Middle East crisis live: Netanyahu expands Gaza war aims; Blinken heads to Egypt

Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, has reported that four Palestinian people, including a child, were killed by Israeli forces bombing several homes in the al-Bureij camp in central Gaza on Tuesday morning.

Sources also told the outlet that a person was killed after Israeli soldiers bombed a bicycle in the Qizan Rashwan area in the southern city of Khan Younis. These claims are yet to have been independently verified by the Guardian.

The US has announced fresh sanctions against five individuals and a company associated with the Intellexa Consortium for their role in developing and distributing spyware that allegedly presents “a significant threat” to US national security.

The move comes months after the US government sanctioned Intellexa’s founder and other parties for their role in making and distributing commercial spyware used to target US officials, journalists and others.

The US Treasury said on Monday it had sanctioned another five individuals associated with Intellexa’s international web of companies allegedly involved in supplying the group’s Predator spyware to foreign governments.

They were targeted “for their role in developing, operating, and distributing commercial spyware technology that presents a significant threat to the national security of the United States,” the Treasury said in a statement.

Predator spyware can be used to turn a target’s cellphone into a surveillance device and gain access to data stored and transmitted by the device.

Acting Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Bradley Smith, said:

The United States will not tolerate the reckless propagation of disruptive technologies that threatens our national security and undermines the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens.

We will continue to hold accountable those that seek to enable the proliferation of exploitative technologies, while also encouraging the responsible development of technologies that align with international standards.

Former US president Barack Obama hosted Yair Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader, in Washington on Monday.

Lapid, who is also a former prime minister, thanked Obama for his “public support and efforts for the return of the Israeli abductees held in Gaza”, adding in a post on X: “I told him that we should all work together to secure a deal that will bring the abductees home.”

There are reports that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering replacing his defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

Israel’s leading television channels and news websites reported that Netanyahu, under pressure from far-right coalition partners, was contemplating firing Gallant and replacing him with former ally turned rival, Gideon Saar, who is a member of the opposition.

Netanyahu has dismissed calls by Gallant and others to accept a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the southern border area of the Gaza Strip as the price of a ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Gallant, who Netanyahu tried to fire in 2023, has been openly scornful of the Israeli prime minister’s repeated aim of “total victory” in Gaza, which he has dismissed as “nonsense”.

“Instead of the prime minister being busy with victory over Hamas, returning the hostages, with the war against Hezbollah and allowing (evacuated) residents of the north to return to their homes, he is busy with despicable political dealings and replacing the defence minister,” Benny Gantz, the centre-right National Unity party leader and Netanyahu’s main political rival, wrote on social media.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Israel has expanded its stated goals of the war to include enabling residents to return to communities in northern Israel that have been evacuated due to attacks by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The decision was approved during an overnight meeting of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, his office said. Tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from towns along the northern frontier that have been badly damaged by rocket fire and have yet to return.

Separately, on Monday, Israel’s defence minister said “the possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas, and refuses to end the conflict. Therefore, the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action.”

It comes as the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was due to travel to Cairo to discuss a proposal for a ceasefire deal and release of hostages. It will be his 10th trip to the region since the outbreak of the war almost a year ago.

The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, meanwhile, has warned of the devastating consequences of further regional escalation in the conflict.

In a statement from the US defence department, he “reaffirmed the necessity of a ceasefire and hostage deal, and that Israel should give diplomatic negotiations time to succeed, noting the devastating consequences that escalation would have on the people of Israel, Lebanon, and the broader region.”

Here is a summary of the day’s other main events:

• Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar has said the Palestinian militant group had the resources to sustain its fight against Israel, with support from Iran-backed regional allies. In a letter to the group’s Yemeni allies, the Houthis, he said “we have prepared ourselves to fight a long war of attrition … our combined efforts with you” and with groups in Lebanon and Iraq “will break this enemy and inflict defeat on it”.

• Palestinian officials say Israeli airstrikes killed 16 people in the Gaza Strip on Monday, including five women and four children. A strike flattened a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 10 people there, according to officials at the Awda hospital, which received the bodies. Another strike on a home in Gaza City killed six people, according to the civil defence first responders.

• UN secretary general António Guterres has said that “nothing justifies” the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. “We all condemn the terror attacks made by Hamas, as well as the taking of the hostages, that is an absolute violation of international humanitarian law,” he said, before adding “the truth is that nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, and that is what we are witnessing in a dramatic way in Gaza”.

• Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, told Agence France-Presse that new generations of fighters have been recruited since the 7 October attacks.

• Polio vaccination coverage in Gaza has reached 90%, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency said on Monday, adding that the next step was to ensure hundreds of thousands of children got a second dose at the end of the month. The campaign, which began on 1 September, aims to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza under 10 years of age against polio.

• Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to New York on 24 September, the first day of the high-level general debate by world leaders at the annual UN general assembly, his office has said. It said the Israeli prime minister is scheduled to stay until 28 September in the US, which he had visited in July for official talks and a congressional address.