Middle East crisis live: Netanyahu’s comments show he is ‘not concerned’ about ceasefire deal, says Hamas official

Al Jazeera has reported from Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest hospital and crucial to the territory’s crippled health services:

Despite the Israeli military’s statement that it has completed operations inside Nasser hospital, snipers are still in the vicinity of the hospital and, tragically, are still shooting at anything moving near it.

There is also still an ongoing blockade of relief convoys, stopping fuel or water supplies from reaching those inside the hospital.

The Israeli military previously conducted mass arrests of about 200 people in or around the hospital, including medical staff and patients. Their fate is unknown. Nobody knows where they are or what’s going to happen to them.

A man identified as a US air force member was left in a critical condition after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, authorities said.

The Metropolitan police department said it responded to an incident on International Drive around 1pm on Sunday to assist the Secret Service. Fire and emergency services said the man had serious burns.

“An adult male was transported by DC fire and EMS [emergency medical services] to a local hospital where they remain in critical condition,” the police department said on Twitter/X.

A video posted online showed a man in a uniform shouting “Free Palestine” as he burned while identifying himself as an active air force member.

The man was reportedly on fire for about a minute before law enforcement put it out.

You can read the full story here:

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday that it was not clear yet whether a hostage deal would materialise from ongoing talks, declining to discuss specifics, but said Hamas needed to “come down to a reasonable situation”.

“They’re in another planet. But if they come down to a reasonable situation, then yes we’ll have a hostage deal. I hope so,” he told CBS’ Face the Nation.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Netanyahu’s comments cast doubt over Israel’s willingness to secure a deal.

“Netanyahu’s comments show he is not concerned about reaching an agreement,” Abu Zuhri told Reuters, accusing the Israeli leader of wanting “to pursue negotiation under bombardment and the bloodshed (of Palestinians)”.

Negotiators from Israel, Qatar, Egypt and the US have agreed the “basic contours” of an arrangement during weekend talks in Paris, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN, but the final details still have to be hammered out.

Israeli media reported that the prospective deal would allow for the release of 30 or 40 hostages in exchange for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners, and a ceasefire lasting up to six weeks.

Both sides would continue negotiations during the pause for further releases and a permanent ceasefire, an Egyptian official told the Associated Press.

The break in fighting would cover the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts around 10 March this year, and the deal would include an increase in desperately needed aid.

After initial talks in Paris, follow-up discussions will be held in Doha and Cairo, Egyptian security sources told Reuters.

We are restarting our live coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza and the wider Middle East crisis.

Senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, has said comments by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu cast doubt over Israel’s willingness to secure a ceasefire deal.

On Sunday, Netanyahu spoke to US media and said a deal would only delay Israel’s planned assault on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where an estimated 1.5 million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter.

More on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.

• US Central Command (Centcom) said that the Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile that likely targeted a US-flagged owned and operated tanker in the Gulf of Aden on Saturday evening. It said the missile missed and landed in the water, therefore not causing any damage or injuries. “Earlier in the evening, at about 9pm (Sanaa time), US Centcom forces shot down two one-way attack unmanned aerial vehicles over the southern Red Sea in self-defence. A third UAV crashed from an assessed in-flight failure,” it added in a post on X.

• Israeli forces killed more than 30 Palestinian gunmen in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district, more than 10 in the central Gaza Strip and others in the southern city of Khan Younis, the military said on Monday in a summary of the last 24 hours’ operations.

• The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said that the “looming famine” and the blockage of food aid into parts of Gaza was a “man made disaster”. He said the last time the UNRWA was able to deliver food aid to northern Gaza was on 23 January. “Our calls to send food aid have been denied & have fallen on deaf ears. This is a man made disaster. The world committed to never let famine happen again. Famine can still be avoided, through genuine political will to grant access & protection to meaningful assistance,” Lazzarini wrote on X.

• Benjamin Netanyahu convened the war cabinet late on Saturday for a briefing with negotiators who had been at ceasefire talks in Paris. This week, it will meet again to discuss preparations for an assault on Rafah. A deal might delay that operation, but would not prevent it, Netanyahu said in an interview with CBS.

• White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN that negotiators from the US, Egypt, Qatar and Israel came to an understanding on the basic contours of a hostage deal during talks in Paris. The deal is still under negotiation, said Sullivan, who added there will have to be indirect discussions by Qatar and Egypt with Hamas.

• The death toll in Gaza is likely to pass the grim milestone of 30,000 this week. Israeli strikes have killed 29,692 Palestinians in Gaza since October, two-thirds of them women and children, and injured 69,879, according to the Gaza health ministry.

• Iran condemned the latest strikes by the US and the UK on Yemen, saying they were seeking to “escalate tensions and crises” in the region.

• The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has been forced to “stretch every dollar” and juggle its finances in order to continue work in Gaza after 18 donor countries suspended funding over allegations of links to Hamas. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is facing a shortfall of $450m from a budget of $880m.