Middle East crisis live: US says it is ‘not looking for war with Iran’ after American troops killed in Jordan drone attack | Israel-Gaza war

Bethan McKernan

Ministers and parliamentarians in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government attended a conference on Sunday calling for the resettlement of the Gaza Strip and “voluntary migration” of the Palestinian population elsewhere.

The event in Jerusalem , called the “Victory of Israel Conference: Settlement Brings Security”, hosted speeches by well-known extremists in Netanyahu’s cabinet, including the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and was attended by 1,000 people, including 11 cabinet ministers and 15 members of the Knesset, some of them being members of the prime minister’s Likud party.

The prominent role of government figures in the far-right conference appears to violate the international court of justice ruling last week that Israel must “take all measures within its power” to avoid acts of genocide in its war in Gaza, including the “prevention and punishment of genocidal rhetoric”.

Participants, who included influential rabbis, settlement leaders and families of soldiers fighting in the Gaza Strip, were presented with maps and detailed preparations for the re-establishment of a Jewish presence in the areas inside what is considered internationally as the borders of a would-be Palestinian state.

Several participants carried guns, and outside the convention centre vendors sold T-shirts reading: “Gaza is part of the land of Israel”. One speaker was Rabbi Uzi Sharbag, a former leader of the banned far-right terrorist group Jewish Underground.

Officials from Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar have agreed on a framework for negotiations aimed at brokering a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, according to a report.

A draft is being presented to Hamas today, NBC reported, citing a source familiar with the talks.

The proposed deal would allow for the remaining American and Israeli hostages to be freed, starting with the women and children, the source said.

This would be accompanied by phased pauses in the fighting and aid deliveries to Gaza, along with the exchange of Palestinian prisoners, they said.

A statement from the Israeli prime minister’s office on Sunday said talks in Paris aimed at brokering a hostage deal were “constructive” but meaningful gaps remain. The statement said the parties would continue to hold discussions this week.

Patrick Wintour

Israel has struck an Iran-linked site south of the Syrian capital, Damascus, killing several people, two days after regional tensions rose again when three US troops were killed in a drone attack on a military outpost in Jordan.

The Israeli strikes, which also left an unspecified number injured, were not regarded as a direct response to the attack on the Tower 22 base on the Jordan-Syria border. The US has vowed to take revenge for the loss of its forces, and it is unlikely that Washington would subcontract this task to Israel.

Iranian and Syrian official media said Monday’s attacks came from the Golan Heights and were attributed to Israel. The strikes hit the area of Aqraba, on the edge of the southern Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, according to the Dama Post. There was no immediate comment from Israel.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition Syrian war monitor, said the strikes hit a farm housing members of Lebanon’s Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group and other Iran-backed factions. It said seven people were killed, including four Syrians, one of whom was the bodyguard of a member of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards. It did not give the nationalities of the others.

Israel frequently mounts strikes against Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps bases inside Syria, but the intensity of the attacks has been raised since the 7 October attack by Hamas.

It is 5pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv, 6pm in Damascus, 6.30pm in Tehran and 8pm in Islamabad. Here are the headlines …

• John Kirby has said that the White House is not seeking a war with Iran or regional escalation. He said: “What we want is a stable, secure, prosperous Middle East, and we want these attacks to stop.” The US president, Joe Biden, has blamed Iran-backed groups for the unmanned aerial drone attack on US forces which killed three service personnel in Jordan, the first deadly strike against US forces since the Israel-Hamas war broke out in October.

• A dossier drawn up by Israel claims that a school counsellor employed by the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza was involved in kidnapping an Israeli woman during atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October. Another employee of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a social worker, helped to bring the body of an Israeli soldier into Gaza and distributed ammunition, the dossier claims.

• They were among 12 UNRWA staff alleged by Israel to have taken part in the 7 October attacks or in the aftermath. As a result of the claims, a string of western countries including the US and the UK have suspended funding to the agency. Austria and Romania said on Monday they were also suspending funds to UNRWA, and the EU said it was considering future payments to the agency “in light of the very serious allegations”.

• UNRWA said on Monday that it would not be able to continue operations in Gaza and across the region beyond the end of February if funding were not resumed. An estimated 2 million people are dependent on UNWRA services. The charity ActionAid has described the withdrawal of funding for UNRWA by some donor nations as a “death sentence” for the population of Gaza.

• Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared to confirm on Monday that Israel had circulated the intelligence dossier, and described the relief agency as “perforated with Hamas”. Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, has posted to social media that he has cancelled planned meetings with UNRWA, and directly called on the head of the organisation, Philippe Lazzarini, to resign.

• The overall death toll in Gaza since 7 October has reached 26,637 Palestinians, with a further 65,387 injured in Israeli strikes, according to the Gaza health ministry. 215 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours, the ministry reported. On Friday, the international court of justice in The Hague told Israel it must “take all measures within its power” to desist from killing Palestinians in contravention of the genocide convention.

• Hani Mahmoud, writing for Al Jazeera from Rafah, has described the situation in Khan Younis as “heart-wrenching”, reporting “large-scale bombings in densely populated areas, more evacuation orders, and mass arrests” by Israeli forces. Israel’s military has issued a statement in which it claims to have killed “dozens of armed terrorists in battles in the central Gaza Strip”, and says that activities “against terrorist operatives and infrastructure are continuing in Khan Younis and Gaza City”.

• Five Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in four different incidents in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in the past 24 hours, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday. Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that 378 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October.

• Protesters, including some relatives of those being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas, have gathered again at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, with the intention of blocking humanitarian aid entering Palestinian territory. OCHA’s latest update on the Gaza-Israel conflict said aid deliveries to northern and central Gaza are increasingly being denied by Israel.

