Israel-Gaza war live: Netanhayu vows to continue war on Hamas after Biden presents ceasefire plan

It has just gone past 10:20am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest blog covering Israel’s war on Gaza and the wider Middle East crisis.

Benjamin Netanyahu has responded cooly to Joe Biden’s proposal for peace between Israel and Hamas, insisting the Israeli army will continue fighting until it has “eliminated” the Palestinian militant group’s capacity to rule Gaza and pose a military threat.

The Israeli prime minister’s comments came after Hamas said it had a positive view of the three-phase ceasefire proposal announced by the US president for a permanent truce in Gaza.

The plan would begin with a six-week complete ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from populated areas of Gaza, and calls for the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and the reconstruction of the territory.

“It’s time for this war to end and for the day after to begin,” Biden said.

Netanyahu’s office said he had authorised his negotiating team to present the deal, “while insisting that the war will not end until all of its goals are achieved, including the return of all our hostages and the elimination of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities”.

In other key developments:

• The World Food Programme (WFP) said daily life had become “apocalyptic” in parts of southern Gaza since Israel began its assault on Rafah in early May. “The sounds, the smells, the everyday life are horrific and apocalyptic,” Matthew Hollingworth, the organisation’s country director in Gaza, told journalists after returning from a trip to Gaza. “People sleep to the sounds of bombing, they sleep to the sounds of drones, they sleep to the sounds of war, as now tanks roll into parts of central Rafah, which is only kilometers away. And they wake to the same sounds.” In the exodus from the southern city, people had fled to areas where there was not enough water, healthcare or fuel, food was limited, telecommunications had stopped and there was not enough space to dig pit latrines, the WFP director for the Palestinian territories warned.

• A joint US and UK air raid on Houthi missile launchers in Yemen has killed 16 people and injured more than 40, according to the Houthi health ministry. The toll could not confirmed but if accurate would represent the single largest loss of life since the US and UK started their campaign to degrade the Houthi military in January. The airstrikes hit the capital, Sana’a, the port of Hodeidah, and Taiz in the south-west of the Houthi-controlled area.

• The Houthis later launched several drones and two ballistic missiles, the US military said, after the western strikes prompted retaliatory threats. US Central Command (Centcom) said it had intercepted four drones – three over the Red Sea and another over the Gulf of Aden – while a fifth drone crashed. The Houthis also launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles, Centcom said, adding no injuries or damage were reported.

• The US secretary of state sought to press Hamas into accepting the new Gaza ceasefire plan in talks with the top diplomats of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. In calls from his plane as he returned from a Nato meeting in Prague, Antony Blinken “emphasised that Hamas should accept the deal without delay”, a state department spokesperson said.

• A former head of the Mossad has described his disbelief and disappointment at allegations that his successor at the Israeli intelligence agency threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC), likening the conduct to mafia-like tactics. Tamir Pardo, who served as director of the Mossad between 2011 and 2016, was responding to a Guardian investigation about an alleged Mossad operation to put pressure on the former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to abandon a war crimes investigation.

• The US state department falsified a report last month to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, overruling the advice of its own experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week. Stacy Gilbert left her post as senior civil military adviser in a department bureau on Tuesday.

• UK government ministers have reviewed a further three months of the Israeli military’s presence in Gaza and found no reason to suspend arms exports to Israel. The latest review of evidence examined Israel Defense Forces’ behaviour until 24 April, the Foreign Office said. The extended review includes the Israeli killing of three British aid workers employed by the World Central Kitchen food charity.

• Jordan announced it will host a summit on 11 June, jointly organised with Egypt and the UN, bringing together aid agency chiefs and heads of donor governments to discuss the humanitarian response.

• The Israeli military said its forces had ended operations in north Gaza’s Jabalia area after days of intensive bombardments involving more than 200 airstrikes. The military continues pushing further into Rafah, in southernmost Gaza.

• The leaders of the US Senate and House of Representatives have invited Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress, a show of support amid partisan divides over Israel’s campaign in Gaza. It did not propose a date for the speech.

• The body of a Mexican-French man who died during Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel arrived in Mexico City on Friday, authorities said. The remains of Orion Hernandez Radoux “were received at the airport … by personnel from the foreign ministry””, the ministry said. The Israeli army said last week that troops recovered his body in northern Gaza, along with those of two other men, including a Brazilian-Israeli.