Middle East crisis live: consensus among US and Arab allies on need for immediate, sustained Gaza ceasefire, says Blinken | Israel-Gaza war

Joanna Walters

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said that negotiating teams are working “every single day” on a deal to get a ceasefire in Gaza in conjunction with a deal to release the remaining hostages taken from Israel into Gaza by Hamas.

He added that there are still “real challenges” to a deal and he can’t put a timeline on it, Reuters reports.

Joe Biden had previously forecast that there would be a deal for a temporary ceasefire before the start of Ramadan on 10 March, which obviously did not happen.

Blinken, in Cairo for talks, once again urged Israel to “do more” to get more aid into Gaza, while international figures at the United Nations have already accused Israel of deliberately starving the Palestinians in the besieged territory.

Consensus among US and Arab allies on need for immediate, sustained ceasefire in Gaza – Blinken

Joanna Walters

US secretary of state Antony Blinken spoke moments ago in the Middle East, where he said that he believes a ceasefire deal for Gaza is still possible.

Blinken has flown once again to Cairo for a new round of talks, which have taken on new urgency in the face of famine unfolding in Gaza as it remains under Israeli blockade and bombardment. He said there is consensus among Arab allies and the US on the need for an immediate and sustained ceasefire.

The secretary said that the US is continuing to push for an agreement to be reached in Doha, the capital of Qatar. The Qataris have been acting as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist militancy that controls Gaza and led the attack on southern Israel on 7 October last year, killing more than 1,200 people and taking about 240 people hostage, many of whom are still being held by Hamas and connected groups in the Palestinian territory.

Reuters reports that Blinken said about a ceasefire deal:

There’s still difficult work to get there, but I continue to believe it’s possible.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said he agreed with Blinken on planning “concrete steps” to increase aid to Gaza and continuing coordination.

Julian Borger

Washington’s draft UN security council resolution on Gaza marks a shift in the US position, but it is a nuanced shift, retaining the linkage between a ceasefire and hostage release while loosening that linkage and emphasising that an immediate end to hostilities is the priority.

The primary focus for now is the hostage negotiations underway in Qatar which are moving into high gear again, with CIA and Mossad chiefs, William Burns and David Barnea expected to fly into Doha on Friday.

The US draft resolution is designed to provide a sense of urgency to those talks. It also represents an attempt by the Biden administration to keep pressure on Hamas while seeking to regain some international credibility and mend ties with allies after three vetoes of UN ceasefire resolutions.

The latest veto was cast on 20 February, on an Algerian ceasefire resolution. At the time the US envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, insisted that an unconditional ceasefire could derail the talks on a hostage deal, which Washington portrayed as the best way to a sustainable truce. The US mission at the UN circulated an alternative text which the security council “underscores its support for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza as soon as practicable, based on the formula of all hostages being released”.

A month has passed since then, however. There has been no hostage deal and Gaza has slipped much further towards absolute catastrophe, with a UN panel of experts warning that a famine is imminent. The US is struggling to avoid the accusation of complicity in that disaster, and February’s version of the text now looks all the more complacent.

The new version of the draft resolution circulated on Thursday morning represents stronger language.

Read the full piece here.

US House speaker to invite Netanyahu to address Congress

Adam Gabbatt

Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, said on Thursday that he plans to invite Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to speak before Congress.

The comments come a week after Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, called for elections in Israel which could oust Netanyahu, claiming the prime minister has “has lost his way”.

Republican support for Netanyahu has remained staunch, despite the death toll in Gaza rising to more than 30,000 in the face of Israel’s continued military action.

“I would love to have him come in and address a joint session of Congress,” Johnson said on Thursday morning, in an interview with CNBC. “We’ll certainly extend that invitation.”

Reuters is carrying some quotes from the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. He said “The future of an entire generation is in serious peril.”

Adding that children are dying from the effects of malnutrition and disease, and from a lack of adequate water and sanitation, the WHO director-general said:

Recent efforts to deliver food by air and sea are welcome, but only the expansion of land crossings will enable large scale deliveries to prevent famine. Once again, we ask Israel to open more crossings and accelerate the entry and delivery of water, food, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid into and within Gaza.

He said that WHO requests to deliver supplies to the enclave were often blocked or refused.

Israel, which insists on inspecting all aid being delivered into Gaza, has repeatedly claimed there is no limit to what would be admitted. Nevertheless, a coalition of aid groups has warned that famine is imminent in northern Gaza with people suffering “catastrophic levels of hunger”, and on Monday Oxfam said Israeli authorities were preventing “a warehouse full of international aid” from reaching the Gaza Strip.

In his statement, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said:

WHO and our partners have been conducting high-risk missions to deliver medicines, fuel and food for health workers and their patients, but our requests to deliver supplies are often blocked or refused.

Damaged roads and continuous fighting, including in and close to hospitals, mean deliveries are few and slow. A planned mission to al-Shifa today had to be cancelled due to lack of security.

Once again, we ask Israel to open more crossings and accelerate the entry and delivery of water, food, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid into and within Gaza.

Once again, we call for health care to be protected, and not militarized. Once again, we call for the release of hostages. And once again, we call for an immediate ceasefire.

