Live Blog Update| Israel's genocide in Gaza
This is an entry from: Live: Israel kills more than 430 Palestinians on Tuesday

Evening recap

6 March 2025 23:53 GMT

Our liveblog will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are the day's key developments:

- An open letter published by a senior Hamas official on Thursday is asking US President Donald Trump to meet with freed Palestinian prisoners from Israeli detention. Trump met with several former Israeli captives at the White House on Wednesday, and reportedly heard stories so enraging about their experience, that he then took to social media and threatened to kill all residents of Gaza.

- The new US State Department spokesperson on Thursday effectively admitted that President Donald Trump's remarks last month about turning Gaza into a US-run beach resort were a negotiating tactic aimed at generating "new ideas".

- Hamas has no future in Gaza, US President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told reporters on Thursday. "Hamas has an opportunity to act reasonably, to do what's right, and then to walk out," Witkoff said. "They're not going to be a part of a government there. Everybody understands that."

- The spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades - Hamas's military wing - said on Thursday that should Israel return to war in Gaza, it will risk the lives of the remaining living captives. 

- The situation on the ground in Gaza isn't safe enough for Israel to allow aid trucks in - and that's why it has stopped doing so, the new US State Department spokesperson told reporters on Thursday. Asked about the Trump administration's position on Israel's withholding of food and other basic needs for Palestinians, Tammy Bruce - holding her first briefing - indicated that it's Hamas that makes conditions too dangerous for aid to be delivered. Amnesty has called Israel's blockade a war crime. 

- The US State Department plans to use artifical intelligence to revoke the visas of foreign students who are deemed "pro-Hamas," Axios reported on Thursday, citing senior State Department officials. The program will comb through social media posts since 7 October, 2023. 

- A new Gallup poll has found that fewer than half of all Americans are now sympathetic to Israel. "Although Americans remain more likely to say their sympathies in the Middle East situation are with the Israelis rather than the Palestinians, the 46% expressing support for Israel is the lowest in 25 years of Gallup’s annual tracking of this measure on its World Affairs survey," the report said.