Israel-Gaza war live: Joe Biden presses Benjamin Netanyahu on ‘urgency’ of sealing ceasefire | Israel-Gaza war

US President Joe Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “made clear that we must bring the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure,” the president wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Biden said: “Today I spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding U.S. efforts to support Israel’s defense against threats from Iran and its proxy terrorist groups.

“I again made clear that we must bring the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure and discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacles.”

It’s xx in Gaza and Tel Aviv, welcome to our latest live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis. I’m xxx and I’ll be with you for the next while.

US President Joe Biden has pressed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the urgency of sealing a deal for a truce in Gaza and the release of hostages, the White House said.

The call between the leaders on Wednesday, in which vice-president Kamala Harris also took part, came after Palestinian health officials reported at least 50 Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes over a 24-hour period, reports Reuters.

Biden stressed to Netanyahu “the urgency of bringing the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure and discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacles,” a White House statement said.

US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators are expected to meet in Cairo this weekend, but have for months struggled to bridge differences between Israel and Hamas.

First, here’s a summary of the latest developments:

• Hezbollah has launched more than 50 rockets and a swarm of drones towards northern Israel, hitting a number of homes in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and wounding one person. The strikes on Wednesday by the Lebanese militant group came the day after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met mediators from Egypt and Qatar, even as Hamas and Israel poured cold water on any prospect of any imminent pause in the fighting in Gaza.

• In response, the IDF has posted on X that it has attacked Hezbollah targets in “more than 10 different areas in southern Lebanon”.

• At least 11 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a residential building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya in the early hours of Thursday, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said, according to Reuters.

• Thousands of people facing Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have been forced to abandon plans to comply with Israeli evacuation orders telling them to move to a designated “safe humanitarian zone” because there is no space for them there. At the weekend the Israeli military told residents of multiple neighbourhoods in and around the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah to leave their homes before planned attacks and go to the narrow strip of coast around the small town of al-Mawasi that was designated earlier in the war to receive displaced people.

• Israel has not agreed to withdraw its troops from the so-called Philadelphi corridor along the border between Egypt and Gaza, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday, denying an Israeli television report. “Israel will insist on the achievement of all of its objectives for the war, as they have been defined by the Security Cabinet, including that Gaza never again constitutes a security threat to Israel. This requires securing the southern border,” Netahyahu’s office said in a statement.

• The outgoing head of Israeli military intelligence, Maj Gen Aharon Haliva, has asked for “forgiveness” from Israelis for failing to protect them from Hamas’s 7 October attack. According to a video released by the Israeli military, Haliva – the first high-ranking official to make a public appeal for forgiveness – said at a ceremony marking his departure that “we did not uphold the sanctity of our oaths”, reports Agence France-Presse.

• The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and accompanying destroyers have arrived in the Middle East, the US military said Wednesday, after the country’s defense secretary ordered the strike group to accelerate its speed. The carrier’s arrival brings the number in the region to two – at least temporarily, as the Lincoln is to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Fears of a major escalation have mounted since Hezbollah and Iran vowed to respond to twin killings blamed on Israel late last month, reports Agence France-Presse.

• The parents of a 23-year-old American taken hostage by Hamas during the 7 October attack on Israel gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention, pleading for the release of the dozens of people who continue to be held captive in Gaza. “This is a political convention. But needing our only son – and all of the cherished hostages – home is not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue,” said Jon Polin, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin lost part of his left arm and was kidnapped from Israel by militants who attacked the music festival he was attending. Polin and his wife, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, were greeted with an extended ovation and chants of “bring him home” by the thousands of Democratic delegates in Chicago.