Middle East crisis live: UK and Australia call for immediate end to fighting as US prepares to put ceasefire resolution to UN

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Friday that its disaster risk management teams have started a project to distribute fresh bread daily to displaced families in the al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis and Rafah governorates in Gaza.

According to a social media post on X, 20,000 loaves of bread have been distributed by the teams, benefiting approximately 1,000 families.

Finland has announced plans to reinstate funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (Unrwa) after suspending its €5m (£4.29m) annual payments to the aid organisation in January.

Finland was one of 16 major donors that suspended payments after Israel accused a dozen staff at the aid organisation of involvement in the 7 October Hamas attack. The Unrwa denies the charge and says no substantial evidence has been provided to support the allegation.

Ville Tavio, Finland’s minister for foreign trade and development, said on Friday that while he had read reports that there were shortcomings in the Unrwa risk management, there was insufficient information about alleged connections to supporting Hamas to continue withholding funding.

The Finns party member said the government had received sufficient information to re-start the payments. However, he said 10% of the support would be allocated to improving risk management.

“We allocate ten percent of the support, i.e. €500,000, to risk management. That money is used to monitor the implementation of policies regarding abuses. In the future, we also require Unrwa to hold annual bilateral discussions with Finland on how the enhancement of risk management will proceed.”

Finland will closely monitor the investigation work into Unrwa in cooperation with other countries, he added.

“I am especially waiting for the final report of the UN internal audit unit OIOS. It is of the utmost importance for Finland to ensure that our money does not end up benefiting terrorism. However, the investigation will take time, and Unrwa cannot be replaced as a humanitarian actor in Gaza in the short term.”

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has arrived in Tel Aviv, Israel, on the final stop in his sixth trip to the region since the start of the war.

Blinken said he would share alternatives to Israel’s planned ground assault into the southern Gaza town of Rafah during talks with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that “hundreds of worshipers” were “blocked” from reaching the al-Aqsa mosque compound by Israeli forces on Friday.

According to Wafa: “Eyewitnesses reported that Israeli forces significantly increased their military presence around checkpoints in Qalandia, north of Jerusalem, al-Zaytouna, east of Jerusalem, and Bethlehem to the south. The forces turned back hundreds of worshipers, citing a lack of necessary entry permits.”

The news agency say worshipers were on their way to perform the second Friday prayer of the holy month of Ramadan.

David Cameron has accused Israel of demanding the closure of a key aid crossing into Gaza, in a clash with a British-born government spokesperson that has reportedly resulted in the official’s suspension.

In a blistering letter, the UK foreign secretary said aid was not getting into Gaza owing to “arbitrary denials by the government of Israel and lengthy clearance procedures, including multiple screenings and narrow opening windows in daylight hours”.

The spokesperson, Eylon Levy, whom Israeli media reported as having been suspended, had tweeted Lord Cameron suggesting Israel was not placing any obstacles in the delivery of aid.

Levy has not commented on the cause of his suspension, but British MPs said some of the claims were not cleared inside the Israeli government. There were also reports of a previous clash between Levy and Cameron that had created tensions.

In a letter to the chair of the foreign affairs select committee chairwoman, Alicia Kearns, Cameron denied a claim by Levy that the UN had requested Kerem Shalom crossing be closed on Saturdays. Cameron said Israel closes the vital aid crossing for the Sabbath.

The tone of the Cameron letter is remarkable for the frankness with which he attributes the problems in distributing aid, flatly contradicting Israeli assertions that the number of aid trucks crossing into Gaza had reached a satisfactory level.

You can read Patrick Wintour’s full piece here:

China said on Friday it supported steps by the UN security council to end fighting in Gaza, while not saying whether Beijing, a permanent council member with veto power, would support a US draft resolution on the need for an immediate ceasefire, reports AFP.

“China supports the security council in taking further responsible and meaningful actions as soon as possible to make unremitting efforts to end the fighting in Gaza at an early date,” foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said.

The US will submit for a vote on Friday a draft to the security council on the need for “an immediate ceasefire”.

The latest version, seen by AFP, notes the necessity for “an immediate and sustained ceasefire to protect civilians on all sides, allow for the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance, and alleviate humanitarian suffering”.

It thereby supports “diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.”

However, the text does not explicitly use the word “call,” instead stating that a ceasefire is imperative, which Russia says is too weak, reports AFP.

According to the news agency, when asked on Friday whether it supported the resolution, Beijing demurred. “The international community expects the security council to earnestly fulfil its responsibilities,” Lin said.

“On the Palestinian-Israeli issue, we must respect history and facts, listen to and respect the position and voice of the majority of Arab countries, realise a ceasefire and end of fighting as soon as possible,” he added.

