In the face of growing violence across the region, EU countries this week gave initial backing to setting up a naval mission to help protect shipping in the Red Sea from attacks by Yemen’s Houthi.
A proposal for deployment says it could have three frigates and a mandate to defend ships, but not attack the Houthis onshore, like a US-led coalition operating in the region. EU ministers meeting on Monday are set to discuss the mission, but it is only expected to be finalised next month.
The Netherlands and Germany have said they are willing to contribute ships to mission.
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Pakistan holds emergency security meeting after trading strikes with Iran
Pakistan’s prime minister held an emergency security meeting on Friday with military and intelligence chiefs after trading deadly airstrikes with Iran on militant targets this week, reports AFP.
Iran carried out a missile and drone attack on what it called “terrorist” targets in Pakistan on Tuesday night, with Pakistan in turn striking militant targets inside Iran on Thursday.
Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister summoned a meeting of the national security committee, with the chief of army staff and head of the intelligence services believed to be attending.
As the meeting began, Islamabad said the foreign minister, Jalil Abbas Jilani, had spoken to his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, by phone.
“Jilani expressed Pakistan’s readiness to work with Iran on all issues based on [a] spirit of mutual trust and cooperation,” said a foreign ministry statement. “He underscored the need for closer cooperation on security issues.”
The muted rhetoric matched analysts’ predictions that both sides would seek to de-escalate the confrontation.
“The upshot of the new situation is that the two countries are seemingly and symbolically even,” said Antoine Levesques, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The risks of further escalation are slight and maybe diminishing with time”.
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Hamas delegation has visited Moscow, says Russian foreign ministry
A delegation of members from Hamas has visited Moscow, reports Al Jazeera, citing information released by the Russian foreign ministry.
According to Al Jazeera’s report, the foreign ministry said that during the talks, the Russian side emphasised the need for Hamas to release Israeli hostages. It also condemned the “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
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Thousands of Houthi supporters have taken to the streets in Sana’a, Yemen, to express their solidarity with Palestinians and protest against US air raids. Here are some images from the demonstration on Friday:
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Here are some of the latest images from the news wires today:
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Israel's emergency government may be 'close to collapse' as Gaza war continues, claims a senior official
Israel’s emergency government is “close to collapse” as Gaza war continues, with “the question no longer being whether an election will take place in 2024”, but rather when in 2024, reports the Jerusalem Post.
“The Americans have realised that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is incapacitated because of the political situation he is in,” a senior official from one of Israel’s opposition parties told the publication’s Yanir Cozin last week.
“In fear of voters’ reaction, moreover, Netanyahu has even gone as far as to conceal his transition to stage three of the war not only from his own war cabinet, but also from the general public,” Cozin reported the source as saying.
While Cozin says “the question is no longer whether an election will take place in 2024, but rather when in 2024”, he also states that most coalition members “have no desire to hold an election anytime soon”. “They already have their budget for the year, have nailed down good positions, and are in no hurry to let the people have their say, even though so many Israelis are hurting now,” he writes.
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Belgium will supply a vessel to an EU mission to protect shipping from attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia in the Red Sea, the Belgian broadcaster VRT reports, citing government sources.
Many commercial shippers have diverted vessels to other routes following attacks in the Red Sea by the Houthi militants, who control much of Yemen and say they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians as Israel and Hamas wage war in Gaza.
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Gaza detainees 'humiliated' and 'subjected to ill-treatment', says UN human rights official
Detainees in Gaza described being “beaten, humiliated, subjected to ill-treatment, and to what may amount to torture” said the spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, Ravina Shamdasani.
Shamdasani, who has been in Rafah since Monday, made the comments in a blog post for the OHCHR website:
During my time here, I have managed to meet a number of released detainees. These are men who were detained by Israeli security forces in unknown locations for 30-55 days. They described being beaten, humiliated, subjected to ill-treatment, and to what may amount to torture. They reported being blindfolded for long periods – some of them for several consecutive days. One man said he had access to a shower only once during his 55 days in detention. There are reports of men who were subsequently released – but only in diapers, without any adequate clothing in this cold weather.
What the detainees told her, she said, was consistent with reports her office has been gathering of the detention of Palestinians on a broad scale. This includes many civilians, held in secrecy, often subject to ill-treatment, with no access to their families, lawyers or effective judicial protection, she added.
“Israel must take urgent steps to ensure that all those arrested or detained are treated in line with international human rights and international humanitarian law norms and standards, notably with full respect for their due process rights,” wrote Shamdasani.
