Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 210

A US official has said that other officials believe there has been some progress in Gaza hostage talks in Cairo but are still waiting to hear more, Reuters reports.

A top Hamas official has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to derail a proposed Gaza truce and hostage release deal with his threats to keep fighting the group AFP reports.

“Netanyahu was the obstructionist of all previous rounds of dialogue … and it is clear that he still is,” senior Hamas official Hossam Badran told AFP by telephone.

A delegation from Hamas will visit Cairo on Saturday, a Hamas official has told Reuters, amid expectations that they will deliver a written response to an Israeli proposal on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release.

The Hamas official, who declined to be identified, spoke after CIA Director William Burns arrived in the Egyptian capital for meetings about the conflict in Gaza, according to an Egyptian security source and three sources at Cairo airport.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkiye’s move to halt trade with Israel is designed to force the country to a ceasefire over Gaza, AFP reports.

“We have taken some measures to force Israel to agree to a ceasefire and increase the amount of humanitarian aid to enter” Gaza, Erdogan told a group of businessmen in Istanbul.

“We will oversee the consequences of this step we have taken in coordination and consultation with our business world.”

“We do not run after hostility or conflict in our region,” said Erdogan.

“We do not want to see conflict, blood or tears in our geography.

“We know now that we did the right thing.”

An Egyptian security source and three sources at Cairo airport have said that CIA Director William Burns has arrived in the Egyptian capital for meetings about the conflict in Gaza, Reuters reports.

The CIA declined to comment, reflecting its policy of not disclosing the director’s travel.

US forces have moved construction of a temporary pier for Gaza aid deliveries from an offshore area to the Israeli port of Ashdod due to high seas and winds, AFP reports.

“Yesterday, US Central Command temporarily paused offshore assembly of the floating pier in the vicinity of Gaza due to sea state considerations,” the military command said in a statement.

“Forecasted high winds and high sea swells caused unsafe conditions for Soldiers working on the surface of the partially constructed pier,” it said.

“The partially built pier and military vessels involved in its construction have moved to the Port of Ashdod, where assembly will continue, and will be completed prior to the emplacement of the pier in its intended location when sea states subside.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani has condemned US authorities for violently suppressing the protests of pro-Palestinian students across the country, Al Jazeera reports.

He wrote on X: “The move of the US government authorities to distort the truth and describe genuine student and academic anger and protests as anti-semitism, in order to justify and use of violent suppression tools to silence the peaceful protests and gatherings of pro-Palestine students, does not diminish the ugliness of their actions.

“A significant number of Jewish people, including Jewish students, have declared their disgust with the hateful crimes of the Zionist regime and the US government’s shameful support for the regime.”

He added that the “mask of hypocrisy” has been removed “from the faces of the false defenders of freedom of speech and human rights”.

The UK has imposed sanctions on two “extremist” groups and four individuals in Israel who it blamed for violence in the West Bank, Reuters reports.

The UK Foreign Office named Hilltop Youth and Lehava as two groups which it said were known to have supported, incited and promoted violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. The four individuals sanctioned were responsible for human rights abuses against these communities, the statement added.

Among them are Noam Federman, who has trained settler groups in committing violence and Elisha Yered, who has justified killing Palestinians on religious grounds.

British foreign minister David Cameron said extremist settlers were undermining security and stability and threatening the prospects for peace.

“The Israeli authorities must clamp down on those responsible. The UK will not hesitate to take further action if needed, including through further sanctions,” he said.

Those sanctioned will be subject to financial and travel restrictions.

Yemen’s military spokesman Yahya Sarea has said that the Houthis will target ships heading to Israeli ports in any area that is within their range, Reuters reports.

“We will target any ships heading to Israeli ports in the Mediterranean Sea in any area we are able to reach,” he said in a televised speech.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, has said that currently 155,000 of pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza have “severely limited access” to water and sanitation.

More than 10,000 women have been killed in the Gaza strip, while 19,000 others have been wounded, according to the agency’s report.

