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

The Israeli army has announced the death of a fourth soldier killed in Sunday’s attack near Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) in southern Israel.

The rocket attack, which wounded at least 10 others, was claimed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri tells Reuters that Israel’s demand that civilians in parts of Rafah to evacuate ahead of an expected offensive is a “dangerous escalation that will have consequences”.

Earlier on Monday, the Israeli army began calling on Palestinians to evacuate the eastern neighbourhoods of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip that are close to the Israeli border.

An Israeli offensive on Rafah "would be devastating for the 1.4 million people" living there, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa has warned, adding that it will not be evacuating.

"An Israeli offensive in Rafah would mean more civilian suffering & deaths," the organisation added in a post on X. 

A spokesman for the Israeli military told journalists it will order “around 100,000 people” to leave eastern Rafah, ahead of an expected ground assault there.

The international community has warned Israel that a military operation in Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering, would be “catastrophic”.

Last night, Israel killed at least 22 people in Rafah. 

The Israeli army confirmed that it conducted a strike overnight into Monday deep into Lebanon.

According to the statement, fighter jets struck a Hezbollah military compound in the area of Sefri, south of Baalbek.

Baalbek, an area identified in the past as a Hezbollah stronghold, is around 100 kilometres from the Israeli border.

The Palestinian Wafa news agency is reporting that the death toll from Israeli attacks on Rafah has risen to 22.

The victims include eight children, it said.

Israeli media outlets are reporting that the Israeli military has begun to order Palestinians living in neighbourhoods in eastern Rafah to evacuate from the area.

Israel’s Army Radio said the order comes before a “military attack” and that the Palestinians are being told to move towards camps for displaced people in Khan Younis and al-Mawasi areas.

The evacuation order only applies to some of the eastern neighbourhoods of Rafah for now, and not the entire city in southern Gaza.

Good morning Middle East Eye readers, 

Here are the latest developments from Israel's war on Gaza, now in its 213th day:

• The latest round of negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza has ended in the Egyptian capital Cairo without agreement with crucial gaps remaining between Israel and Hamas. The Palestinian group is seeking a permanent end to the war as part of any deal but Israel’s prime minister has firmly rejected that demand
• Israeli police have raided Al Jazeera‘s workspace in occupied East Jerusalem, seizing equipment, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government decided to shut the network’s operations down
• Al Jazeera has condemned the closure order, saying it will pursue all available legal channels in response
• At least 22 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli strikes in the southern city of Rafah. The victims included many children

Medics and first responders in Gaza said 16 people were killed in Israeli air strikes in the southern city of Rafah on Sunday, hours after Hamas rockets had killed three Israeli soldiers earlier in the day. 

"The toll of martyrs in Rafah reached 16," emergency first responders told AFP, adding that seven people from one family and nine from another were killed. 

Medical sources confirmed two strikes they said took place at two different locations around the city. 

Good evening, Middle East Eye readers.

Our live coverage of Israel's war on Gaza will shortly be closing for the evening.

Here are the day's major developments:

• New figures released by the Palestinian health ministry on Sunday showed the death toll in Gaza had risen to 34,683 Palestinians. Alongside the dead, the ministry said that Israeli strikes had injured 78,018 Palestinians since 7 October. 
   
• Israel's cabinet on Sunday voted to shut down Al Jazeera's operations in Israel. The closure followed months of Israeli incitement against the Qatar-based broadcaster, one of the last remaining international media networks reporting on Israel's war on Gaza from the ground.
   
• The move to close Al Jazeera was met with widespread condemnation, with the Foreign Press Association calling it a "dark day for the media" and a "dark day for democracy", Hamas saying it was a "blatant violation of press freedom", and the United Nations Human Rights Office saying "a free and independent media is essential to ensuring transparency and accountability". 
   
• Al Jazeera said in a statement: "Israel's suppression of free press to cover up its crimes by killing and arresting journalists has not deterred us from performing our duty."
   
• Senior Palestinian Authority officials have requested from mediators that Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti be excluded from a potential prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas, a source has told Middle East Eye.
   
• A top UN official on Sunday accused Israel of continuing to deny the United Nations humanitarian access in the Gaza Strip, where the UN food chief warned a "full-blown famine" had taken hold in the north of the enclave.
   
• The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas claimed responsibility on Sunday for an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza that Israel said killed three of its soldiers and wounded a dozen others.
   
• An Israeli strike targeting a house in Rafah in Southern Gaza killed nine Palestinians, Gaza health officials said.
   
• Civil defence workers and a security source told Reuters that an Israeli airstrike killed four civilians in a house in a border village in southern Lebanon.
   
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out ending the war on Gaza and said he was willing to pause the fighting for the return of captives held by Hamas.
   
• A Hamas delegation has left Cairo after two days of talks with mediators over a Gaza ceasefire deal, with the head of the CIA travelling to Doha for emergency talks with Qatar's prime minister, with Gaza talks 'near to collapse', according to an official briefed on the talks.
   
• Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant accused Hamas on Sunday of showing signs it was not serious about reaching a ceasefire, and said that if so Israel would launch military actions in Rafah and other parts of the Gaza Strip "in the very near future".
   
• The United States has put on hold an ammunition shipment intended for Israel last week, Axios reported on Sunday.

An Israeli strike targeting a house in Rafah in Southern Gaza killed nine Palestinians, Gaza health officials said on Monday.

The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas claimed responsibility on Sunday for an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza that Israel said killed three of its soldiers and wounded a dozen others.

Israel's military said 10 projectiles were launched from Rafah in southern Gaza towards the area of the crossing, which it said was now closed to aid trucks going into the coastal enclave. Other crossings remain open.

Hamas' armed wing said it fired rockets at an Israeli army base by the crossing, but did not confirm where it fired them from. Hamas media quoted a source close to the group as saying the commercial crossing was not the target.

More than a million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

Shortly after the Hamas attack, an Israeli air strike hit a house in Rafah killing three people and wounding several, Palestinian medics said.

Reporting by Reuters

A top UN official on Sunday accused Israel of continuing to deny the United Nations humanitarian access in the Gaza Strip, where the UN food chief warned a "full-blown famine" had taken hold in the north of the enclave of 2.3 million people.

While not a formal famine declaration, World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain said - in an NBC News interview broadcast on Sunday - that based on the "horror" on the ground: "There is famine, full-blown famine, in the north, and it's moving its way south."

The head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa), Philippe Lazzarini, on Sunday accused Israel of continuing to deny the United Nations aid access in Gaza as it tried to avert famine.

"Only in the past two weeks, we have recorded 10 incidents involving shooting at convoys, arrests of UN staff including bullying, stripping them naked, threats with arms & long delays at checkpoints forcing convoys to move during the dark or abort," Lazzarini posted on X (formerly Twitter).

The Foreign Press Association (FPA) on Sunday condemned Israel's decision to close down Al Jazeera, calling it a 'dark day for the media' and a 'dark day for democracy'.

The closure followed months of Israeli incitement against the Qatar-based broadcaster, one of the last remaining international media networks reporting on Israel's war on Gaza from the ground. 

"With this decision, Israel joins a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station," the FPA wrote in a statement.

"And the government may not be done. The prime minister has the authority to target other foreign media that he deems to be 'acting against the state'.

"We urge the government to reverse this harmful step and uphold its commitment to freedom of the press - including outlets whose coverage it may not like.

"This is a dark day for the media. This is a dark day for democracy."