Palestinian president ‘expects Israeli assault on Rafah to happen in the next days’
Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, said at a conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh that only the US could stop Israel attacking Rafah, adding he expected an assault on the city in the next days, Reuters reported.
Israel has signalled it plans to push ahead with a ground operation in southern Rafah, the only part of Gaza where it has not sent in troops. More than half of the Palestinian territory’s population of 2.3 million has sought shelter in Rafah after fleeing Israeli bombardment from elsewhere.
The long-threatened plan to attack the city has drawn intense opposition from Israel’s allies, including the US, which said it would cause thousands of civilian casualties and further disrupt aid deliveries.
The US president, Joe Biden, has said Israel should not go into Rafah without credible plans to protect civilians, and foreign ministers from the G7 countries have said they opposed a full-scale military operation on the grounds it would be catastrophic for people sheltering there.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says four brigades of Hamas fighters are hiding there and must be tackled. His government has vowed to “destroy” the group, after the 7 October cross border attacks when militants killed about 1,200 people inside Israel and took 250 hostage.
Key events
A senior Qatari official has urged both Israel and Hamas to show “more commitment and more seriousness” in ceasefire negotiations in interviews with Israeli media.
The interviews with the newspaper Haaretz and the Israeli public broadcaster Kan were published and aired on Saturday evening.
In the interviews, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said each side has made its decisions based on political interests and not with the good of civilians in mind.
“We were hoping to see more commitment and more seriousness on both sides,” he told Haaretz.
He did not reveal details of the current state of the talks, other than to say they have “effectively stopped”, with “both sides entrenched in their positions”.
“If there is a renewed sense of commitment on both sides, I’m sure we can reach a deal,” he said.
The Israeli journalists conducted the interviews in Qatar, which hosts Hamas headquarters in Doha and has been a key intermediary throughout the war.
Israel and Hamas have been unable to agree on the conditions and length of a truce and the identities and numbers of Israeli hostages to be released in exchange for freeing Palestinians held in Israel jails.
France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, has given some quotes after a visit to the UN peace keeping force in Naqoura, southern Lebanon.
Al Jazeera has quoted him as saying:
If I look at the situation today if there was not a war in Gaza, we could be talking about a war in southern Lebanon given the number of strikes and the impact on the area.
I will pass messages and make proposals to the authorities here to stabilise this zone and avoid a war.
Earlier this year, Séjourné delivered an initiative that proposed Hezbollah’s elite unit pull back 10 km (6 miles) from the Israeli border, while Israel would halt strikes in southern Lebanon.
In its first ever direct attack on Israel, Iran sent a barrage of more than 300 missiles and drones on 13 April in what it said was retaliation for Israel’s suspected deadly strike on its embassy compound in Damascus on 1 April.
Israel and anti-Israeli forces including Hezbollah – a Lebanese Shia Muslim militant group – have frequently exchanged fire over the UN-drawn blue line that divides Israel and Lebanon since 7 October.
Britain’s defence ministry is considering sending troops into Gaza to escort trucks of aid being driven off a giant floating pier built by the US military, a UK defence source has said.
The pier is due to be completed next month in the eastern Mediterranean, and then it will be pushed towards the Gaza shore. But the US president, Joe Biden, has pledged that American forces managing the project will not set foot on land there.
That means someone else must be found to take responsibility for one of the most challenging parts of a politically contentious aid delivery.
There is “consideration” of a UK role inside the British defence ministry, a source said, although the challenges mean it seems unlikely. “It’s not a done deal, and the mood music is probably not.”
You can read the full story by my colleagues, Emma Graham-Harrison and Dan Sabbagh, here:
Israel’s war in Gaza, along with conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere, put “a lot of pressure” on the economic “mood”, Saudi Arabia’s finance minister, Mohammed al-Jadaan, said at one of the first panel discussions of the two-day World Economic Forum (WEF) special meeting in Riyadh.
“I think cool-headed countries and leaders and people need to prevail, and you need to make sure that you actually de-escalate,” Jadaan said.
“The region needs stability.”
The International Monetary Fund has warned that increasing regional instability caused by the war could cause damage to the economies in the Middle East and Africa for a long time to come.