She also described the situation in Gaza as a “massive human rights crisis” and a “major, human-made, humanitarian disaster”, describing how heavy bombardment of middle Gaza and Khan Younis was “clearly visible and audible”. Shamdasani said she could hear bombing “sometimes several times an hour” from her location in Rafah.
“It is a pressure cooker environment here, in the midst of utter chaos, given the terrible humanitarian situation, shortages, and pervasive fear and anger.” She concluded her statement with: “A resounding plea from Gaza, above all, for an immediate ceasefire, for human rights and humanitarian reasons, and for all hostages to be released.” “These horrors must not become normalised,” said Shamdasani.
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Essential aid including food and medical supplies are being prevented from entering Gaza, says the charity ActionAid UK, criticising “confusing and arbitrary rules about the type of aid permitted to enter Gaza”. The charity says it is resulting in thousands of essential items being stopped at border crossings and prevented from reaching those who desperately need it, as well as increasing the time spent on screening trucks, leading to a backlog at the border.
“It is incredibly frustrating that crucial aid is being prevented from entering Gaza when we know the level of need has soared to a staggering high,” said Ziad Issa, head of humanitarian policy at ActionAid. “We now face a farcical situation in which mere miles separate warehouses teeming with rejected but vital items like food, shelter kits, and medical supplies, and desperate people who are starving and in pain.”
Issa called for more “clarity, transparency and consistency in the aid screening process”, saying that the duty of all parties in a conflict to ensure the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for civilians is enshrined under humanitarian law. She criticised the inspection process of aid as “too slow”.
Essential aid including food and medical supplies prevented from entering Gaza, as 2.3 million people face starvation and disease.
— ActionAid UK (@ActionAidUK) January 19, 2024
Read our new statement:https://t.co/ySbExTvSt0
Oxygen cylinders, anaesthetics for hospitals and stone fruit are among the items rejected during inspections say Actionaid. Stone fruit is being refused entry even as famine looms under the explanation that the stones could be used as bullets or used to plant trees, said the charity, who had also heard that tent poles were being turned away.
“Ultimately, even allowing more aid into Gaza will do nothing to stop dozens of deaths and injuries from airstrikes each day, which is why we will keep demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire,” said Riham Jafari, advocacy and communications coordinator at Actionaid Palestine. “Problems with distributing aid will continue until bombs stop falling and it is safe and practically feasible to reach people in need at scale,” he added.
Frequent communication blackouts – such as the one Gaza has been experiencing since 12 January – have made coordination even more difficult, said the charity. “Aid workers inside Gaza, including our own staff members, are utterly exhausted and under immense pressure to coordinate aid distribution, despite facing the same hunger, loss and trauma as the rest of the population,” Actionaid wrote in a statement published on Friday.
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Israeli shelling has killed two people in the Abasan area of Khan Younis, bringing the number killed in the city to 10 since last night, reports Al Jazeera.
Earlier, the news organisation said Israeli forces were continuing to shell Khan Younis while bringing in reinforcements to the area. According to Al Jazeera, the death toll from last night’s strike on a home in western Khan Younis has risen to eight.
It states that the death toll from an Israeli airstrike that hit an apartment block near the Gaza City health facility has reached 15. Another strike in the northern city’s Sabra neighbourhood had also injured several civilians, Al Jazeera said citing the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
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The Gaza Strip is the 'most dangerous place in the world to be a child', says Unicef
Unicef described the Gaza Strip as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child” in a statement released after a visit to the area by its deputy executive director Ted Chaiban.
Chaiban has just finished a three-day visit to the Gaza Strip where he was able to coordinate with local and international organisations about the emergency response and take stock of humanitarian operations since the last time he was there two months ago. In the statement, published on Unicef’s website, Chaiban said he met “children and their families suffering some of the most horrific conditions I have ever seen”.
He said: “Since my last visit, the situation has gone from catastrophic to near collapse. Unicef has described the Gaza Strip as the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. We have said this is a war on children. But these truths do not seem to be getting through.”
Of the nearly 25,000 people reported to have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the escalation in hostilities, up to 70% are reported to be women and children, he said. “The killing of children must cease immediately.”
In the statement, Chaiban recalled meeting wounded children, such as 13-year-old Ibrahim who had undergone an arm amputation without anaesthetic after developing gangrene because of a lack of medicine for his infected and damaged hand. He was in “a designated shelter with his family, in an area they were told was safe, when everything collapsed around them”.