• Far-right Israeli ministers and ministers belonging to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party have attended a conference on the resettlement of Gaza, at which the national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, said Israelis needed “to find a legal way to voluntarily emigrate [Palestinians]”

• Media in Syria said an apparent Israeli airstrike on a Damascus suburb where Iran-backed fighters have a presence killed two people on Monday.

• The UK added eight designations under its Iran sanctions regime.

• Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, held talks in Islamabad with his Pakistan counterpart, Jalil Abbas Jilani. Jilani said the two countries were able to bring the “situation back to normal in the shortest possible time” after the recent exchange of airstrikes because both sides had agreed to resume dialogue to resolve all issues.

• US officials have rejected a claim by Yemen’s Houthis that they attacked US navy vessel the USS Lewis B Puller.

The overall death toll in Gaza since 7 October has reached 26,637 Palestinians, with a further 65,387 injured in Israeli strikes, according to the Gaza health ministry.

215 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours, the ministry reported.

Sally Weale

A Palestinian academic who had worked as a visiting fellow at the University of Manchester has been killed in Gaza, the university has confirmed.

Dr Wiesam Essa, of Al-Aqsa University in the Gaza Strip, worked in the geography department at Manchester between June 2019 and March 2021.

He died earlier this month when his apartment block was badly damaged by Israeli bombs, the university said. His wife and four children survived the attack and are staying with extended family in Gaza.

In early December, the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA) and the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF) secured a new academic placement for Essa and were hoping to place him the UK, the university said, but it proved impossible to get him out of Gaza.

Prior to his placement in Manchester, Essa said:

The University of Manchester and the department of geography will be an oasis for me after years of wandering in both human and academic crises within the Gaza Strip.

A statement by the University of Manchester said:

Wiesam is fondly remembered by colleagues in geography – he was a regular and cheerful presence in the department, contributing enthusiastically to the mapping, culture and geographical information science research group.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared to confirm on Monday that Israel had circulated an intelligence dossier alleging that some UNRWA staffers participated in the October 7 attack from Gaza, and described the the relief agency as “perforated with Hamas”.

Netanyahu told Britain’s TalkTV:

We discovered that there were 13 UNRWA workers who actually participated, either directly or indirectly, in the October 7 massacre.

In UNRWA schools they’ve been teaching the doctrines of extermination for Israel – the doctrines of terrorism, glorifying terrorism, lauding terrorism.

UK says it will not be providing further aid to UNRWA while claims about links to Hamas being investigated

Andrew Sparrow

The UK will not provide further aid to UNRWA while claims about links to Hamas are being investigated, the prime minister’s spokesperson has said.

Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson said this morning that the government did not think any UK aid funding had gone to Hamas.

Asked about claims that up to a dozen staff at the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which is part-funded by Britain, were involved in the Hamas massacre of Israelis on 7 October, the spokesperson said:

We have tight controls and agreements and due diligence on how the funding is used, as you would expect, but it’s right in light of these allegations that we conduct a further investigation with our allies and seek the reassurance that will be required in order to allow funding to continue.

The spokesperson said that the UK committed £16m to UNRWA after the Hamas attack, but that that money had now been disbursed. He said no further money would be allocated while the Hamas link was being investigated.

You can follow the detail over at our UK Politics blog.

Harriet Sherwood

A dossier drawn up by Israel claims that a school counsellor employed by the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza was involved in kidnapping an Israeli woman during atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October, the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood writes.

Another employee of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a social worker, helped to bring the body of an Israeli soldier into Gaza and distributed ammunition, the dossier claims, the New York Times reported on Monday.

They were among 12 UNRWA staff alleged by Israel to have taken part in the 7 October attacks or in the aftermath. As a result of the claims, a string of western countries including the US and the UK have suspended funding to the agency, which provides aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.

Austria and Romania said on Monday they were also suspending funds to UNRWA, and the EU said it was considering future payments to the agency “in light of the very serious allegations”.

The full story is here:

John Kirby, in an interview on NBC television in the US, has said that the White House is not seeking a war with Iran or regional escalation.

The national security council spokesperson said:

We are not looking for a war with Iran. We are not looking to escalate the conflict in the region. Obviously, these attacks keep coming. We’ll keep looking at the options. I can’t speak for the Supreme Leader or what he wants or he doesn’t want. I can tell you what we want. What we want is a stable, secure, prosperous Middle East, and we want these attacks to stop.

On the accusations made by Israel against 12 staff at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which has led to the US pulling funding for the agency, Kirby said

It’s important to remember that UNRWA does important work across the region, certainly in Gaza. They have helped save thousands of lives, and we shouldn’t impugn the good work of a whole agency because of the terrible, just terrible allegations lobbied against just a small number of their employees. So I think we have decision points that we’re going to have to make going forward here, but I don’t want to get ahead of the investigation and what it’s going to find.

Chris Michael

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday declined to join critics who accuse Israel of genocide in its actions in Gaza, but said American society should not “toss someone out of our public discourse” for doing so.

Following the international court of justice’s order to Israel to work to prevent genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza, the Democratic representative from New York argued on Meet the Press that “large amounts of Americans” think “genocide” is the right term for what is happening in Gaza.

“The fact that [the ICJ] said there’s a responsibility to prevent it, the fact that this word is even in play, the fact that this word is even in our discourse, I think demonstrates the mass inhumanity that Gazans are facing,” she said.

Read more here: AOC says no one should be ‘tossed out of public discourse’ for accusing Israel of genocide