Live: Israel kills more than 430 Palestinians on Tuesday

A team of Israeli negotiators left for Doha on Monday for a fresh round of discussions on the Gaza ceasefire, an Israeli official has told AFP.

Israel is attempting to encourage UN agencies and aid groups to take over the work of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) in Gaza, Israel's ambassador said on Monday. 

"We, the State of Israel, are working to find substitute to the act, to the work of Unrwa inside Gaza," Daniel Meron, Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told reporters.

Meron did not elaborate further but said Israel was "encouraging the UN agencies and NGOs to take over each one in its own field that they specialise in". 

Israel passed a law banning Unrwa from operating in the occupied Palestinian territories in January. 

The UN agency provides aid, health and education services to millions in the Palestinian territories, as well as the millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps in the neighbouring countries of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

"Since October 7th, since the aggression on the Gaza Strip, we have been without electricity."

Israel has cut off Gaza's electricity supply to the last facility in Gaza that was still receiving power for vital necessities in the blockade.

According to the UN, Gaza has long… pic.twitter.com/wI6f8cxXYH

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) March 10, 2025

The German government said on Monday that Israel's decision to halt aid deliveries and cut off the electricity supply to Gaza could prompt a fresh humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.

Regarding the decision to stop aid, foreign ministry spokesperson Kathrin Deschauer told a regular press conference that Gaza was "again threatened with a food shortage".

"We note with great concern the cutting off of electricity and the discussion about stopping the water supply," she said. 

"Such steps are or would be unacceptable and incompatible with (Israel's) obligations under international law," Deschauer added.

She said that Germany "calls on the Israeli government to lift restrictions for all forms of humanitarian aid to Gaza with immediate effect".

Palestinian group Hamas accused Israel on Monday of reneging on a ceasefire deal that halted the Gaza war, as Israeli negotiators were due in Qatar to discuss a potential extension, AFP reported.

"The (Israeli) occupation continues to renege on the agreement and refuses to commence the second phase, exposing its intentions of evasion and stalling," Hamas said in a statement, after the initial phase of the truce had expired with no agreement on subsequent stages that could secure a permanent end to the war.

At least 97 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army and settler attacks this year, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

The ministry said that the figure includes 16 minors and three women.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that the bodies of nine Palestinians, including five recovered from under the rubble from previous air strikes and four newly killed, were brought to hospitals in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours. 

Sixteen injured individuals were also admitted to hospitals during the same period.

The ministry also stated that several victims remain trapped under rubble and on roads, with emergency teams unable to reach them. The death toll from Israel's war on Gaza has now risen to 48,467 with 111,913 injuries since 7 October, 2023. Thousands more remain missing.

An Israeli army attack in Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood has wounded a Palestinian woman, Al Jazeera reported.

Israeli army vehicles and quadcopters have been firing at people attempting to return to their destroyed homes in southern and central Rafah, resulting in casualties, according to the Wafa news agency.

Hamas said on Monday that it is showing flexibility in talks with mediators and is awaiting the outcome of efforts from Egypt, Qatar, and the United States in negotiations with Israel, Reuters reported.

The group's spokesman Abdul Latif al-Qanou: "We have softened our demands at the request of the mediators and Trump's envoy, and we await the results of the negotiations. Israel's duty is to agree to move to the second stage," according to Haaretz.

Qanou added that "the talks are based on ending the war, withdrawing, and rebuilding the Gaza Strip. We agree to the Egyptian proposal to establish a committee responsible for managing the Gaza Strip and its reconstruction."

He also said: "Israel's decision to cut off electricity and talk about resuming the fighting constitutes a threat to the hostages. They will only be released through negotiations."

Israeli live fire injured two Palestinian men in the town of Idhna, west of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reported.

The director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Idhna, Ma’mar Tomaizi, said Israeli forces handed over the two men to the PRCS teams after shooting at them near the separation wall on Sunday night.

An official at al-Ahli Hospital said one of them arrived with a gunshot wound to his abdomen and was taken to the operating theatre. The other was shot multiple times in his feet and was transferred to al-Meezan Specialized Hospital.

The head of the Bakery Owners Association in Gaza, Abdel Nasser Al-Ajrami, said that all bakeries in Gaza's Khan Younis operating with cooking gas have stopped working, according to The Palestine Information Center.

Israel's war on Gaza destroyed most of the boats in the harbour, wrecking the fishermen's means of making a living. 

But fisherman Khaled Habib came up with the idea of using an old refrigerator door as a makeshift paddle to propel himself through the waters of Gaza City's fishing port to continue feeding his family.

"We're in a very difficult situation today, and struggling with the fishing. There are no fishing boats left. They've all been destroyed and tossed on the ground," Habib told AFP.

"I made this 'boat' from refrigerator doors and cork - and thankfully it worked."

The fisherman stuffed cork into old fridge doors to make them buoyant and covered one side with wood and the other with plastic sheeting to help make the makeshift paddleboard waterproof.

Habib said he uses dough as bait and now fishes mainly inside the small port area.

“If we go [outside the fishermen’s harbour], the Israeli boats will shoot at us, and that’s a problem we suffer from a lot,” he said

Tania Hary, executive director of Israeli rights group Gisha, has condemned Israel's decision to cut off the electricity supply to Gaza, calling it a war crime.

“Cutting electricity supply used for civilian purposes like desalinating water is not ‘using the tools at our disposal’ as Minister [Eli] Cohen says, it’s committing the crimes at Israel’s disposal,” Hary said on X, referring to the Israeli energy minister’s statement on the move.

Hary also told the Associated Press that the plant has been providing 18,000 cubic metres of water per day, but that it will now need to rely on generators, meaning it can only process about 2,500 cubic metres per day, about the amount in an Olympic swimming pool.

Good morning MEE readers, 

Here are some of key developments from the last few hours:

• Trump’s envoy for captives, Adam Boehler, dismissed Israel’s anger over American direct talks with Hamas and praised Qatar for its role during the ceasefire talks.

• Families of captives held in Gaza as well as their supporters have set up a protest camp outside Israel’s defence ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, the Times of Israel reported.

• Israeli soldiers assaulted and arrested two young men in the centre of Jenin, Wafa reported, as Israeli soldiers and settlers continue raids across the occupied West Bank.

• Palestinian media outlets also reported that clashes broke out between Palestinian fighters and Israeli soldiers near the eastern market in the old city of Nablus.

• US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal slammed Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil's arrest, calling it a "unacceptable" crackdown on free speech.

• Francesa Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, said no sanctions and no arms embargo against Israel means, among others, "aiding and assisting Israel in the commission of one of the most preventable genocides of our history," after Israel decided to cut off electricity to Gaza.

Our live blog will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are the day's key developments:

• Israel’s energy minister Eli Cohen has signed an order to cut off of Gaza’s already meagre electricity supply, after a week long blockade of aid. The only power line into Gaza supplies the territory's main desalination plant, which serves over 600,000 people.

• The move threatens already sparse water supplies, as there is no fuel to run generators for water pumping and no cooking gas cylinders.

• Hamas condemned the decision as “cheap and unacceptable blackmail”.

• US hostage envoy Adam Boehler has said that Hamas is willing to “lay down arms” for the duration of a five to ten year truce.

• Palestinians in Khan Younis face severe food shortages and soaring prices amid the renewed Israeli blockade, which has entered its eighth day. Fuel shortages have forced several shops and bakeries to close.

• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the US will be “revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported”. His comments come after US immigration agents arrested a Palestinian graduate student who helmed the Columbia student encampment.