Middle East crisis live: Israel war cabinet reportedly approves sending negotiators to Qatar for truce talks
Israel’s spy chief was in Paris earlier for talks seeking to “unblock” progress towards a truce and the return of hostages held by Palestinian militants. The Israeli delegation, which includes the heads of its internal and external intelligence services, met the director of the CIA, Qatar’s prime minister and Egypt’s most senior intelligence official for talks over the weekend in what appeared to be the most serious push for weeks to halt the fighting. According to the Times of Israel, an “outline of an agreement” has been reached in talks in Paris this weekend but no official confirmation or further details have yet been shared.
The negotiations came after a plan for a postwar Gaza unveiled by the Israeli prime minister drew criticism from key ally the US and was rejected by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas on Friday.
More than 100 people were reported killed in overnight strikes across Gaza. The Gaza health ministry also said dozens of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had been killed in the latest Israeli strikes on Saturday.
Hamas said on Saturday that Israeli forces had launched more than 70 strikes on civilian homes in cities including Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis and Rafah over the previous 24 hours. Hamas said fighting was raging in the northern Gaza district of Zeitun.
Israel’s military said it was “intensifying the operations” in western Khan Younis using tanks, close-range fire and aircraft. “The soldiers raided the residence of a senior military intelligence operative” in the area and destroyed a tunnel shaft, a military statement said.
The US and UK carried out strikes against 18 Houthi targets including underground weapons and missile storage facilities in Yemen on Saturday in the latest round of military action against the Iran-linked group that continues to attack shipping in the region.
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said on Saturday that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, doubling down after stirring controversy a week earlier by comparing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza to the Nazi Holocaust. Lula wrote on X that he would not give up his “dignity for falsehood”, an apparent reference to calls for him to retract his comments. In response to Lula’s initial comments last week, Israel declared him a persona non grata, summoned Brazil’s ambassador and demanded an apology.
Fears for civilians in Gaza are deepening, with the UN warning of the growing risk of famine. Its main aid body for Palestinians, UNWRA, said early on Saturday that Palestinians were “in extreme peril while the world watches on”. AFP footage showed distraught Palestinians queueing for food in the territory’s devastated north on Friday and staging a protest decrying their living conditions.
The UN agency in charge of Palestinian affairs (UNRWA) said it has been forced to pause aid deliveries to northern Gaza – where it is not “possible to conduct proper humanitarian operations” – amid increasing reports of famine among people in the area. “The desperate behaviour of hungry and exhausted people is preventing the safe and regular passage of our trucks,” said Tamara Alrifai, director of external relations for UNRWA. She added that she was “very wary of how to explain this so as not to make it sound like we are blaming people or describing these things as criminal acts”.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Saturday that its ambulance teams had, for the fourth time, carried out an evacuation mission from Nasser hospital after it went out of service, in coordination with Ocha. The PRCS said four ambulance vehicles evacuated 18 injured people, including two newborns who had lost their mothers.