Gaza live: Biden moves ahead with military aid for Israel as it launches ground assaults on Rafah

Israel is moving ahead with its offensive on Rafah following a unanimous decision by the war cabinet, the Israeli Prime Minister’s office said.

The statement said Israel needed to move ahead with the attack “in order to apply military pressure on Hamas, with the goal of making progress on freeing the hostages and the other war aims”.

The statement added that the Hamas ceasefire proposal was "far from Israel’s obligatory demands”.

Israel carried out intense air strikes on Rafah late Monday after reiterating a call for people to leave the east of the city in southern Gaza, according to the AFP.

The strikes have been virtually continuous in the past 30 minutes. Videos posted on social media showed intense airstrikes. 

Israel’s call for Palestinians to leave eastern Rafah in Gaza is “inhumane”, Volker Turk, the UN’s top human rights chief said.

Turk says that Israel is pushing hundreds of thousands of people into areas with no access to humanitarian aid. He slammed the plan as “inconceivable”, warning an attack on Rafah would bring suffering in Gaza to“unbearable” levels.

“Gazans continue to be hit with bombs, disease, and even famine…today, they have been told that they must relocate yet again as Israeli military operations into Rafah scale up.”

“This is inhumane. It runs contrary to the basic principles of international humanitarian and human rights laws, which have the effective protection of civilians as their overriding concern.”

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said there are ‘positive developments’ in attempts to reach a comprehensive ceasefire, but did not announce that an agreement had been reached.

Speaking earlier, a Hamas official said that Egyptian mediators had promised they would guarantee that Israel does not restart the war after the initial hostage exchange.

Egypt is mediating truce talks with Qatar.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Hamas’s acceptance of a Gaza ceasefire proposal.

He called on the international community to pressure Israel to agree to the deal.

The US will not support the attack on Rafah that Israel has planned in its current form, State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

Miller said the plan still failed to protect the 1.5 million Palestinians sheltering in the southern coastal town.
He said Israel’s plans, including fliers calling on around 100,000 Palestinians in eastern Rafah to leave, were not credible.

“The problem now is there are such limited places for them to go inside Gaza and there is no effective way to distribute aid to them and make sure they have access to shelter, access to sanitation, in the places that they would go.”

The US is “quite concerned” with Israel’s move to ban Al Jazeera inside the country, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

“We have made quite clear that we support media freedom all around the world, including in Israel,” Miller said.

“We think Al Jazeera ought to be able to operate in Israel, as it does in other countries in the region,” he added.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir slammed Hamas’s acceptance of a ceasefire proposal as a “trick,” calling for an attack on Rafah to go ahead.

“There is only one response to Hamas’s tricks and games — an immediate order to conquer Rafah, increase military pressure, and continue to crush Hamas until it is utterly defeated,” he said.

Israel says its forces are still waging war in Gaza after Hamas announced it accepted a three-phase ceasefire.

Israel said it was examining the Hamas proposal, but that in the interim it would continue fighting in Gaza.

Hamas says that mediators promised US President Joe Biden gave a clear commitment to ensure the implementation of the ceasefire agreement.

"In this agreement, we achieved the goals of a ceasefire, the return of the displaced, relief, and a serious exchange deal,” Hamas official, Khalil al-Hayya told Al Jazeera Arabic.

An Israeli official said that the ceasefire accepted by Hamas was a "softened" version of an Egyptian proposal with "far-reaching" conclusions that Israel could not accept, appearing to downplay the truce announcement.

“This would appear to be a ruse intended to make Israel look like the side refusing a deal," said the Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity," according to Reuters.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed Hamas’s acceptance of a truce in Gaza.

The Turkish leader said that he hoped Israel would follow the group and accept the truce.

“We were pleased that Hamas announced that it accepted the ceasefire following our suggestions. Now the same step should be taken by Israel. “I call on all western actors to put pressure on the Israeli administration.”

Hamas's political chief Ismail Haniyeh informed Egypt and Qatar that the group has accepted a truce agreement.

"Brother Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas movement’s political bureau, had a phone call with the Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani, and with the Egyptian Minister of Intelligence, Abbas Kamel, and informed them of the Hamas movement’s approval of their proposal regarding the ceasefire agreement," the group said in a statement

Hamas says it has accepted a ceasefire proposal presented by Qatar and Egypt, according to a statement by the group.

Palestinian civilians have fallen off a rooftop trying to receive airdropped aid in the Gaza Strip, according to Arabic media reports.

In a video posted on the social media platform X, a number of Palestinians appeared to fall from the top of a bombed-out building trying to retrieve airdropped aid packages.

MEE couldn’t independently verify the video.