Many of the victims are mothers, meaning that an average of 37 children are losing their mothers every day, UNRWA said.

The Palestinian foreign ministry has welcomed the decision taken by Trinidad and Tobago to recognise the state of Palestine, Al Jazeera reports.

The ministry said in a statement that the step is consistent with the international law, adding that it will contribute to the international efforts towards ending the Israeli occupation.

It came after the government of Trinidad and Tobago said its move would help to achieve a “lasting peace”.

A news release from the Caribbean country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said the recognition strengthened the “growing international consensus on the issue of Palestinian statehood”.

Authorities in Bahrain have confirmed that Saraya al-Ashtar, or al-Ashtar Brigades, the group that claimed a drone attack in Israel “operates outside the kingdom” and has previously been classified “as a terrorist organisation”, Al Jazeera reports.

State media quoted Mohammed al-Abbasi, the official spokesman for the National Communication Centre, as saying that several other countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, had also designated al-Ashtar Brigades as such.

World Health Organization (WHO) has said that the agency had a contingency plan prepared in case Israel followed through on its planned incursion into Gaza’s Rafah but said it would not be sufficient to prevent a substantial rise in the death toll, Al Jazeera reports.

“I want to really say that this contingency plan is a band-aid,” said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, at a Geneva press briefing via videolink.

“It will absolutely not prevent the expected substantial additional mortality and morbidity posed by a military operation.”

British High Commissioner Jane Marriott has said that the system needs to work better, referring to the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) inability to implement a resolution on Gaza.

Speaking at the National Press Club, she said, “I think there is a real challenge from what the international order looks like.

“The United Nations can only be as strong as its members allow it to be,” she added. “We now live in a world with a lot more conflict, a little bit more side-taking and some fundamental issues that we are not addressing,” she said, listing Gaza as an example.

While speaking with journalists, she said, “I have no solution other than agreeing with you, the system needs to work better. I think that is our collective responsibility. It is definitely the UK’s responsibility as a permanent member of the UNSC.”

The high commissioner added that she looks forward to Pakistan when it “potentially, likely” joins the UNSC next year.

The health ministry in Gaza has said that at least 34,622 people have been killed in the Palestinian enclave during almost seven months of fighting between Israel and Hamas, AFP reports.

The tally includes at least 26 deaths in the past 24 hours, the ministry statement said, adding that 77,867 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since fighting broke out on October 7.

Israel agreeing to end the “war in Gaza” in exchange for captives held by Hamas would damage the “security of Israel’s citizens”, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, Al Jazeera reports..

The demand would be a defensive alliance between the United States and Hamas, under which the former will give “all the murderers, slaughterers and rapists in fact full impunity and prevent Israel from destroying it”, wrote Smotrich on X.

“Any Israeli leader who agrees to this, by signing or turning a blind eye, will be forever remembered for knowingly neglecting the security of Israel’s citizens,” Smotrich said, urging an operation in Rafah “now and immediately, with full force”.

The availability of food in the Gaza Strip has very slightly improved, though the risk of famine in the besieged territory remains, AFP reports quoting the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“The food situation has a little bit improved. There’s a bit more food,” Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories, told a press briefing in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.

Compared to a few months ago, “definitely there is more basic food, more wheat, but also a little bit more diversified food on the market. Not just in the south — also in the north”, where people have been surviving on the equivalent calories of less than a can of beans a day.

Ahmed Dahir, the WHO’s Gaza sub-office team lead, said that previously, “thousands” of people had been rushing at WHO trucks heading to northern Gaza — which has been most at risk of famine — in the hope of finding food.

“It has changed in the last few weeks. Now there is more food coming, and going to the north,” he said, speaking from the Gaza Strip.

Dahir said the food situation remained “fragile” in Gaza, while the population also lacked the cash to pay for food in the markets. “Access to food now has to be sustained,” he said.

