Middle East crisis live: US paused shipment of bombs to Israel; CIA director set to meet Netanyahu | Israel-Gaza war

CIA Director William Burns is to hold talks with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israeli officials, a source familiar with his travel told the Reuters news agency.

Burns is heading to Israel from Cairo, where ceasefire negotiations have been taking place.

All five delegations participating in the talks on Tuesday – Hamas, Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar – have reacted positively to the resumption of negotiations according to Reuters.

Meetings are expected to continue on Wednesday morning, two Egyptian sources said.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said Hamas presented a revised proposal, and the new text suggests the remaining gaps can “absolutely be closed.” Speaking on Tuesday, he declined to specify what those were.

“Everybody is coming to the table,” Kirby said.

Israel on Monday declared that a three-phase proposal approved by Hamas was unacceptable because terms had been softened.

US President Joe Biden’s administration paused a shipment of weapons to Israel last week in opposition to apparent moves by the Israelis to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a senior administration official has told Reuters and two other news agencies.

Biden has been trying to head off a full-scale assault by the Israelis against Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinian have sought refuge from combat elsewhere in Gaza.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that as Israeli leaders seemed to approach a decision on a Rafah incursion, “we began to carefully review proposed transfers of particular weapons to Israel that might be used in Rafah” beginning in April.

“As a result of that review, we have paused one shipment of weapons last week. It consists of 1,800 2,000lb bombs and 1,700 500lb bombs,” the official said, according to Reuters. The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse reported similar comments from a senior US official.

“We are especially focused on the end-use of the 2,000lb bombs and the impact they could have in dense urban settings as we have seen in other parts of Gaza. We have not made a final determination on how to proceed with this shipment,” the official said.

Four sources told Reuters that the shipments, which have been delayed for at least two weeks, involved Boeing-made joint direct attack munitions, which convert dumb bombs into precision-guided ones, as well as small diameter bombs.

It’s 7:12am in Gaza and Tel Aviv and 12:12pm in Washington, welcome to our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis. I’m Reged Ahmad and I’ll be with you for the next while.

The US paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that the country was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a senior administration official told Reuters on Tuesday.

The shipment was supposed to consist of 1,800 900-kilogram bombs and 1,700 225-kilogram bombs, according to the official, who spoke to several news agencies on the condition of anonymity.

The focus of US concern was how the bombs could be used in a dense urban setting. More than 1 million civilians are sheltering in Rafah after evacuating other parts of Gaza.

The official said the decision to pause the shipment was made last week and no final decision had been made yet on whether to proceed with the shipment at a later date.

Meanwhile, CIA Director William Burns is expected to travel from Cairo to Israel later on Wednesday to meet Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli officials, a source familiar with his travel told Reuters.

More on that in a moment but first, here’s a summary of the latest developments:

• The United States believes the remaining differences between Israel and Hamas can be bridged in negotiations over the latest ceasefire proposal, as talks resume in Cairo on Wednesday. All five delegations participating in ceasefire talks on Tuesday – Hamas, Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar – reacted positively to the resumption of negotiations, and meetings were expected to continue on Wednesday morning, two Egyptian sources told the Reuters news agency.

• Israel has launched a major military offensive against Hamas forces in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, seizing control of a key border crossing and cutting off most aid into the territory a day before indirect talks on a ceasefire deal are due to restart. “This is the beginning of our mission to take out the last four Hamas brigades in Rafah. You should be in no doubt about that whatsoever,” a government spokesperson said.

• White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby said the operation along the Gaza-Egypt border in eastern Rafah was not a full-on Israeli invasion of the city that President Joe Biden has repeatedly warned against on humanitarian grounds, reports Associated Press. Kirby said Israel described it as “an operation of limited scale and duration” aimed at cutting off Hamas arms smuggling.

• An Israeli military offensive on the city of Rafah would break international humanitarian law and not lead to the eradication of Hamas, Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s deputy foreign minister, said on Tuesday, but he held back from spelling out any planned British consequences if a full-scale invasion goes ahead.

• Aid agencies in Gaza have less than a day’s fuel for trucks and tankers that deliver vital food, medicine, water and diesel to millions across the territory, threatening an almost complete shutdown of operations including bakeries and hospitals, officials have warned.

• All main entry points to the south of Gaza are closed and there has been widespread looting of existing stocks in Rafah after aid agencies were forced to leave warehouses unguarded after warnings to evacuate the area from Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ahead of the military offensive launched on the city on Tuesday morning.

• Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to ensure that the Kerem Shalom crossing is open for humanitarian assistance, during a Monday call with Joe Biden, the White House reported.

• Scott Anderson, the senior deputy director of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa), said that the closing of Kerem Shalom and other aid passages threatens the critical fuel supply in Gaza. “Everything we do in Gaza is run by diesel. We currently have one day of diesel on hand. If we don’t have a resume by tomorrow, everything will stop,” he said to CNN.

• Joe Biden reportedly demanded that Israel immediately reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing, one of the key routes for bringing aid into Gaza, during a call with Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Axios reported, citing a senior US official.

• The US military has completed construction of its Gaza aid pier, but weather conditions mean it is unsafe to move the two-part facility into place, the Pentagon said Tuesday. The pier will cost at least $320m and is aimed at boosting aid deliveries. “As of today, the construction of the two portions of the JLOTS – the floating pier and the Trident pier – are complete and awaiting final movement offshore,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists, using an acronym for Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, the official name for the pier capability. US Central Command (Centcom) “stands by to move the pier into position in the near future,” she added. Once the weather clears, the pier will be anchored to the Gaza shore by Israeli soldiers, keeping US troops off the ground.

• During a 30-minute phone call, Biden and Netanyahu also spoke about ongoing hostage negotiations and Israel’s upcoming ground invasion of Rafah, Axios reported.

• Thousands of people are evacuating from Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, hours after the Israeli military told residents and displaced people in eastern neighbourhoods to leave in advance of a long-threatened attack on the city and its environs. Witnesses described frightened families leaving the city on foot, riding donkeys or packed with their belongings into overloaded trucks on Monday. Overnight Israeli airstrikes had reinforced “panic and fear”, prompting more to heed the instructions to move.

• Student protests demanding that universities sever ties with Israel over the Gaza war have spread across Europe, sparking clashes and arrests as new demonstrations broke out in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria.

• Joe Biden warned against a “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America” at a Holocaust event Tuesday, as student protests against Israel’s military strikes on Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis continued to roil campuses across the US.