Gaza live: Gaza death toll rises to 35,80

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Majed al-Ansari, says Gaza ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas remain “close to a stalemate”.

When asked about the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to seek arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, Ansari would not be drawn to specifics but said that all states and organisations should be “held responsible for the killing of civilians”.

Medical sources have told Al Jazeera that an Israeli drone attack targeting people at the Yibna refugee camp in Rafah, southern Gaza, killed at least three children.

Al Jazeera has reportedly seen footage of the strike with the bodies of the children lying on the ground.

At least 35,647 Palestinians have been killed and 79,852 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

The ministry added that 85 people were killed and 200 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established for Africans and "thugs" like Russian President Vladimir Putin, the court's prosecutor says he was told by senior elected leaders.

Speaking to CNN a day after announcing he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and three leaders of the Palestinian group Hamas, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan defended the court's remit for targeting war criminals without discrimination.

“Of course, I have heard some elected leaders speak to me and be very blunt: This court is built for Africa and for thugs like Putin, was what a senior leader told me," Khan said.

"We don't view it like that. This court is the legacy of Nuremberg. This court is a certain indictment of humanity. This court should be the triumph of law over power and brute force; grab what you can, take what you want, do what you will, and we are not going to be dissuaded by threats,” he told Christiane Amanpour.

Read more: ICC just for Africans and Putin, 'elected leaders' told court prosecutor

The University of Edinburgh is under pressure from students who started a hunger strike 22 days ago and is ongoing. 

Students are demanding divestment from companies complicit in Israel's ongoing genocide and occupation of Palestine like Alphabet and Amazon.

The divestment campaign has won the support of 600 staff and was endorsed with a 97 per cent vote at the students’ union.

A statement from one student, age 20, on their fifth day of joining the hunger strike, said “The university has failed their duty of care. We have been led to take this extreme form of protest in order for our demands to even be acknowledged by senior management. Yet we have still faced complete negligence, with no sense of urgency to meet our demands.”

The director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the alarm on Tuesday about the safety of health workers in Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza’s northern city of Jabalia. 

The hospital, which is one of the few health facilities still operating in northern Gaza, and the only hospital to offer maternity and orthopaedic surgery care, has been under siege for two days. 

We are deeply concerned about the safety of the remaining patients and hospital staff,” he said in a post on X. “We appeal for their protection, for humanitarian access and an immediate ceasefire.”

Hamas says the Israeli army’s operation in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank is “a continuation of a series of the occupation’s crimes of murder, siege and starvation in Rafah, Jabalia and other areas of the Gaza Strip”, a statement by the group said.

The Israeli operation will not discourage the Palestinian group from resisiting the occupation, said Hamas, which called the assualt on Jenin “desperate”.

The movement added: “As we mourn the martyrs and extend our condolences to their families, we affirm that the occupation’s continuing crimes against our people in Gaza and the West Bank will not weaken the support of our people, nor will they stop the resistance of our people.”

The group stressed it “continues to confront the occupation and its aggression by all means, despite international complicity and silence”.

Israeli killed at least seven Palestinians early in the morning, including a student, doctor and a teacher. 

A group of state-level lawmakers in New York have resubmitted a piece of legislation that would bar any charities in the state from sending tax-deductible money to Israeli settlers and Israeli military units in Gaza.

The Not On Our Dime! Act, reintroduced on Monday by New York assembly member Zohran Mamdani and Senator Jabari Brisport, comes in light of reporting from late last year that US residents have been able to raise funds for Israeli military units involved in the war on Gaza, as well as settler groups operating in the occupied West Bank.

The legislation, first introduced last year, would give the state attorney general the authority to sue and dissolve not-for-profit organisations that are found to be using their tax-deductible donations to support organisations funding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank which are illegal under international law.

It would also give Palestinians harmed by settler organisations funded by New York-based charities the right to seek damages in American courts.

Read more: New York lawmakers relaunch bill to stop charities funding Israeli settlers

Israeli president Isaac Herzog told a conference of the Israeli Democracy Institute that during his meeting with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan over the weekend they spoke about the proposal for Israeli normalising its relations with Saudi Arabia.

Herzog said he hopes this option is being seriously considered. The move would be "a historic 'game changer' that is a victory over the evil empire, which sought on October 7 to destroy the chance for normalisation," said Herzog.  

According to Herzog, "Our struggle is not only against Hamas, it is a great strategic and historical, inter-power and global struggle, and we must do everything to fit into the grand vision of normalization."

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has voiced her support for a New York state bill to revoke the tax-exempt status of non-profits backing Israeli settlements.

“It is more important now than ever to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for endorsing and, in fact, supporting some of this settler violence that prevents a lasting peace,” said Ocasio-Cortez.

She added that the bill aims to ensure that “the ongoing atrocities that we see happening in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as the ongoing enabling of armed militias to terrorise Palestinians in the West Bank, do not benefit from New York State charitable tax exemptions.”

The right-wing Israeli minister of culture and sports, Miki Zohar, warned against the military occupation of Gaza which would result in countless soldiers dying. 

A member of the Likud party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Zohar said: “Anyone here who calls for a military government knows that he will later go to the homes of the mothers who will lose, probably hundreds if not more soldiers, and explain to them why their children fell,” Israel National News reported. 

Salman Rushdie has said that a free Palestinian state would be “Taliban-like” and a “client” of Iran.

Speaking to German broadcaster RBB, the author said that “any human right now” had to be “distressed by what is happening in Gaza because of the quantity of human death”.

But, he continued: “I would just like some of the protesters to mention Hamas because that’s where this started. And Hamas is a terrorist organisation. It’s very strange for young, progressive student politics to kind of support a fascist, terrorist group.” 

“They’re talking about free Palestine. I am somebody who has argued for a Palestinian state for most of my life, since the 1980s probably,” Rushdie, who had a fatwa calling for his death placed on him by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 after perceived blasphemy contained in his book The Satanic Verses, said. 

Read more: Salman Rushdie says free Palestinian state would be 'Taliban-like'

Yemen's Houthi group downed a US MQ-9 drone over al-Bayda province in southern Yemen, the group's military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said in a televised statement.

This is the second drone to have been shot down by the Houthis in the last week.

The number of people killed by Israel in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin has climbed to seven, the Palestinian Authority health ministry confirmed. 

The ministry said another nine are wounded, including three in serious condition.

The victims included a doctor, a teacher and a student.

Local media published a photo of what looks like a student killed riding his bike.