Israel-Palestine live: US vice president calls for ‘immediate’ six-week ceasefire
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At least 576,000 people in Gaza, roughly, are just a step away from famine, a senior UN aid official told the Security Council on Tuesday.
The official added that "if nothing is done, we fear widespread famine in Gaza is almost inevitable".
Reporting by Reuters
The State Department has said an agreement for a temporary halt in fighting could happen by Monday 4 March.
The deal would see the freeing of Israeli captives in Gaza, a temporary pause in fighting, and the allowing of more aid into the territory.
"We do think it’s possible," said Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the State Department.
"Ultimately some of this comes down to Hamas and whether Hamas is willing to agree to a deal that would provide significant benefits to the Palestinian people that they claim to represent."
Michigan voters are headed to the polls on Tuesday for the presidential primary, which has turned into a litmus test for how many voters will take part in the "uncommitted" campaign to not vote for incumbent Joe Biden over his support for Israel's war in Gaza.
Results are expected at some point later tonight. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib spoke in a video shared on Tuesday morning, calling on Michigan voters to check the "uncommitted" slot in the Democratic primary and send a message to Biden on where the voters stand ahead of the general election in November.
You can read more about the "uncommitted" campaign by clicking below.
Michigan's Arab and Muslim Americans mobilise to show Gaza will cost Biden presidency
A coalition of more than 40 health groups penned an open letter regarding the dire humanitarian and health situation for Palestinians in Gaza.
The groups accuse Israel of using healthcare as a weapon of war as it continues its assault on Gaza, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and targeting civilian infrastructure including hospitals.
The letter outlines eight demands for health professional groups around the world. Here are the demands:
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Health workers, activists, and patient groups should call out Israel’s war crimes and unequivocally condemn the genocide in Gaza.
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Professional health associations must end their perceived complicity in genocide.
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All health activist groups and HIV patient groups must boycott the company TEVA, an Israeli multinational pharmaceutical company.
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All health activist groups and HIV patient groups must demand that the organisers of the 25th AIDS conference devote a plenary session to Gaza, including a moment of silence for the health workers killed in Gaza during the opening ceremony.
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The 2024 World Health Assembly must devote a dedicated session to the current health crisis in Gaza.
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Scientists, researchers, clinicians and patient advocacy groups must actively pause health research, scientific and data collaboration and research projects with Israeli health institutions.
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Health workers, health activists, advocacy and patient groups must support colleagues who are being censored and targeted for speaking up about anti-Palestinian racism.
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Health workers, including unions and health activist groups, must call for and pressure all governments to immediately resume and increase funding for the critical work of Unrwa.
Speaking on the talk show Late Night with Seth Meyers, US President Joe Biden said that Israel had "made a commitment to me" that they have "the ability to evacuate significant portions of Rafah before they go and take out the remainder of Hamas".
The comments appear to be the clearest indication yet that the US president has approved of an Israeli operation into the southernmost part of Gaza, an assault that UN secretary general Antonio Guterres warned would be the "nail in the coffin" for aid programmes.
Earlier this month, Middle East Eye reported that while the Biden administration had said it wouldn't support an Israeli military offensive on Rafah, it left room to back the offensive.
In an interview with CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, the Israeli prime minister said that a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas would delay the Rafah operation, but it would still take place at a later date.
Biden said during the talk show that there is "in principle" a hostage deal that will take place, and added that Israeli forces "would not engage in activities" during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
A coalition of Palestinian organisations is calling for a "total energy embargo" on Israel until it puts an end to "the genocide and its regime of apartheid and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people".
The campaign is working with a team of researchers to analyse energy flows to Israel and identify choke points in its supply chain.
The group is also coordinating with trade unionists in key supplier or transit countries along the supply chain to stop fuel shipments to Israel, and working with corporate research groups to issue corporate notices to energy companies investing in Israeli gas fields.
Read the full story by clicking below.
Palestinian coalition calls for 'total energy embargo' on Israel
The Abraham Accords were “not the answer” to bring about a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a former British Middle East Minister told MPs on Tuesday.
Testifying before the UK Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, Alistair Burt said he had warned Jason Greenblatt, the Trump administration’s Middle East peace envoy, on a number of occasions to ensure that the "Deal of the Century", as it was called, would not “humiliate the Palestinians”.
