Middle East crisis live: Qatar accuses Netanyahu of obstructing Gaza mediation effort after leaked recording
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Middle East crisis with me, Helen Livingstone.
Qatar has accused Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of obstructing mediation efforts in the Gaza war after a leaked recording allegedly captured him calling the Gulf state “problematic”.
“We are appalled by the alleged remarks attributed to the Israeli Prime Minister in various media reports about Qatar’s mediation role,” Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Majed Al Ansari, said on social media platform X.
“If the reported remarks are found to be true, the Israeli PM would only be obstructing and undermining the mediation process, for reasons that appear to serve his political career instead of prioritizing saving innocent lives, including Israeli hostages,” he wrote.
More on that soon. In other key developments:
More than 25,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza since 7 October, local authorities said on Wednesday. The latest figures included 210 Palestinians killed and nearly 400 injured in the past 24 hours. About 85% of the besieged strip’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced from their homes, now dealing with cold, hunger and disease in unsanitary and chaotic makeshift displacement camps.
The Israeli army said on Wednesday that it had “encircled” Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, after two days of heavy fighting, in what Israeli officials described as the last large ground assault in the three-month-old war before a shift to “lower intensity” operations. Approximately 88,000 Palestinians live in Khan Younis, which is also hosting an estimated 425,000 people displaced by fighting elsewhere in the tiny coastal territory.
Thousands of people sheltering in hospitals in Khan Younis are now trapped by Israel’s assault on the southern city. By Wednesday morning, fierce battles had reached the gates of Khan Younis’s three main hospitals – al-Aqsa, Nasser and al-Amal – making it difficult for civilians to flee, according to Ocha, the UN humanitarian agency. About 18,000 people were believed to be sheltering in the grounds of Nasser hospital alone, Ocha said, along with 850 patients. People fleeing the vicinity of Nasser hospital have been shot at by Israeli tanks as well as attack drones, according to reports. The Palestinian Red Cross Society, which runs al-Amal hospital, said troops had blockaded its staff inside. Israel says Hamas fighters operate in and around hospitals, which hospital staff and Hamas deny.
The White House condemned Wednesday’s deadly shelling of a UN shelter in southern Gaza, reiterating its position that Israel has a “responsibility to protect civilians” as it prosecutes its war with Hamas. The Gaza director of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said earlier Wednesday that two tank shells had hit a building sheltering 800 people in the city of Khan Younis, with reports that nine people had died and 75 more were injured.
The UNRWA commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, said the number of killed was “likely higher”, adding that the incident was “once again a blatant disregard of basic rules of war”. Meanwhile, at least eight people were critically injured after Israeli forces targeted a school in Khan Younis that was sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians, according to reports.
The World Health Organization’s regional director for the eastern Mediterranean said Israel was continuing to target health institutions in Gaza. Ahmed Al-Mandhari said 660 attacks were recorded on health institutions, about half of them in northern Gaza, adding that attacks on health institutions were a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.
Two ships sailing close to the Gulf of Aden were forced to seek the support of the US navy after explosions were heard nearby, as the Houthi group kept up their assault on commercial shipping off the coast of Yemen. The Houthis have also written to the UN demanding that all UK and US staff leave the country within a month.
The international court of justice in The Hague said it would deliver its ruling this week on whether or not to grant emergency measures against Israel. The UN court said the 17-judge panel would hand down its ruling on Friday at 1200 GMT. The court could order Israel to stop its military campaign in Gaza, although it has no way to enforce its orders.
An Israeli government spokesperson ruled out a Gaza ceasefire, despite reports that negotiations on hostage releases were progressing and repeated international calls for Israel to cease its months-long bombardment of the Gaza Strip. “Israel will not give up on the destruction of Hamas, the return of all the hostages … There will be no ceasefire,” the Israeli government spokesperson said on Wednesday.
The Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, accused Israel of holding up aid deliveries to Gaza. The Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip is open “24/7” but the procedures by Israel to allow the entry of aid are obstructing the process, Sisi said on Wednesday, adding that “this is part of how they exert pressure on the issue of releasing the hostages.”
Israeli forces arrested 35 Palestinians, including a woman and former prisoners, in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem on Wednesday, according to data released by the Palestinian prisoners’ affairs authority, bringing the total number of Palestinians arrested in the occupied West Bank since 7 October to 6,255. Meanwhile, Israeli troops on Wednesday reportedly demolished the home of a Palestinian accused of assisting in the killing of four Israelis near a settlement in the occupied West Bank in June.
UN member states must stop arms transfers to Israel and Palestinian armed groups, more than a dozen international humanitarian and human rights organisations urged in a joint statement on Wednesday. They called on countries to “stop fuelling the crisis in Gaza and avert further humanitarian catastrophe and loss of civilian life”.
US strikes against militias in Iraq prompted the most scathing criticism yet from Baghdad, with the prime minister’s office accusing Washington of contributing to a “reckless escalation” of regional violence. The Pentagon announced earlier on Wednesday that it had carried out overnight retaliatory strikes against three facilities linked to Iran-backed militias in response to its own forces coming under attack at an Iraqi airbase at the weekend.
The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, met Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem as part of his Middle East visit. Cameron, who is on his second visit to the region since returning to government, pressed for an immediate humanitarian pause in the fighting and raised “the importance of a two-state solution”, Downing Street said.