Chaiban continued: “The sheer mass of civilians on the border is hard to fathom and the conditions they live in are inhumane. Water is scarce and poor sanitation is inescapable. The cold and rain this week created rivers of waste. The little food that is available doesn’t meet children’s unique nutritional needs. As a result, thousands of children are malnourished and sick.
Cases of diarrhoea were up 40% from two months ago, before the escalation in hostilities, said Chaiban, adding that by mid-December, 71,000 cases were recorded among children under five, a more than 4000% increase since the war began.
“This is nothing short of a staggering decline in conditions for the children of Gaza. If this decline persists, we could see deaths due to indiscriminate conflict compounded by deaths due to disease and hunger. We need a major breakthrough,” he said. Chaiban has called to an end to the “intense bombardment”, which is not only killing thousands of people, but also impeding the delivery of aid he said.
“Before the conflict more than 500 trucks entered the Gaza Strip every day. When I was there in November, about 60 aid trucks a day entered. Now, it is about 130 trucks a day alongside an average of 30 commercial trucks a day. This is with the opening of a second crossing point but it still remains wholly inadequate. We are trying to drip assistance through a straw to meet an ocean of need,” said Chaiban.
“UNICEF has described the Gaza Strip as the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. We have said this is a war on children. But these truths do not seem to be getting through.”
— UNICEF (@UNICEF) January 18, 2024
Deputy Executive Director @TedChaiban following his visit to Gaza. Read full statement:…
He called for access restrictions to be lifted, reliable ground communications ensured, and movement of humanitarian supplies facilitated to ensure those who have been without aid for days receive desperately needed assistance. “We have to get commercial traffic flowing in Gaza, so that markets can reopen and families can be less dependent on relief,” added Chaiban.
“Finally, we need access to the north,” he said. “The estimated 250,000 to 300,000 people living in north Gaza have no access to clean water and barely any food. In the first two weeks of January, only seven of 29 planned aid deliveries have successfully reached their destinations in northern Gaza. Not a single Unicef convoy has accessed the north of the Gaza Strip in 2024.”
He concluded: “We cannot wait any longer for a humanitarian ceasefire to end the daily killing and injuring of children and their families, enable the urgent delivery of desperately needed aid and the safe and unconditional release of the two remaining Israeli children still held hostage in Gaza. This cannot go on.”
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Some cruise operators have cancelled or adjusted their itineraries to avoid the Red Sea due to attacks on ships by Houthi militia, reports Reuters.
Royal Caribbean said in a statement on Thursday it had cancelled two voyages so far: one from Muscat to Dubai at the end of January and another from Dubai to Mumbai scheduled for a month from 26 January.
Last week, it also amended the itinerary of a cruise between Aqaba and Muscat to disembark guests in a port city near Athens. “Our global security team continues to closely monitor the situation in the region and we will make additional changes if required,” Royal Caribbean said.
Swiss-Italian operator MSC Cruises said on Wednesday it had cancelled three trips in April from South Africa and the United Arab Emirates to Europe due to the Red Sea crisis. The cruise operator said as there was “no viable alternative itinerary”, they had had to cancel the voyages: “The three ships will transfer directly to Europe without any passengers on board and avoid transiting through the Red Sea.”
Although thousands of passengers are affected, the impact on cruise operators at a global level is not expected to be significant, said Todd Elliott, CEO of Florida-based travel agency Cruise Vacation Outlet: “This is a small part of their overall fleet and multi-year itineraries so they will be able to overcome this easily.”
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Only a ceasefire deal can bring hostages home, says member of Israel's war cabinet
Only a ceasefire deal can win the release of dozens of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and that those claiming they can be freed through military pressure are spreading illusions, says a member of Israel’s war cabinet reports AP.
Former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, whose son was killed several weeks before while fighting in Gaza, told the investigative programme Uvda, broadcast on Israel’s Channel 12 television station late on Thursday, that “the hostages will only return alive if there is a deal, linked to a significant pause in fighting.”
According to AP’s report, Eisenkot said dramatic rescue operations are unlikely because the hostages are apparently spread out, many of them in underground tunnels. Claiming hostages can be freed by means other than a deal “is to spread illusions” he said.
Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, have said the fighting will continue until Hamas is crushed, and argued that only military action can win the release of the hostages.
In a thinly veiled criticism of Netanyahu, Eisenkot also said strategic decisions about the direction of the war, now in its fourth month, must be made urgently, and that a discussion about an endgame should have begun immediately after fighting started on 7 October in response to the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel.
