Middle East crisis live: Hamas says Israeli-backed US ceasefire plan would continue ‘killing and famine’ in Gaza | Gaza
Opening summary
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Hamas has said a new Israeli-backed US ceasefire plan would not put an end to the war or the Israeli blockade of Gaza, although it is studying the proposal “with all national responsibility”.
Bassem Naim, a top Hamas official, told the Associated Press that Israel’s response “means perpetuating the occupation and continuing the killing and famine”. He said it “does not respond to any of our people’s demands, foremost among which is stopping the war and famine.”
Another senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, told Reuters the terms echoed Israel’s position and did not contain commitments to end the war, withdraw Israeli troops or admit aid as Hamas has demanded.
Earlier the US said Israel has “signed off” on the proposal. Donald Trump and US envoy Steve Witkoff “submitted a ceasefire proposal to Hamas that Israel backed,” the White House said on Thursday, adding that discussions were “ongoing”.
According to a draft leaked to Reuters, the proposal includes a 60-day ceasefire that would be guaranteed by Trump and mediators Qatar and Egypt and an exchange of 28 Israeli hostages – alive and dead – for 125 Palestinian prisoners sentenced to life and the remains of 180 dead Palestinians in the first week.
Aid would be sent to Gaza as soon as Hamas signs off on the agreement according to the draft and Hamas would release the last 30 hostages once a permanent ceasefire is in place, Reuters reported.
According to a draft seen by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the aid would be distributed by channels including the UN and Red Crescent. Though all Israeli offensive military activities would cease upon the agreement going into force, the army would be redeployed in areas in northern and southern Gaza, as well as the so-called Netzarim Corridor, the paper reported.
In other key developments:
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a new evacuation warning covering a large area of northern Gaza late on Thursday. It calls for Palestinians residing in Al-Atatra, Jabalia, and the Gaza City neighbourhoods of Shujaiya and Al-Zaytun to head west, warning that these areas “will be considered dangerous combat zones” immediately.
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Israeli forces are carrying out a “forced evacuation” of patients and medical staff inside Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, hospital officials said. Earlier on Thursday, the hospital said there were “still 97 people inside the hospital, including 13 patients and injured individuals, and 84 medical staff members”.
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An Israeli airstrike on a house in central Gaza killed 22 people, including nine women and children, according to hospital officials. The airstrike hit a family home in Bureij, an urban refugee camp in central Gaza, they said. Israeli strikes in northern Gaza late Wednesday and early Thursday hit a house, killing eight people, including two women and three children, and a car in Gaza City, killing four, local hospitals said.
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The latest Palestinian death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza reached 54,249 on Thursday, according to figures by the territory’s health ministry. The majority of those killed are women and children, it says.
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The UN criticised Israel’s announcement that it will establish 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, describing the decision as moving “in the wrong direction”. A UN spokesperson repeated calls by UN chief António Guterres for Israel to “cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory.” A UK minister said Britain “condemns these actions”, adding that settlements are “illegal under international law, further imperil the two-state solution, and do not protect Israel.”
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Italy has offered to treat a Palestinian child who survived an Israeli strike in Gaza in which nine of his siblings were killed. Adam Al-Najjar, 11, is in serious condition in Nasser hospital.
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A US charity has accused the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the controversial Israeli-backed group that began distributing food in Gaza this week, of sending out photographs of deliveries containing its logo without permission. The aid bearing the Rahma logo, which was prominently displayed in a press packet distributed by GHF, suggested to some media outlets that the groups were official partners.
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Two people were killed in separate Israeli attacks on south Lebanon on Thursday, the country’s health ministry said, in the latest flare-up despite a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. The ministry said an Israeli strike hit a forested area in Nabatiyeh al-Fawqa, killing one man, while Israeli gunfire on the border town of Kfar Kila killed another.
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The Israeli army said that it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen on Thursday. The missile interception comes two days after Israeli forces said it intercepted a missile and another projectile fire from Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Key events
Israeli airstrikes killed at least 14 people in the Gaza Strip, AP reports, citing hospital officials.
Officials at Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza said the bodies of 12 people, including three women, were brought from the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said the bodies of two people as well as nine others who were wounded were taken to Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City. It said one of the wounded is a doctor who works at the same hospital.
Israel minister pledges to build a ‘Jewish Israeli state’ in the illegally occupied West Bank
An Israeli minister said “we will build a Jewish Israeli state” in the West Bank, AFP reports.
On Friday, defence minister Israel Katz vowed to build a “Jewish Israeli state” in the illegally occupied West Bank, merely a day after Israel announced the creation of 22 new illegal settlements in the territory.
“This is a decisive response to the terrorist organisations that are trying to harm and weaken our hold on this land – and it is also a clear message to (French president Emmanuel) Macron and his associates: they will recognise a Palestinian state on paper – but we will build the Jewish Israeli state here on the ground,” Katz was quoted as saying in a statement from his office.