Burt also said he told Greenblatt: “Don’t think this can all be solved by a check. It’s not all about money”.
In the end, however, he said the accords, while giving a useful projection of how the Middle East could work differently in the future, ignored the Palestinian issue at their own peril.
“It gave a sense that the future of the region could be sorted without dealing with the Palestinian issue,” Burt said.
“That did a couple of things. In Israel, it reinforced a view amongst some certain Israeli politicians that they had been right all along: the Palestinian issue was marginal. It could be put to one side, it could be managed and controlled and they could have a good relationship with Arabs states regardless.
“For Palestinians, it looked as though this was another abandonment and this was an abandonment by those immediately around them.”
The normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia “could be fundamental” moving forward, Burt said, but it is now clear the Palestinian issue “has to be part of the resolution and that is a good thing”.
Muhammad Shehada, communications head at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, said that another Palestinian child has died from starvation in Gaza's Beit Hanoun in the northern part of the enclave.
Shehada said it was the second such death in the past 24 hours, with humanitarian aid having not reached northern Gaza in a month, according to Unrwa. Aid agencies say Israel is delaying the entry of aid.
Israel denies this, but a recent US congressional delegation called on Israel to increase the flow of aid into Gaza after coming back from a trip to Egypt, Israel, and Jordan.
Local Egyptian media is reporting that Cairo's air force carried out its first air drop of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The drop was conducted in coordination with the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, the latter of which on Tuesday conducted its largest air drop for the besieged enclave since October.
Around 45 tonnes of aid was dropped in the northern and central parts of Gaza, according to local media.
Palestinian civilians have been killed in large numbers since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to take provisional measures to prevent genocide in Gaza, according to a report by Airwars.
The report looked at the two weeks following the ICJ judgement, between 27 January and 9 February, during which it monitored over 200 alleged incidents of harm. Each incident was corroborated by at least five sources.
It found that Palestinians civilians were killed every day during the two weeks. In 190 incidents, civilians were killed or wounded by explosive weapons, while civilians were killed or wounded by live gunfire in 36 incidents.
Among those civilians killed were healthcare workers, journalists, people waiting for humanitarian aid and those sheltering in education centres.
In 13 separate incidents, ten or more civilians were alleged to have been killed.
Yemen's Houthis have said they will only reconsider their attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea once Israel ends its "aggression" on the Gaza Strip.
"There will be no halt to any operations that help Palestinian people except when the Israeli aggression on Gaza and the siege stop," spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam told Reuters.
The Houthis have launched several drone on missile attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait since November in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Top global container line Maersk have told its clients that they should prepare for Red Sea disruptions continuing into the second half of the year.
On 19 November, the Houthis seized vessel Galaxy Leader along with its 25 crew members. The ship has been held near the port city of Hodeidah since then.
Galaxy Maritime Ltd, the owner of Galaxy Leader, said that crew members from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Mexico, Romania and the Philippines had "nothing whatsoever to do with the conflict in the Middle East".
"From the few permitted phone calls they are allowed, crew members are becoming increasingly concerned about their loved ones at home," Galaxy Maritime said.
"Families of those being detained are now calling on the international community to take action to secure the immediate release of the crew."
Almost 9,000 people, including artists and museum directors, have called for Israel to be excluded from this year's Venice Biennale art fair over its "genocide in Gaza".
"Any official representation of Israel on the international cultural stage is an endorsement of its policies and of the genocide in Gaza," the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) collective said in an online statement.
The collective said that the Venice Biennale had previously banned South Africa over its apartheid policy, and excluded Russia after its invasion of Ukrain in 2022.
Signatories of the statement include Faisal Saleh, director of the Palestine Museum US, and British artist Jesse Darling, who won last year's Turner Prize.
Egypt's air force is set to air drop humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, in collaboration with the UAE and Jordan, a high-level security source told Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Ahram.
It is the first such aid drop by Cairo since the war began, and will include food and medical assistance.
On Monday, Jordan carried out the largest air drop operation since 7 October, deploying four C–130 planes to parachute humanitarian aid to 11 sites along the Gaza coast.
Some of the aid fell into the sea, but the packages were made to be waterproof, allowing boats to be able to retrieve the aid.