It projected expected growth in the Middle East, north Africa and Pakistan to be a “lacklustre” 2.6% in 2024, down from 3.3% in its previous regional economic assessment forecast.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister chairs meeting with Arab countries to discuss war in Gaza – report
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, has chaired a meeting in Riyadh with representatives from six Arab countries to discuss Israel’s war in Gaza, the Saudi Press Agency has reported.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, Palestinian Authority official Hussein Al-sheikh, senior diplomatic adviser to the UAE’s president, Anwar Gargash, and Qatar’s minister of state at the foreign ministry, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, were among those said to be in attendance.
They reiterated their calls to see Israel’s military offensive in Gaza end and voiced their opposition to Israel’s planned assault on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, the only corner of the strip that has not seen fierce ground fighting and where more than half of the Palestinian territory’s population of 2.3 million has sought shelter.
As mentioned in our opening summary, an international summit will take place on Sunday in Saudi Arabia and will have a strong focus on the war, including the humanitarian situation.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will be among leaders attending the World Economic Forum special meeting, organisers said.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Middle East crisis.
Israel’s war on Gaza and broader Middle East tensions are expected to get top billing at a Saudi-hosted special meeting of the World Economic Forum that begins on Sunday.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, Palestinian leaders and high-ranking officials from other countries trying to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas are on the guest list for the summit in Riyadh, capital of the world’s biggest crude oil exporter.
Hamas said on Saturday that it was studying the latest Israeli counterproposal regarding a potential ceasefire in Gaza, a day after media reports said a delegation from Egypt, a key mediator in the talks, arrived in Israel in a bid to jump-start stalled negotiations.
Egypt, Qatar and the US have been unsuccessfully trying to seal a new truce deal in Gaza ever since a one-week halt to the fighting in November, when 80 Israeli hostages were exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
There has been “noticeable progress in bringing the views of the Egyptian and Israeli delegations closer”, said al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence services.
But Israel and Hamas have been unable to agree on the conditions and length of a truce and the identities and numbers of Israeli hostages to be released in exchange for freeing Palestinians held in Israel jails.
In other developments:
-
At least 34,388 Palestinians have been killed and 77,437 others injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Saturday. An estimated 32 people have been killed and 69 others injured over the past 24 hours, the ministry said.
-
Israel’s foreign minister said on Saturday that a planned incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah could be suspended should a deal emerge to secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Israel Katz told local Channel 12 television: “If there will be a deal, we will suspend the operation.”
-
Hamas’s armed wing released video on Saturday of two men held hostage in Gaza who are seen alive and urging Israeli authorities to strike a deal for the release of all the remaining captives. Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum identified the two as Keith Siegel and Omri Miran who were abducted by militants during the Hamas attack on southern Israel on 7 October. Siegel also has US citizenship.
-
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement said on Saturday it had targeted northern Israel with drones and guided missiles after cross-border Israeli strikes killed three people, including two of its members. A statement from the group said it “launched a complex attack using explosive drones and guided missiles on the headquarters of the Al Manara military command and a gathering of forces from the 51st Battalion of the Golani Brigade”.
-
France’s foreign minister will push proposals to prevent further escalation and a potential war between Israel and Hezbollah during a visit to Lebanon on Sunday. Earlier this year, Stéphane Séjourné delivered an initiative that proposed Hezbollah’s elite unit pull back 10 km (6 miles) from the Israeli border, while Israel would halt strikes in southern Lebanon.
-
Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian men at a military post near the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the army and Palestinian officials reported. The incident occurred when several militants arrived in a vehicle and fired at soldiers stationed at the Salem military post at the entrance to Jenin, the army said in a statement. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli forces withheld their bodies after denying medics access to them, adding two other men had been hospitalised after being injured.
-
Some senior US officials have advised secretary of state Antony Blinken that they do not find “credible or reliable” Israel’s assurances that it is using US-supplied weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law, according to an internal state department memo reviewed by Reuters. Blinken must report to Congress by 8 May whether he finds credible Israel’s assurances that its use of US weapons does not violate US or international law.