Finland condemns new settlements in the illegally occupied West Bank
Finland has denounced Israel’s approval of 22 new settlements in the West Bank.
“Settlements are illegal under international law,” Finnish foreign minister Elina Valtonen wrote on a post on X.
“Creating deliberate obstacles to the two-state solution is unacceptable and runs counter to international efforts to advance peace.”
The US plan for Gaza, as seen by the Reuters news agency, reportedly includes a 60-day ceasefire and the release of 28 hostages, both alive and dead, in the first week in exchange for 1,236 Palestinian prisoners and the remains of 180 dead Palestinians.
The plan also stipulates that Hamas release the last 30 of the 58 remaining hostages once a permanent ceasefire has been arranged.
Donald Trump has signed off on the plan, which includes delivering humanitarian aid into the region as soon as Hamas agrees to the proposals.
Netanyahu has agreed to the deal, presented by Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, which entails the resumption of UN-organised aid in Gaza.
Hamas said it had received the Israeli response to the proposal, which it said “fails to meet any of the just and legitimate demands of our people”, including an immediate cessation of hostilities and an end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Hamas official Basem Naim said the Israeli response “fundamentally seeks to entrench the occupation and perpetuate policies of killing and starvation, even during what is supposed to be a period of temporary de-escalation”.
However, he said Hamas’ leadership was carrying out a “thorough and responsible review of the new proposal”.
Hamas has rejected the demand to give up its weapons and says Israel must pull its troops out of Gaza and commit to ending the war.
The Israeli Defence Force says it demolished a kilometre-long Hamas tunnel underneath an area in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
The IDF say the tunnel was discovered by the Commando Brigade and the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit.
The IDF said they encountered several Hamas militants inside the tunnels and “eliminated” them.
“During searches carried out in the tunnel area prior to its destruction, the forces identified a number of terrorists who had barricaded themselves in the tunnel and eliminated them,” said the IDF.
“The route was used by the Hamas terrorist organisation for terrorist activities, cynically exploiting civilian infrastructure in the area.”
Hamas has received Israel’s response to a US proposal for a Gaza ceasefire deal and is “thoroughly reviewing it”, an official from the group, Basem Naim told Reuters.
Naim said that the Israeli response to the US ceasefire plan “fails to meet any of the just and legitimate demands of our people, among them an immediate cessation of hostilities and an end to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza”.
“Hamas leadership is currently undertaking a thorough and responsible review of the new proposal,” he added. “This evaluation is guided by a deep sense of national responsibility and a steadfast commitment to protecting the rights and the future of Palestinian people on his land.”
People can rent a holiday home on Airbnb or Booking.com in an illegal Israeli settlement, on occupied Palestinian territory. But not if you’re a Palestinian.
Josh Toussaint-Strauss and the Guardian’s video team looks into how two of the world’s most popular tourism websites have been doing business on illegally seized land in the occupied West Bank, while Palestinians in the region are facing mass forced displacements and a sharp rise in violent attacks.
Israel is blocking all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, with almost no ready-to-eat food entering what its spokesperson described as “the hungriest place on earth”, Reuters reports.
Spokesperson Jens Laerke said only 600 of 900 aid trucks had been authorised to get to Israel’s border with Gaza, and from there a mixture of bureaucratic and security obstacles made it all but impossible to safely carry aid into the region.
“What we have been able to bring in is flour,” he told a press conference. “That’s not ready to eat, right? It needs to be cooked … 100% of the population of Gaza is at risk of famine.”
Tommaso della Longa, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, added that half of its medical facilities in the region were out of action for lack of fuel or medical equipment.
“UNRWA is at a crossroads – without urgent funding, we risk implosion,” UNRWA’s commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said in an interview with Middle East Eye.
In a post on X, the UN’s aid agency for Palestinian refugees said: “As the largest humanitarian actor supporting millions of #Palestine Refugees, UNRWA faces a severe funding crisis. Urgent financial support is needed for UNRWA to continue supporting the most vulnerable across the region.”
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for two attacks in southern Syria, AP reports.
One of them was an attack on government forces that a war monitor described as the first on the Syrian army to be adopted by the extremists since the fall of Bashar Assad in December.
IS said in statements issued late yesterday that the attacks occurred over the past few days in the al-Safa area in southern Syria. IS once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq. The militant group is opposed to the new authority in Damascus led by president Ahmad al-Sharaa.
Israel launched hundreds of attacks on Syria following al-Sharaa’s rise to power. It has since dialled them down since Western powers, led by Donald Trump, have embraced the new Syrian leader.
The office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the 75-year-old “successfully underwent a routine colonoscopy” at a hospital in Jerusalem, AFP reports.
“Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu successfully underwent a routine colonoscopy this morning at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem,” a statement from his office said.
Netanyahu has been admitted to hospital several times since returning to office in December 2022, according to information provided by his office.
In July 2023 Netanyahu had a pacemaker implanted after a brief hospitalisation following complaints of dizziness. In March 2024, he underwent hernia surgery before having his prostate removed in December of the same year.