“This is the yardstick by which we measure the security council’s actions and decisions,” he said.

The Israeli military’s spokesperson said its forces have detained hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, including a number of security officials and military commanders, during its extended raid into Gaza’s main hospital, reports Reuters.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Hamas and medical staff deny that the hospital is used for military purposes or to shelter fighters.

In recent days, Hamas spokespeople have said that the dead announced in previous Israeli statements were not fighters but patients and displaced people and have accused Israel of war crimes.

Israeli troops entered the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in the early hours of Monday morning and have been combing through the sprawling complex, which the military claim is connected to a tunnel network used as a base for Palestinian fighters.

It says troops have killed hundreds of fighters and detained more than 500 suspects, including 358 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the largest number since the beginning of the war nearly six months ago.

R Adm Daniel Hagari, Israel’s main military spokesperson, said special forces units had used “deception tactics” to surprise the fighters and had severely damaged Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

According to Reuters reporting, among the detainees were three senior Islamic Jihad military commanders and two Hamas officials responsible for operations in the occupied West Bank as well as other Hamas internal security officials.

“Those who did not surrender to our forces fought against our forces and were eliminated,” Hagari told a briefing late on Thursday.

Al-Shifa, the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital before the war, is now one of the few healthcare facilities even partially operational in the north of the territory, and had also been housing displaced civilians.

Israel faced heavy criticism last November when troops first raided the hospital. The troops uncovered tunnels there, which they said had been used as command and control centres by Hamas.

Reuters has been unable to access the hospital and verify either account.

Finland will resume funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (Unrwa), its foreign trade and development minister said on Friday, reports Reuters.

Several countries, including the US and the UK, paused their funding to Unrwa after accusations by Israel that a dozen of the agency’s 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in the 7 October Hamas attack in Israel.

“Unrwa improving its risk management, meaning preventing and initiating close monitoring for misconduct, provides sufficient guarantees for us at this point to continue our support,” Finland’s foreign trade and development minister Ville Tavio said.

According to Reuters, he told a press conference some of the Finnish money would be earmarked for risk management.

Countries including Canada, Australia and Sweden have also restored funding to Unrwa, while several Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia have increased funding.

Australian and UK foreign and defence ministers on Friday stressed the “urgency of an immediate cessation of fighting in Gaza to allow aid to flow and hostages to be released”, in a statement after talks in Adelaide, reports AFP.

The call came just hours before the US was expected to put a resolution to the UN security council that would stress the need for “an immediate ceasefire”.

London’s call for an “immediate cessation of fighting” is a sign that the UK is also growing more anxious about the toll and impact of Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

The UK and Australia said a cessation was now urgently needed to “allow aid to flow and hostages to be released as a crucial step toward a permanent, sustainable ceasefire”.

The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, his Australian counterpart, Penny Wong, Australian defence minister Richard Marles and UK defence secretary Grant Shapps called the humanitarian crisis in Gaza “catastrophic” and “called on Israel to allow immediate, safe, unimpeded and increased humanitarian relief to reach Palestinians in Gaza”.

According to Reuters, a joint statement was released on Friday after the defence and foreign secretaries of the UK met with their Australian counterparts in Adelaide. The statement warns that there were potentially devastating consequences of an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah in Gaza.

“Given the large number of displaced persons taking refuge in the area and lack of safe spaces in Gaza, ministers shared deep concern at the potentially devastating consequences for the civilian population of an expanded Israeli military operation in Rafah,” the statement said.

EU leaders have overcome their differences to call for an “immediate humanitarian pause leading to a sustainable ceasefire” in Gaza, hours before the US is expected to bring a resolution to a vote at the UN calling for a truce and a hostage deal without delay in the face of a looming famine.

The EU declaration, at a Brussels summit late on Thursday, marked the first time European leaders had agreed a declaration on the Middle East since October. The US draft resolution to be put to a vote in the UN security council on Friday morning also reflects greater urgency in Washington’s position. It is the first time the Biden administration has put forward language calling for an “immediate ceasefire”, although it continues to link a truce with a hostage deal.

The council will vote on the US resolution at the same time as CIA and the Mossad spy chiefs William Burns and David Barnea are expected to arrive in Qatar on Friday in the hope of clinching an elusive truce-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas. Speaking in Egypt, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said difficult work remained to be done but added: “I continue to believe it’s possible.”

The EU declaration calls for the “unconditional release of all hostages” by Hamas, but does not make its demand for a halt to Israeli military operations dependent on a deal. In Brussels, Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said all 27 EU members had agreed “a strong and unified statement on the Middle East” which including a call for “full and safe humanitarian access into Gaza”.