The pro-Palestine protests sweeping US universities mark a “real generational shift” that could herald a “reckoning” of the US’ relationship with Israel, says Mohamed Elmasry, media studies professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, to Al Jazeera.

“This is the first time the Palestinian cause has become a domestic issue in the United States. It’s become more or less mainstream,” Elmasry told Al Jazeera.

“It’s not just Arab or Palestinian or Muslim students who are protesting on behalf of the Palestinian cause, but you have organisations like Jewish Voice for Peace, you have Black Lives Matter activists, you have Latino and Hispanic activist groups and many others.”

The growing protest movement, if its momentum continues, has the potential to “significantly” alter the US’s long-term relationship with Israel, Elmasry said.

“The United States is going through a kind of reckoning right now with the state of Israel and with Zionism more broadly. For the first time in the decades-long history of this relationship, millions of Americans are starting to ask why does the United States support Israel to the extent that it does,” he said.

“I think you will start to see changes… these young people are the future.”

An Israeli incursion into Rafah would put the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza at risk and be an incredible blow to the humanitarian operations of the entire enclave, according to a spokesman for the UN humanitarian office, Al Jazeera reports.

“It could be a slaughter of civilians and an incredible blow to the humanitarian operation in the entire strip because it is run primarily out of Rafah,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian office, at a Geneva press briefing.

Aid operations out of Rafah include medical clinics and food distribution points, such as centres for malnourished children, he added.

In a statement marking World Press Freedom Day, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has issued a reminder that 53 Palestinian journalists are currently detained by Israeli forces, Al Jazeera reports.

Forty-three of the journalists were detained following October 7, the group said, including four who have been deemed “forcibly disappeared” because Israel has provided no information about their status or whereabouts.

“The targeting of Palestinian journalists has been and remains one of the most prominent policies pursued by the occupation throughout its history,” said the Prisoner’s Society.

The death toll from an overnight air strike on a home in northern Rafah has now risen to seven, with four of the victims being children, reports Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abou Azzoum from the southern Gaza district.

Elsewhere in Rafah, especially to the east, there has been a “surge in air strikes and artillery bombardment,” said Abou Azzoum

Israeli military attacks have also intensified in parts of northern Gaza, such as Sheikh Ijlin neighbourhood, as well as central Gaza, where eyewitnesses say there is “constant intensive artillery bombardment”, according to Abou Azzoum.

“A number of casualties have been transferred to al-Aqsa Hospital,” he said.

The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prosecutor’s office has called for an end to what it called intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the world’s permanent war crimes court, Reuters reports.

In the statement posted on social media platform X, the ICC prosecutor’s office said all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence its officials must cease immediately. It added that the Rome Statute, which outlines the ICC’s structure and areas of jurisdiction, prohibits these actions.

The statement, which named no specific cases, followed Israeli and American criticism of the ICC’s investigation into alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s military operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Neither Israel nor the US are members of the court and do not recognise its jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories.

An Israeli man held hostage in Gaza since the October 7 attack by Hamas has been confirmed dead, AFP reports, quoting the Israeli government and the kibbutz where he had lived.

Dror Or, 49, is the latest hostage to have been confirmed dead by Israel after being captured during the Hamas attack.

“We are heartbroken to share that Dror Or, who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, had been confirmed as murdered and his body is being held in Gaza,” the Israeli government said on X.

Israel estimates that 129 captives seized during the attack remain in Gaza. The military says 35 of them are dead, including Or.

Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it will assist Or’s family. Neither the forum nor the Israeli government said how they learned of Or’s death.

The settlers have reached Jabal al-Arma, a hill on the outskirts of the Palestinian town of Beita in the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reports.

Within the town of Beita, sirens have gone off warning residents of a potential settler attack, according to Wafa.

Israeli settlers, sometimes given cover by Israeli security forces, have intensified assaults on Palestinian towns during the onslaught on Gaza, waging more than 800 attacks that have caused casualties or property damage, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.