It has gone 5.20pm in Gaza, Tel Aviv and Beirut, and 6.20pm in Sana’a. Here is a recap of the latest developments:

• The US has drafted a new UN security council resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, amid mounting pressure on Israel to halt its military campaign and allow the delivery of substantial amounts of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory. Details of the resolution, which calls for “an immediate ceasefire tied to the release of hostages” in Gaza, were disclosed by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, as he toured the Middle East.

• EU leaders gathered in Brussels on Thursday for a two-day meeting during which they discussed the war in Gaza amid deep concern about Israeli plans to launch a ground offensive in the city of Rafah. Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs said the lack of food and medicines in Gaza was “a failure of humanity” and Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, called for “an immediate pause in the fighting”.

• Officials from 36 countries and UN agencies gathered in Cyprus on Thursday to discuss how to expedite aid to Palestinians in Gaza via a sea route launched last week. It was attended by Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, as well as Curtis Ried, chief of staff of the US national security council.

• A second ship, The Jennifer, capable of transporting up to 600 tons, will ply the newly inaugurated sea corridor connecting Cyprus with Gaza as soon as weather conditions allow. “It will go either at the end of this week or the beginning of next due to weather conditions,” Cyprus’s foreign ministry spokesperson Theodoros Gotsis told the Guardian of the second aid mission. “Currently there are about 240 tons [of aid] on board but loading will continue,” he said.

• Blinken on Thursday discussed with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi the negotiations to secure an immediate ceasefire for at least six weeks and the release of all hostages kidnapped by Hamas, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. Blinken was in Egypt after visiting Saudi Arabia a day earlier. He also discussed with Sisi the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel.

• Satellite images analysed by the UN’s Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) showed that 35% of the Gaza Strip’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Khan Younis City had been hit “particularly hard”, it said, with 6,663 newly destroyed structures.

• Half the population of the Gaza Strip is at imminent risk of famine as food shortages approach catastrophic levels for more than a million people, the World Bank has warned. Almost six months after the war between Israel and Hamas began, the Washington-based Bank said urgent action was needed to prevent widespread deaths from starvation within the next two months.

• The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had killed more than 50 Palestinian gunmen over the past day in fighting around the Gaza Strip’s al-Shifa hospital, taking the number of fighters killed around the complex to 140 since it launched a raid on the complex on Monday. The military said it was continuing with its “precise operational activity in the Shifa hospital”.

• Hamas condemned Israeli “crimes” at al-Shifa hospital. It also denied that the hospital harboured militants and said those killed by the military were injured patients and displaced people. The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said at least 70 people had been killed in Gaza overnight.

• The occupied West Bank faced a “particularly violent” night on Wednesday into Thursday morning, said Al Jazeera journalist Laura Khan reporting from the area. She said the Israeli army had raided Tulkarem at dawn, an Israeli drone strike in Jenin had killed four men and in the south of Hebron soldiers had shot a man in the leg after he “tried to carry out a stabbing attack”. Khan also said “In Nablus, a witness account described how one man had his phone confiscated by an Israeli soldier and was brutally beaten for an hour, mostly in his face.” The Guardian was been unable to verify these incidents.

• The death toll rose to four on Thursday in an Israeli operation in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said. Two of the four Palestinians were killed by an airstrike and two by live bullets, the PRCS said.

• The military told AFP on Thursday that it had been carrying out an operation in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nur Shams, which adjoins the town of Tulkarem in the northern West Bank. “During the operation, an aircraft struck two terrorists who posed an immediate threat to the forces,” the Israeli army said. In total, nine Palestinians were killed in less than 24 hours in the West Bank, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

• 25 Palestinians, including two children, were detained overnight by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank, Wafa said, citing the Palestinian prisoner society.

• Arab ministers held talks with a Palestinian official in Cairo on Thursday to discuss efforts to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and were due to meet Blinken, who is seeking to secure a ceasefire of at least six weeks.

• 65 Palestinians were killed 92 were injured in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, according to the latest figures from the Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas. According to the statement, at least 31,988 Palestinians have been killed and 74,188 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

• Israel will take control of Rafah even if it causes a rift with the US, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday, describing the city packed with refugees as a final Hamas bastion harbouring a quarter of the group’s fighters. Strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer made the comments on the Call Me Back with Dan Senor podcast.

• A merchant vessel reported shots from a skiff approximately 109 nautical miles south of Yemen’s Nishtun, British security firm Ambrey said on Thursday. No damage or injuries were reported.

• A burning object was thrown at the Israeli embassy in The Hague on Thursday morning. Police in the Netherlands said they had arrested a suspect and that nobody was injured.

My colleague Lisa O’Carroll is in Brussels and reporting from the EU leaders summit. She has been providign updates for the European live blog on comments made by Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs. She writes:

The lack of food and medicines in Gaza is “a failure of humanity” Josep Borrell has said on arrival to the EU leaders summit.

“What is happening today in Gaza is the failure of humanity, it is not a humanitarian crisis, it is the failure of humanity, it is not an earthquake, it is not a flood, it is bombing.”

“The only way you can stop the humanitarian crisis, human crisis is Israel respecting more civilians and allowing more support into Gaza.”

You can read more on Borell’s comments here and here.