Middle East crisis live: Israel will launch Rafah offensive next month if hostages held by Hamas not freed, says Gantz
It’s 8:21am in Gaza and Tel Aviv, welcome to our latest Guardian live blog on the Middle East crisis. I’m Reged Ahmad and I’ll be with you for the next while.
Israel will launch its long-threatened offensive against Rafah next month if Hamas has not freed the remaining hostages held in Gaza by the start of Ramadan, Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz said.
The Israeli government has not previously specified a deadline for its planned assault on the city where most of the 1.7 million displaced Palestinians have sought refuge.
“The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know – if by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue everywhere, including the Rafah area,” Gantz, a retired military chief of staff, told a conference of American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem Sunday, according to Agence France-Presse.
More on that in a moment but first, here’s a summary of the latest developments:
The UN security council is expected to vote Tuesday on an Arab-backed resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, which the United States announced it will veto, Associates Press reports.
Israel formalised its opposition to what it called the “unilateral recognition” of Palestinian statehood, and said any such agreement must be reached through direct negotiations. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, brought the “declaratory decision” to a vote in cabinet, which unanimously approved the measure, according to a statement.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the situation in the Israel-occupied West Bank posed a major obstacle to finding a long-term solution for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza is no longer functioning due to the Israeli army’s “week-long siege followed by the ongoing raid”. The Gaza Strip’s second-largest hospital still sheltered many patients suffering from war wounds and Gaza’s worsening health crisis, but there was no power and not enough staff to treat them all, health officials said. “It’s gone completely out of service,” Gaza health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra told Reuters. “There are only four medical teams – 25 staff – currently caring for patients inside the facility,” he said.
A total of 28,985 Palestinian people have been killed and 68,883 others injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said in a statement. At least 127 Palestinians have been killed and 205 others injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
The Israeli military said on Sunday that it killed dozens of Palestinian militants and seized a large amount of weapons in fighting throughout the Gaza Strip over the past day.
Western powers have rejected suggestions that Hamas as an entity can be allowed a role in governing Gaza at the end of the war, saying only that they recognise that Palestinian militancy will still exist.
In the UK, Keir Starmer, the Labour party leader, said the “fighting must stop now” in Gaza, warning Israel not to extend its military offensive to the southern city of Rafah.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva accused Israel on Sunday of committing “genocide” against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. “What’s happening in the Gaza Strip isn’t a war, it’s a genocide,” Lula told reporters in Addis Ababa, where he was attending an African Union summit. “It’s not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It’s a war between a highly prepared army and women and children,” he added. The 78-year-old leader condemned Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel as a “terrorist” act but he has since grown vocally critical of Israel’s retaliatory military campaign.
US forces in the Red Sea have successfully conducted “five self-defence strikes” to foil attacks by land and sea from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, the American military said Sunday. The five strikes included targeting “the first observed Huthi employment of a UUV (unmanned underwater vessel) since attacks began” in October, according to a statement from US central command (Centcom). Meanwhile maritime security firm Ambrey reported a new incident in the strategic Bab al-Mandeb straight, in which a cargo vessel came under attack on Sunday.