Cameron: vital to get pause in fighting but Israel has to ‘get Hamas leaders out of Gaza’
The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, has spoken again about Israel and Gaza while on a trip to Thailand. He said it was vital for a pause in fighting to allow for the release of hostages, but that Israel has to “get Hamas leaders out of Gaza”.
Reuters reports he told the media:
Crucially what we must try to do is to turn that pause into a permanent sustainable ceasefire. We will only do that if a whole lot of conditions are fulfilled. We’ve got to get Hamas leaders out of Gaza, we have to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.
Cameron was visiting a Thai air force base.
Key events
Hamas official: Israel retracted previous negotiation approvals in latest talks
Reuters is now carrying a fuller quote from senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan, who told a press conference in Beirut that Israel had rejected its proposals for a ceasefire.
The news agency quotes him saying:
On Tuesday evening, our brothers, the mediators, informed us of the occupation’s position on the proposal. It is a negative response in general and does not respond to the demands. In fact, it retracts the approvals it previously provided to the mediators.
Netanyahu: preparations for ground assault on Rafah will ‘take some time’
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again stated Israel intention to launch a ground offensive against Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip, but cautioned that it will “take some time” for Israel’s forces to be ready.
Reuters reports Netanyahu said that he will soon approve a plan for the evacuation of Palestinian civilians from fighting areas after having green-lit the military’s operational plans for Rafah.
Israel has repeatedly told Palestinians in Gaza to flee to Rafah for their safety, and there is now a huge displaced population living there in makeshift tents. An airstrike on Rafah today killed more Palestinians, with the Hamas-led ministry of health saying that the number of people killed in Israel’s military assault has nearly reached 32,000.
Haaretz reports that in his statement, Netanyahu said Israel’s military continues to operate in Khan Younis. He added “We continue to eliminate and capture senior Hamas officials as we just did in al-Shifa Hospital, eliminating many hundreds of terrorists.”
Earlier Israel claimed it had killed about 90 fighters at the al-Shifa hospital complex. Hamas has denied using it as a base, and said those killed were civilians, patients and medical staff. Neither sets of claims have been independently verified.
Video footage obtained by Al Jazeera in Rafah and shared on social media shows the extent of damage caused by an Israeli airstrike there earlier today.
Hamas says Israeli response to truce proposal negative
Hamas senior official Osama Hamdan said on Wednesday that the Israeli response to the group’s latest Gaza ceasefire proposal was negative after mediators handed it over, Reuters reports.
Head of the Mossad David Barnea had been on Doha earlier in the week for talks, and representatives of Israel had stayed there in order to continue negotiations.
Earlier today the UK foreign secretary David Cameron said it was “vital” to get a pause in fighting in order to secure the release of hostages being held in Gaza, and US secretary of state Antony Blinken is visiting Saudi Arabia and Egypt, with a planned stop in Israel on Friday to make a further push for a ceasefire.
Antony Blinken’s visit to Israel is understood to be taking place on Friday. Images of Blinken arriving today in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia have appeared on the news wires in the last few minutes.
France claims to have destroyed Houthi drone near commercial vessels in Red Sea
A French Navy helicopter destroyed a Houthi combat drone in the southern Red Sea to protect merchant ships, the EU’s mission in the Red Sea, known as Aspides, said on Wednesday.
Reuters reports that according to a statement from Aspides’ headquarters in the Greek town of Larisa, a French destroyer warship detected an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flying near commercial vessels, and the warship’s helicopter, “patrolling in the area, was guided by the destroyer to engage and destroy the drone with its machine gun.”
Israel has continued to bombard the southern and central Gaza Strip, including Rafah, where many displaced Palestinians have fled the five months of military assault. Here are some of the latest images from the news wires.
Blinken expected to add Israel to countries visited on Middle East tour
Reuters reports an Israeli government official said on Wednesday that US secretary of state Antony Blinken was expected in Israel “end of week” on his tour of the Middle East.
Blinken returned to the region on Wednesday for his sixth visit since the 7 October Hamas assault inside southern Israel, to push for a ceasefire deal and the release of hostages held by in Gaza. It was known that he would be visiting Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
In the UK, the BBC’s most senior figure, director-general Tim Davie, has described social media remarks about the Israel-Gaza war by some of the corporation’s journalists as “unacceptable”, PA Media reports.
However, he told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Wednesday that the BBC remains “impartial”. His comments came after culture secretary Lucy Frazer recently said she believes the broadcaster is biased “on occasion”.
When asked about retweets by BBC Arabic staff that Conservative MP Damian Green dubbed “essentially pro-Hamas”, Davies replied:
Some of those tweets that we’ve seen are unacceptable, and we have taken action and we’ll continue to take action; whether I can convince you that it will never happen again … of course not.
We are robust and I think we’re doing the fair thing, we’re acting fairly and judiciously and it’s not easy.
I mean, you’re seeing it around the world, every news organisation, every cultural institution as you know is under enormous pressure … this is enormously fraught.”
A small number of BBC Arabic journalists had been criticised for allegedly liking posts comparing Hamas to “freedom fighters” after the 7 October attacks while others have been criticised for calling or endorsing posts calling Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocidal” and the country a “terrorist apartheid state”.
Davie said “social media activity with regard to this issue” has led to many BBC staff facing “threats” and has caused some to leave.
In Gaza City there has been a funeral for 23 Palestinians killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a gathering of people at the Kuwait Roundabout. Palestinian news agency Wafa reported the gathering was to facilitate the transportation of aid.
Near the Israeli-occupied city of Nablus today relatives have buried Fakher Bani Jaber, who was shot by an Israeli settler on Tuesday.