The eight-paragraph EU text expressed deep concern over the “imminent risk of famine caused by insufficient entry of aid into Gaza”.

You can read the full piece, with reporting by Julian Borger in Washington, Lisa O’Carroll in Brussels and Peter Beaumont in London, here:

Ana Lucía González Paz, Lucy Swan, Paul Scruton and Harvey Symons and have created a visual guide to the obstacles to Gaza aid deliveries. The handy explainer features maps, charts and graphics, and analysis by former Jerusalem correspondent Oliver Holmes.

You can view it here:

The US secretary of state Antony Blinken is heading to Israel on Friday to press for a truce in Gaza, ahead of a key UN security council vote on a draft resolution by the US calling for an “immediate” ceasefire.

Israel’s main backer the US announced it would submit the resolution on Friday, after repeatedly using its veto power to block other similarly worded resolutions, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

It comes as a statement by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel’s spy chief David Barnea would travel to Qatar on Friday to meet truce mediators.

Blinken said on Thursday in Cairo that a major Israeli ground assault on the southern Gaza town of Rafah would be “a mistake” and unnecessary to defeating Hamas.

His comments underscore the further souring of relations between the US and Israel, according to the Associated Press (AP).

In Gaza, Israel said it expected to continue attacks on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City for a few more days. The facility, where residents reported tanks, gunfire and flames on Thursday, is the only partially working medical facility in the north of the enclave and has already been under attack for four days.

Israel says Hamas gunmen are holding out at the medical complex, something Hamas denies.

Blinken is on his sixth urgent mission to the Middle East since the war began in October. It’s understood growing disagreements between Netanyahu and US president, Joe Biden, over the prosecution of the war could overshadow those talks.

It has gone 9am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest Guardian live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is to meet with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as he heads to Israel for talks. He’s due to press for a truce as the US prepares to put a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to a vote of the UN security council.

Meanwhile, Israel’s spy chief, David Barnea, is also due to travel to Qatar on Friday for ceasefire negotiations.

More on that in a moment but first, a summary of the latest developments:

• EU leaders have overcome their differences to call for an “immediate humanitarian pause leading to a sustainable ceasefire” in Gaza, hours before the US is expected to bring a resolution to a vote at the UN calling for a truce and a hostage deal without delay in the face of a looming famine.

• US secretary of state Antony Blinken said that negotiating teams are working “every single day” on a deal to get a ceasefire in Gaza in conjunction with a deal to release the remaining hostages taken from Israel into Gaza by Hamas. He added that there are still “real challenges” to a deal and he can not put a timeline on it, Reuters reports.

• UK foreign secretary David Cameron has accused Israel of demanding the closure of a key aid crossing into Gaza, in a clash with a British-born government spokesperson that has reportedly resulted in the official’s suspension.

• Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, said on Thursday that he plans to invite Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before the US Congress. The comments come a week after Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, called for elections in Israel which could oust Netanyahu, claiming the prime minister has “has lost his way”.

• Cyprus is planning to get “as many boats as possible” to Gaza along a maritime corridor, Cyprus’s foreign minister, Constantinos Kombos, said, Agence France-Presse reports. In a meeting on Thursday, Cyprus hosted representatives from 36 countries, UN agencies and humanitarian groups in the port of Larnaca, where the first aid vessel set sail to Gaza earlier this month.

• World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Ghebreyesus said that the “future of an entire generation is in serious peril” in Gaza. Adding that children are dying from the effects of malnutrition and disease, and from a lack of adequate water and sanitation, the WHO director-general said: “Recent efforts to deliver food by air and sea are welcome, but only the expansion of land crossings will enable large scale deliveries to prevent famine.”

• Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has said that she will visit the Middle East on Sunday. It will be her seventh visit since the 7 October attack inside southern Israel by Hamas.

• Australia and Britain have said in a joint statement there were potentially devastating consequences of an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah in Gaza.
  “Given the large number of displaced persons taking refuge in the area and lack of safe spaces in Gaza, ministers shared deep concern at the potentially devastating consequences for the civilian population of an expanded Israeli military operation in Rafah,” the statement said. It also called on Israel to allow immediate, safe, unimpeded and increased humanitarian relief to reach Palestinians in Gaza.

• A second ship, the Jennifer, capable of transporting up to 600 tons, will ply the newly inaugurated sea corridor connecting Cyprus with Gaza as soon as weather conditions allow. “It will go either at the end of this week or the beginning of next due to weather conditions,” Cyprus’s foreign ministry spokesperson Theodoros Gotsis told the Guardian of the second aid mission.

• Satellite images analysed by the UN’s Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) showed that 35% of the Gaza Strip’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged by Israel since October. Khan Younis City had been hit “particularly hard”, it said, with 6,663 newly destroyed structures.