US President Joe Biden has warned Israel that it cannot use aid as a “bargaining chip” as he issued a call for an immediate, temporary ceasefire with Hamas in the bloody Gaza war.

“To the leadership of Israel I say this – humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip. Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority,” Biden said in his annual State of the Union address.

Biden laid out a plan, announced by officials earlier in the day, to set up a temporary pier in the Mediterranean to bring aid into Gaza, where the UN has warned of the risk of famine.

Biden again said that Israel was justified in attacking Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, over the attack on 7 October and said that the militants “could end this conflict today” by releasing hostages.

But he called the impact on Gaza “heartbreaking”. The flow of aid has rarely been more than a trickle in relation to the vast needs of 2.3 million Palestinians. Fewer than 100 trucks a day are getting across.

Aid groups have said that efforts to deliver desperately needed supplies to the beleaguered territory have been hampered by difficulties coordinating with the Israeli military, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of public order.

In other developments:

Delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza by airdrops or sea cannot sufficiently “substitute” land deliveries, the UN aid coordinator for the Palestinian territory has said after a closed-door security council meeting. “The diversification of the supply routes via land” remains the “optimal solution,” Sigrid Kaag said.
A Hamas statement has confirmed that talks over a deal with Israel will continue, despite a Hamas delegation leaving Cairo where talks were being held, and a senior Hamas official claiming that Israel had “thwarted” any deal. Official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Israel had been “thwarting” efforts to conclude a ceasefire deal mediated by Qatar and Egypt during the four days of talks, rejecting Hamas’s demands to end its offensive in the territory, withdraw its forces, and ensure freedom of entry for aid and the return of displaced people.
Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said “it is Hamas who is the stumbling block right now by not telling us who is alive and who they have in their custody”. Separately an Israeli official told the CNN network it believes Hamas is playing a “game”, and that the group does know where hostages are being held.
At least 30,800 Palestinians have been killed and 72,298 have been wounded since Israel began its military assault on Gaza after the 7 October Hamas attack inside Israel, according to the latest figures from the health ministry. In addition, the Palestinian Authority ministry of health – which is separate to the Hamas-led one that operates inside Gaza – says that 424 Palestinians have now been killed by Israeli security forces or settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since 7 October.
A UN expert said on Thursday that Israel was destroying Gaza’s food system as part of a broader “starvation campaign” in its war against Hamas militants and berated a UN human rights body for not doing more. “The images of starvation in Gaza are unbearable and you are doing nothing,” Michael Fakhri, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said in a speech to the UN human rights council.
In its latest operational update Israel’s military says it continues “operations against terrorist infrastructure and operatives in Khan Younis and the central Gaza Strip”. It claims in the last 24 hours to have located “weapons manufacturing facility, explosive devices and military equipment” as well as having “dismantled command centers used by terror organizations in the Gaza Strip”.
Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will push on with its offensive in Gaza, including in Rafah, regardless of international pressure. Israel’s prime minister said “There is international pressure and it’s growing, but particularly when the international pressure rises, we must close ranks, we need to stand together against the attempts to stop the war.”
The health ministry in Gaza said Israel on Thursday returned 47 bodies of Palestinians it had killed earlier during the military offensive. Images appeared to show a mass gave being prepared near where people are sheltering in makeshift tent camps in Rafah.

Palestinian workers bury bodies of those killed in Israeli attacks in a mass grave in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah on 7 March 2024. — Palestinian workers bury bodies of those killed in the conflict in a mass grave in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah on 7 March 2024. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, is reported to have instructed diplomats to push calls for the UN to declare Hamas a terrorist organisation in the wake of a UN report on sexual violence occurring during and after the 7 October attacks inside southern Israel.
Turkey’s Red Crescent is sending its biggest aid shipment yet to Gaza via Egypt, with a ship carrying about 3,000 tons of food, medicine and equipment leaving for the Egyptian port of Al-Arish.
The IDF has said that it struck on Thursday at what it described as two Hezbollah outposts inside Lebanon.
Lior Haiat, spokesperson for Israel’s foreign affairs ministry, has accused South Africa of acting “as the legal arm of Hamas in an attempt to undermine Israel’s inherent right to defend itself and its citizens, and to release all of the hostages”. South Africa has been pressing the international court of justice in The Hague to order Israel into a ceasefire.
Three crew members of the True Confidence dry bulk carrier were killed in a missile attack off Yemen on Wednesday, the owners and manager of the ship confirmed in a statement on Thursday. Two other crew members sustained serious injuries. The ship is drifting away from land and salvage arrangements are being made.
Russia’s Federal Security Service said it prevented an attack on a synagogue in Moscow that was plotted by an Islamic State cell.
Malaysia’s prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, has criticised the west for its attitude to the situation in Gaza during a speech in Australia. He said the west had been “so vociferous, vehement and unequivocal in the condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine” but “utterly silent on the relentless blood-letting inflicted on innocent men, women and children of Gaza”. Anwar said it would foolish to think these inconsistencies would “go unnoticed”.

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