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There can be 'no security and stability' without a Palestinian state, says the president's spokesperson
There can be “no security and stability in the region” without a Palestinian state, said the spokesperson for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, reports Associated Press.
The remarks come in response to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection on Thursday of calls by the US to take steps toward the establishment of a Palestinian state after the war.
“Without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the borders of 1967, there will be no security and stability in the region,” Palestinian state news agency Wafa quoted Abbas’ spokesperson Nabil Abu Rdeineh as saying on Thursday.
Israeli gunboats shelling northern Gaza coast
Israeli gunboats are hitting coastal areas of Gaza City which has also been the site of heavy airstrikes, reports Al Jazeera.
At least 12 people have been killed and several have been injured from a strike that hit a residence near the city’s al-Shifa hospital, the news organisation added. Al Jazeera is one of the few news organisations with a functioning bureau in Gaza.
Elsewhere, reporting from Tulkarm refugee camp in the West Bank, Al Jazeera’s reporter Hoda Abdel-Hamid, said the “mood is one of anger”. Israeli bulldozers had dug up the roads at the entrance to the camp, she said. “The raid lasted nearly 40 hours, one of the longest we have seen in the occupied West Bank since 7 October,” she added.
Abdel-Hamid reported that a large number of people were detained and some were released after being interrogated. She says the anger comes from the destruction of businesses, shops and houses.
Abdel-Hamid writes: “Many Palestinians believe the destructive raids are happening more and more often because Israel wants to make life in the camps very difficult so that they will leave. There is a strong belief that Israel wants to push Palestinians off their land, to push them all the way to Jordan if possible.”
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Pakistan will hold emergency security meeting after trading strikes with Iran
Pakistan’s prime minister will hold an emergency security meeting on Friday with military and intelligence chiefs after trading deadly airstrikes with Iran on militant targets this week, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“The prime minister has summoned a meeting of the national security committee set to take place today,” a spokesperson in his office told AFP. An Islamabad security official said the chief of army staff and head of the intelligence services will attend the mid-afternoon meeting.
Iran carried out a missile and drone attack on what it called “terrorist” targets in Pakistan on Tuesday night, with Pakistan in turn striking militant targets inside Iran on Thursday.
The rare military actions in the porous border region of Balochistan – shared between the two countries – have further stoked regional tensions already enflamed by the Israel-Hamas war.
Pakistan has recalled its ambassador from Tehran and said Iran’s envoy – on a visit home – is blocked from returning to Islamabad.
The UN and the US have appealed for restraint, while China has offered to mediate.
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Airstrike targets a house in northern Rafah
An airstrike targeted a house in northern Rafah, says Al Jazeera journalist, Hani Mahmoud who is reporting from the location in southern Gaza. He said it happened less than an hour ago.
“Due to network outage, we are unable to get an exact number of casualties, but many with severe injuries are reported to be admitted to el-Najjar hospital,” he wrote.
Mahmoud also reports that overnight airstrikes and heavy bombardment in Khan Younis killed five people as Israeli military tanks and army vehicles pushed deeper into the vicinity of Nasser hospital and the Jordanian field hospital.
“The Israeli military, along with its tanks and armoured vehicles and invading forces, haven’t left the area. They are causing a wave of panic among people sheltering inside Nasser hospital,” he writes.
The IDF appeared to confirm reports that its soldiers dug up graves in a Gaza cemetery, explaining that it took the action in order to verify that the bodies of hostages were not buried there, reports the Times of Israel.
Responding to a query from US outlet NBC, the IDF said in a statement that it is “committed to fulfilling its urgent mission to rescue the hostages and find and return the bodies of hostages that are held in Gaza”.
The statement continues: “When critical intelligence or operational information is received, the IDF conducts precise hostage rescue operations in the specific locations where information indicates that the bodies of hostages may be located.
“The hostage identification process, conducted at a secure and alternative location, ensures optimal professional conditions and respect for the deceased. Bodies determined not to be those of hostages are returned with dignity and respect.
“If not for Hamas’s reprehensible decision to take Israeli men, women, children and babies as hostages, the need for such searches … would not exist.”
However, Al Jazeera reports that various cemeteries in Gaza have been documented to have been dug up by the Israeli army, with Palestinian bodies left on the dug-up soil after soldiers leave.
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The World Health Organisation (WHO) said overnight it had counted 24 cases of hepatitis A and “thousands” of cases of jaundice likely linked to the spread of the viral liver infection in Gaza.
“The inhumane living conditions – barely any clean water, clean toilets and possibility to keep the surroundings clean – will allow hepatitis A to spread further,” the WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on X.