The foreign ministry of the Palestinian Authority has condemned the killing, reports the Wafa news agency, with a statement blaming Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s policy of making gun distribution to Israeli citizens easier. It described the killing as a “heinous crime”.
According to the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, since 7 October, 420 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or Israeli settlers inside the occupied West Bank. Israel has occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address US Republican senators via video linkup to their weekly policy lunch on Wednesday, Reuters reports, citing a source familiar with the plan, days after the Senate’s Democratic leader gave a speech harshly criticising him as an obstacle to peace.
The plan underscored the politicisation of Washington’s Israel policy, in which the Israeli leader has been aligned with Republicans.
In his speech last week, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer, long a supporter of Israel and the highest-ranking Jewish US elected official, told the Senate that Netanyahu’s government “no longer fits the needs of Israel” and urged for new elections in the country to take place.
Republicans in turn harshly criticised Schumer. Netanyahu told CNN on Sunday that Schumer’s speech was inappropriate.
Netanyahu’s plan to address the weekly Republican policy lunch was first reported by the political news outlet Punchbowl.
Summary of the day so far …
It has just gone 2pm in Gaza and Tel Aviv. Here are the headlines …
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The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, has said it was vital for a pause in fighting to allow for the release of hostages, but that Israel has to “get Hamas leaders out of Gaza”. Earlier Cameron had said his country continues to “push Israel to allow more crossings to open and for longer, and for healthcare, water and sanitation to be restored.”
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In its latest operational update Israel’s military has claimed to have killed “approximately 90 terrorists” and to have “questioned over 300 suspects” at the al-Shifa hospital medical complex in Gaza. It says “an additional 160 suspects have been transferred to Israeli territory for further questioning”. Israeli troops entered the hospital on Monday. It also claims to have found weapons stored at the hospital. Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office, has said that all of those killed at the al-Shifa hospital complex by Israeli forces had been wounded patients and displaced persons inside the hospital. Neither sets of claims has been independently verified.
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Mourners held funeral prayers Wednesday morning outside a hospital in central Gaza for 28 people killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on urban refugee camps. Nineteen people, including five women and nine children, were killed when a strike flattened a family home late Tuesday in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp. Another person was killed in a separate strike in the camp. A strike in the nearby Bureij camp killed eight people, including three women.
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Demonstrators in Jeruslam have gathered outside an Unrwa office calling for the UN agency that works with Paelstinian refugees to be disbanded. Israeli authorities have claimed that 12 of Unrwa’s 13,000 Gaza staff members were directly involved in the 7 October Hamas attack inside southern Israel which killed about 1,140 people. Another protest in Tel Aviv blocked a highway as friends and families of those being held hostage in Gaza called for their release.
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Trade unionists and anti-weapons campaigners have staged protests outside two factories – one in Edinburgh and one in Cheltenham – in the latest UK demonstrations calling for an end to British arms sales to Israel.
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A delegation of US and British doctors is in Washington DC to tell the Biden administration the Israeli military is systematically destroying Gaza’s health infrastructure in order to drive Palestinians out of their homes. The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it has recorded over 400 attacks on healthcare infrastructure in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 12 March 2024.
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Israel’s high court has passed an Israeli request to demolish the home of Israeli-occupied West Bank resident Khaled Abed Alfatah Almukhtasab. In October he seriously injured an Israeli police officer in a shooting in occupied East Jerusalem. It will be the first time Isreali authorities demolish the house of a Palestinian whose attack caused no fatalities.
Israel’s president Isaac Herzog has announced that he will hold a ceremony to honour three Israeli hostages that were killed by Israel’s military inside the Gaza Strip.
A statement from his office said:
In light of the extraordinary circumstances of the event, the president decided to honor the determination, fortitude and special bravery they demonstrated and to award their families a unique certificate of appreciation in the name of the state of Israel.
Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer El-Talalqa were abducted from two kibbutzim inside southern Israel on 7 October during the Hamas attack that killed about 1,140 people.
After being held hostage, they were killed in December in the Gaza City area of Shejaiya by Israeli troops who shot them after identifying them as a threat during fighting.
Reuters reports that Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office, has said that all of those killed at the al-Shifa hospital complex by Israeli forces had been wounded patients and displaced persons inside the hospital.
“The Israeli occupation army practices lying and deception in spreading its narrative as part of justifying its continuous and law-breaking crimes, which violate international law, international humanitarian law,” he said.
Israel’s military earlier said that it had killed approximately 90 fighters and had interrogated 300 suspects at the al-Shifa hospital since it entered the complex on Monday. It also claims to have found weapons stored at the hospital. [See 8.07 GMT]
Neither sets of claims has been independently verified.
Chris McGreal
A delegation of American and British doctors is in Washington DC to tell the Biden administration the Israeli military is systematically destroying Gaza’s health infrastructure in order to drive Palestinians out of their homes.
The doctors, who have recently returned from volunteering at Gaza’s besieged hospitals, are expected to meet White House officials and senior members of Congress this week to warn that pledges of increased aid to Palestinians under bombardment are largely meaningless without an immediate ceasefire to allow safe distribution of food and the revival of healthcare services.
Professor Nick Maynard, the former director for cancer services at Oxford University who worked at the al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza at the beginning of the year, accused the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of “appalling atrocities”.
“The IDF are systematically targeting healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and really dismantling the whole healthcare system,” he said.
“It’s not just about targeting the buildings, it’s about systematically destroying the infrastructure of the hospitals. Destroying the oxygen tanks at the al-Shifa hospital, deliberately destroying the CT scanners and making it much more difficult to rebuild that infrastructure. If it was just targeting Hamas militants, why are they deliberately destroying the infrastructure of these institutions?”
Read more here: US and UK doctors in Washington to warn of IDF’s ‘appalling atrocities’ in Gaza
