Israel-Palestine live: Israel bombs Unrwa building in Gaza

Israeli air strikes on southern Gaza’s southern city of Rafah have killed at least 48 Palestinians and wounded dozens, the spokesman for the Health Ministry in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qudra told the Reuters news agency on Monday. 

Al Jazeera Arabic is reporting that an Israeli bomb has killed at least 15 people in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Monday.

Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that it's  “deeply concerned” about “reports of an Israeli military operation in Rafah” in a statement on Monday.

“As the humanitarian situation on the ground deteriorates and the number of civilian casualties, including a large number of children, women, and elderly people, continues to rise, it is crucial to improve the humanitarian situation as soon as possible and to secure an environment in which humanitarian assistance activities can be carried out to achieve this,” the statement said.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday called for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus added on the sidelines of the World Governments Summits 2024 in Dubai that help provided so far to Gaza in terms of medical supplies is "a drop in the ocean of need which continues to grow every day."

Jordan’s King Abdullah II and US President Joe Biden are expected to discuss the situation in Gaza when they meet in Washington on Monday.

The two leaders are expected to discuss the ongoing effort to free captives held in Gaza and the growing concern over a possible full Israeli military operation in the port city of Rafah.

It is the first meeting between the allies since three American troops were killed last month in a drone strike against a US base in Jordan.

The meeting with King Abdullah II comes as Biden and his aides are working to broker another pause in Israel's war against Hamas in order to send humanitarian aid and supplies into the region and get hostages out.

Hamas has condemned the latest Israeli air strikes on Rafah in southern Gaza, saying they represent an "expansion of the scope of the massacres it is committing against our people."

“The Nazi occupation army’s attack on the city of Rafah tonight… which have claimed the lives of more than a hundred martyrs so far, is considered a continuation of the genocidal war and the attempts at forced displacement it is waging against our Palestinian people,” the group said in a press release on Monday.

The Israeli military has announced that two soldiers were killed in combat on Sunday.

The two men, both 21 years old and members of the Magellan unit, were killed during fighting in southern Gaza. No injuries were reported.

Good morning Middle East Eye readers, 

Here are the latest developments from Israel's war on Gaza, which enters its 129th day today: 

• At least 60 people were killed as Israeli planes and ships bombarded Rafah overnight, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported
• The Israeli army says it rescued two captives from a house in Rafah’s Shaboura neighbourhood at about 1am local time 
• The director of the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah, Suhaib al-Hams, has said that “the hospital is full of wounded people in a very dangerous situation”, Wafa reports
• On Sunday evening, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank
• Egypt warned of "dire consequences" of a potential Israeli military assault on the southern Gazan city of Rafah near its border
• Unrwa is facing growing administrative hurdles from Israel, with a shipment amounting to a month's supply of food blocked in port, the agency's chief said

It is now just after 01:30 in Gaza and Middle East Eye’s live coverage of Israel's relentless assault on the besieged enclave will shortly be closing for the evening.

Here are the day's key developments:

Israeli forces have killed at least 112 Palestinians and wounded 173 more over the past 24 hours in 14 "massacres", according to the Palestinian health ministry. This brings the Palestinian death toll in four months to more than 28,176, with over 67,784 wounded and 7,000 missing, who are believed to be dead and buried under rubble. Over 70 percent of the victims are children and women, according to health officials.

On Sunday, US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel should not proceed with a military operation in Rafah without a plan to ensure the safety of the roughly one million people sheltering there. The hostage release deal was another subject discussed during the 45-minute telephone call, according to White House officials.

Hamas's armed wing, al-Qassam Brigades, said Israeli air strikes across Gaza in the past 96 hours had killed two Israeli captives and seriously wounded eight others. In a communique published on its Telegram page, al-Qassam said the conditions of those wounded are worsening as it struggled to treat them amid continued Israeli attacks on the health system in Gaza. 

Netanyahu on Sunday suggested that "enough" of the remaining people, believed to be more than 100, held by Hamas in Gaza were alive to justify its continued aggression against the Gaza Strip.

But Hamas warned that a ground offensive on Rafah city would scupper any possibility of hostage exchange negotiations. Speaking to the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV channel, one senior Hamas leader said an Israeli incursion on Rafah would "blow up" hostage exchange negotiations. 

The war has devastated the economies of the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, the International Monetary Fund's chief said on Sunday, adding that only "durable peace" would improve the outlook. "The Palestinian economy's dire outlook is worsening as the conflict persists," managing director Kristalina Georgieva told the World Governments Summit in Dubai.

Cairo has threatened to suspend a key peace treaty with Israel if it invades Rafah city on the border with Egypt in Gaza. Two Egyptian officials and a western diplomat told the Associated Press that Egypt would suspend the historic Camp David Accords if Israel followed through with Netanyahu's plan to take over Rafah city.

Other key developments included:

• The Palestine Red Crescent said three patients had died in Gaza after the Israelis failed to deliver oxygen to Palestinian health facilities for over a week.
• An Israeli sniper shot dead a Palestinian man in the courtyard of the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis, according to the Wafa news agency.
• The Gaza Municipality has warned of an environmental catastrophe and said more than 700 litres of wastewater had leaked onto the streets of Gaza City.

Negotiators working on a phased framework deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in Gaza have made "real progress" over the last few weeks, a senior Biden administration official said on Sunday, according to Reuters.

The hostage release deal was the main focus of a 45-minute telephone call between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, although there were still some "significant" gaps to close, the official said, adding, "It's pretty much there".

Biden in the call stressed that the United States did not support Israeli military operations in Rafah under the current circumstances, with some 1.3 million people sheltering there "with nowhere to go".

US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday that Israel should not proceed with a military operation in Rafah without a plan to ensure the safety of the roughly one million people sheltering there, the White House said.

Biden's call with Netanyahu came days after the US leader told reporters that Israel's response in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza was "over the top".

The call also focused on ongoing efforts to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas in its 7 October attack on Israel, the White House said.

Aid agencies have said that an assault on Rafah would be catastrophic.

Jordan's King Abdullah participated in an airdrop of humanitarian aid to Gaza, state-owned Al Mamlaka broadcaster said on Sunday.

A video showed the monarch in military gear on board a plane in the latest mission by the Jordanian air force to drop urgent medical supplies to field hospitals it runs in the war-torn enclave. According to official media, the latest airdrop was on 6 February.

The kingdom, which has been among Arab neighbours pushing Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, is the only country that airdrops aid to the enclave, channelling it through these two medical facilities.

It has conducted 11 airdrops, with at least two conducted with the French and Dutch airforces, to deliver medical aid.

The king, who has been vocal in calling for an end to Israel's campaign, left on Thursday on a tour of major western capitals and is due to meet US President Joe Biden in Washington on 12 February to lobby for an immediate ceasefire.

Jordan, which shares a border with the West Bank, fears that the Gaza conflict could spread, with wider violence by armed settlers encouraged by the army triggering a large-scale Palestinian exodus to the other side of the Jordan River.

Egypt warned on Sunday of "dire consequences" of a potential Israeli military assault on the south Gaza city of Rafah near its border.

"Egypt called for the necessity of uniting all international and regional efforts to prevent the targeting of the Palestinian city of Rafah," its foreign ministry added in a statement.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made a series of new appointments to the PA's security forces, according to the Wafa news agency.

Abbas on Sunday appointed General Abed Suleiman Abu Mahmid (also known as Abdel Qader Tamari) and Lieutenant-Colonel Iyad al-Aqra.

These are part of a series of proposed changes announced by PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh last month and are also made by Abbas as part of reforms requested by the US during talks over the war in Gaza.