Describing the health crisis in the Palestinian territory as “explosive”, he also said:
The capacity to diagnose diseases remains extremely limited. There is no functioning laboratory. The capacity to respond remains limited too.
Cases of #HepatitisA, an inflammation of the liver, have been confirmed in #Gaza via test kits supplied by @WHO.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) January 18, 2024
Hepatitis A is usually mild but can occasionally cause severe disease. 24 cases are confirmed and no deaths have been reported so far. There are several thousand…
The UN says the war has displaced about 85% of Gaza’s 2.4 million people, Agence France-Presse reports, and many are crowded into shelters where they struggle to get food, water, fuel and medical care.
UN agencies say improved access to aid is needed urgently as famine and disease loom.
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Israeli forces have advanced further into southern Gaza’s main city, pounding areas near the territory’s biggest functioning hospital and sparking fears it could be forced to close due to Israeli bombardments and evacuation orders.
Helen Livingstone and news agencies report that Khan Younis residents and medical staff said the fighting had come within metres of Nasser hospital, the biggest hospital still partially working in Gaza, over the past week.
It has been receiving hundreds of wounded patients a day since the fighting shifted to the south last month.
Israeli officials have accused Hamas fighters of operating from Nasser hospital, which staff deny.
Two-thirds of Gaza’s hospitals have ceased functioning and losing Nasser would further curtail the limited trauma care still available. Two other hospitals – al-Aqsa and the Gaza European – are also at risk of closure, according to the UN.
On Thursday, Hamas denied claims aired by the released Israeli hostage Sharon Aloni in an interview on CNN that she and other prisoners had been detained in rooms in Nasser hospital.
The aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières said heavy bombing by Israeli forces in recent days had sparked “panic among patients and displaced people seeking refuge there”.
The full report is here:
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The latest round of US bombing against Houthi targets in Yemen comes as little surprise, and raises with it the prospect of an extended military campaign affecting a nation already impoverished by years of war.
The assault implies an effective recognition by Washington that any effort to try to completely halt the attacks on western shipping in the southern Red Sea will require repeated intervention because of the Yemeni group’s capacity and determination to resist.
The movement’s leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, said on Thursday in his first speech since the US-led intervention that it was “a great honour” to be in direct confrontation with the Israelis, Americans and British, characterising it as part of Houthi attempts to intervene in support of Palestinians in Gaza – a moral cause from which it will be politically difficult to back down.
In narrow military terms it is not a fair fight, although asymmetric conflicts are nothing new. The problem is that the US and their allies have the capacity to keep bombing Houthi targets in Yemen for a long time, while the Houthis still retain the ability to close the southern Red Sea to merchant shipping, and so impose economic costs on the west.
See more of this analysis here:
Houthis promise safe passage for Russian and Chinese ships
A senior Houthi official has promised safe passage for Russian and Chinese vessels through the Red Sea, where the Iran-backed Yemeni militant group has been carrying out attacks on commercial ships in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
In an interview published by Russian outlet Izvestia on Friday, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti insisted the waters around Yemen – which some shipping firms are avoiding due to the ongoing aggression – were safe so long as vessels were not linked to certain countries, particularly Israel, Agence France-Presse reports.
The Houthi official said:
As for all other countries, including Russia and China, their shipping in the region is not threatened.
Moreover, we are ready to ensure the safe passage of their ships in the Red Sea, because free navigation plays a significant role for our country.
Attacks on vessels “in any way connected with Israel” would continue, he added.
The Iran-backed militants have recently said US- and British-linked ships were also fair game after the two countries launched airstrikes in Yemen in response to the repeated attacks.
The Houthis insist their attacks only target vessels of certain nationalities, but a US Navy commander has said the ships involved actually have ties to dozens of countries.
The Houthis early on Friday claimed another attack on a US ship after the US launched fresh strikes on militant targets the day before.
In Friday’s interview, Bukhaiti said the blame for the shipping attacks rested with the vessels that ignored Houthi orders to change course.
Our goal is to raise the economic costs for the Jewish state in order to stop the carnage in Gaza.
Opening summary
Welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Middle East crisis. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a rundown on the latest news.
A senior Houthi official has promised safe passage for Russian and Chinese vessels through the Red Sea, where the Iran-backed Yemeni militant group has been attacking commercial ships.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti insisted the waters around Yemen were safe so long as vessels were not linked to certain countries, particularly Israel.
“As for all other countries, including Russia and China, their shipping in the region is not threatened,” he said in an interview published by Russian outlet Izvestia. “Moreover, we are ready to ensure the safe passage of their ships in the Red Sea, because free navigation plays a significant role for our country.”
Attacks on vessels “in any way connected with Israel” would continue, he added.
While the Houthis insist their attacks only target vessels of certain nationalities, a US Navy commander has said the ships involved actually have ties to dozens of countries.
More on that story soon. In other developments as it turns 8.40am in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and 7.40am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv:
The US has carried out a fifth strike against Houthi targets in Yemen, even as Joe Biden acknowledged that bombing the militants has yet to stop their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Late on Thursday US warplanes targeted anti-ship missiles that “were aimed into the southern Red Sea and prepared to launch”, according to US Central Command. The US president told reporters: “When you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.”
Also on Thursday night, Houthis fired missiles at a US-owned tanker ship in the Gulf of Aden. The White House and the Houthis gave differing accounts of the launches at the Chem Ranger, with the militants saying their naval forces had attacked “with several appropriate naval missiles, resulting in direct hits”. However, US Central Command said the Houthis launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles and that they hit the water near the ship, causing no damage or injuries. It said it was the third Houthi strike on a commercial shipping vessel in three days.
A total of 24,620 Palestinians have been killed and 61,830 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures by the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry on Thursday. The figures include 172 killed and 326 injured in the past 24 hours. At least 16 people were reported killed by an Israeli airstrike on a house in Rafah, southern Gaza.
A new wave of violence has swept the West Bank, with a series of major raids launched by the Israeli military across much of the occupied territory. Israeli forces remained in Tulkarm, in the West Bank’s north, for a second day on Thursday after launching a raid on a refugee camp there. Eight people were killed on Thursday, the Israeli military said.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has told the White House that he rejects any moves to establish a Palestinian state when Israel ends its offensive against Gaza, and that all territory west of the Jordan River would be under Israeli security control. His public statement on Thursday represented his sharpest rebuttal of US foreign policy. The White House responded by saying the US would continue working towards a two-state solution and that there could be no Israeli reoccupation of Gaza when the war concluded.
Pakistan has launched retaliatory strikes against militants in Iran in response to attacks by Tehran that targeted sites within Pakistan’s borders, heightening fears of further instability across the Middle East and surrounding region. Ten people from one family were killed in the attacks, including six children, reportedly all “non Iranian nationals”.
Children in Gaza are suffering from “horrific conditions” and the Palestinian territory remains the most dangerous place in the world to be a child, the deputy chief of the UN children’s agency says. Ted Chaiban said at the end of a three-day visit to Gaza that since his last visit two months ago “the situation has gone from catastrophe to near collapse”. If the staggering decline in conditions persisted, “we could see deaths due to indiscriminate conflict compounded by deaths due to disease and hunger”, he said.
A communications blackout in Gaza entered a seventh day on Thursday, hindering rescue and relief efforts.
There was no word on Thursday on whether medicines that entered Gaza as part of a deal brokered by France and Qatar had been distributed to dozens of hostages with chronic illnesses who are being held by Hamas. Qatar confirmed late on Wednesday that the medicine had entered Gaza, but it was not yet clear if it had been distributed to the hostages, who are being held in secret locations.
The EU is set to adopt sanctions against Hamas on Monday that will “target individuals and ban money transfers”, according to the French foreign ministry. EU foreign ministers were also expected to discuss possible measures against violent Israeli settlers, a ministry spokesperson said. Meanwhile, the European parliament has voted to call for a “permanent ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, but on condition that all Israeli hostages held in the territory are released and Hamas dismantled. The resolution on Thursday, which is non-binding, stopped short of calling for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
Mexico and Chile have asked the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate possible crimes against civilians in Gaza. In a statement, Mexico’s foreign ministry said the action “is due to growing worry over the latest escalation of violence, particularly against civilian targets”. Any proceedings by the ICC would be separate from South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide at the UN’s international court of justice.
An airstrike on southern Syria early on Thursday killed at least nine people and was probably carried out by Jordan’s air force, Syrian opposition activists said, over the latest in a series of strikes in an area where cross-border drug smugglers have been active. There was no immediate confirmation from Jordan on the strike that hit the province of Sweida, and there was some confusion over the number of people killed.
Israel has joined a notorious band of authoritarian states with a history of imprisoning journalists by detaining Palestinian reporters without trial since the beginning of the latest war in Gaza. A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists released on Thursday said that for the first time, Israel figures in its list of “worst jailers of journalists”, putting it on a par with Iran.
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