Israel-Palestine live: US and Israel air differences over Gaza strategy

A senior Hamas official invited US billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday to visit the Gaza Strip to see the extent of destruction caused by Israeli bombardment.

"We invite him to visit Gaza to see the extent of the massacres and destruction committed against the people of Gaza, in compliance with the standards of objectivity and credibility," Hamas's senior official,
Osama Hamdan, said in a press conference in Beirut.

Musk is the CEO of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, and X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

On Monday, Elon Musk went to Israel to visit the site of the 7 October attack.

The Israeli military is denying the entry of fuel trucks into the north of the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestine Red Crescent.

Israeli soldiers controlling access to the north denied entry to a truck carrying fuel to ambulances in the north.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday told United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres that Israel must be held accountable in international courts for the war crimes it committed in Gaza.

Erdogan told Guterres that “Israel continues to shamelessly trample on international law, laws of war, and international humanitarian law by looking in the eyes of the international community”, the Turkish president’s office said.

In a post on the social media platform X, the Israeli army alleged that three explosive devices went off near its troops in two separate locations in the northern Gaza Strip.

The explosions were “violating the framework of the operational pause”, the Israeli army said. “In one of the locations, terrorists also opened fire at the troops, who responded with fire.

"A number of soldiers were lightly injured during the incidents,” it added.

Hamas, for its part, released a statement saying that its fighters had “dealt with” an Israeli violation of the truce in northern Gaza.

The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, added that it was committed to the truce “as long as the enemy has committed to it, and we call on the mediators to pressure the occupation to adhere to all the terms of the truce on the ground and in the air”.

Palestinians inspecting the destruction wreaked by the Israeli military have been dismayed to find Gaza’s main public library in ruins, following at least seven weeks of bombing.

Officials have decried the bombing of the building as a “deliberate attempt to destroy historical documents and books”.

Photos of the destroyed building, with books scattered on the floor, were released by the Municipality of Gaza.

Video footage shared by Storyful, an intelligence agency and open source intelligence and verification platform, showed the destroyed building and the collapsed bookshelves inside. 

Read more: Gaza’s main public library destroyed in Israeli bombing

A Palestinian child was killed after being shot by Israeli occupation forces on Tuesday morning in the occupied West Bank governorate of Tubas, according to the Wafa news agency.

Medical sources at a nearby hospital said that Amr Ahmed Jamil Wahdan, 14, died from the injuries he sustained after being shot in the chest by live bullets in the village of Tayasir, east of Tubas.

In their latest opinion piece for Middle East Eye, columnists Imran Mulla and Peter Oborne argue that former UK Prime Minister David Cameron - now the country's foreign secretary - has seized control of the Gaza file and renounced Rishi Sunak's "unequivocal support" for Israel. 

"Privately, we have been told that Cameron warns of the deep damage being done to Britain’s international reputation, especially with Arab governments, by the blank cheque handed to Netanyahu on Sunak’s visit to Israel last month," they wrote.

"Most important of all, Cameron has allowed his junior minister, Andrew Mitchell, to reverse British policy towards the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in Israel. This is a concrete change that has sent a shiver down the spine of Israel’s senior political echelon."

"Cameron’s apparent rediscovery of the long-lost Tory Arabist tradition looks like yet another humiliation for hapless Sunak. But it also spells danger for Labour leader Keir Starmer," Mulla and Oborne argue.

You can read the full column below. 

Opinion: Has David Cameron revived the Tory Arabist tradition?

Hamas released an additional 11 Israelis held prisoner in Gaza on Monday in exchange for 33 Palestinians who were freed from Israeli jails, bringing the total number of released captives to 69 Israelis and 150 Palestinians.

The latest transfer comes as Qatar announced a two-day extension of the truce between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, which will see more prisoners released from both sides.

The newly released Israeli captives, all dual nationals, include three French nationals, two Germans and six Argentinians.

On the Palestinian side, the freed prisoners include three women and 30 children.

Read more: More Israelis and Palestinians released from captivity as truce extended

Qatar is working on further extending the truce between Hamas and Israel beyond Wednesday based on the Palestinian group's ability to continue releasing 10 hostages per day, Doha's foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said on Tuesday. 

Talks are also under way for a permanent ceasefire too, Egyptian and Qatari officials told the Wall Street Journal. 

“We are working to strengthen the Qatari mediation role in reaching a truce and then a permanent ceasefire,” Ansari said.

CNN reported that CIA Director Bill Burns visited Qatar on Tuesday for talks on the war with Qatari officials and his Israeli and Egyptian counterparts.

The majority of Palestinians released by Israeli authorities in recent days, as part of a prisoner exchange deal, were never charged, according to a report by CNN on Tuesday. 

Of the 150 Palestinian prisoners released, 98 were detained without charge, the report stated.

Some 119 of those freed were children, while the remaining 31 were women. 

Israel often uses administrative detention against Palestinians, a procedure that allows Israeli authorities to hold prisoners indefinitely without charging them or allowing them to stand trial.

According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, there are around 1,300 Palestinians in administrative detention, including children aged between 16 and 18.

More people could die from diseases than from Israeli bombings in Gaza if the health system is not put back on its feet quickly, a World Health Organisation spokesperson has said.

"Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system," the WHO's Margaret Harris said on Tuesday.

She described the collapse of Al Shifa Hospital - the largest medical facility in Gaza - as a "tragedy" and voiced concern about Israeli forces detaining some of its medical staff.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's planned visit to Turkey has been postponed, Iran's Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday.

"The trip was scheduled to take place on Wednesday but it has been postponed to another date," Tasnim reported, without elaborating on the reason.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier this month that Raisi would visit at the end of November to hold talks on the Israel-Palestine war.

Israeli shelling has hit an area near the southern Lebanese town of Aita al-Shaab on Tuesday morning, according to Lebanon's state news agency.

The attack came just hours after a truce between Israel and Hamas was extended.

While the truce did not formally include Lebanon, weeks of cross-border exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah came to a halt when the truce first came into effect on Friday.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said that three young French nationals released by Hamas on Monday after being held prisoner in Gaza were in good health.

"We have indirect news and that news is good... It is a great, great relief," Colonna told RTL radio on Tuesday, when asked about the health of Eitan, 12, Erez, 12, and Sahar, 16.

"Three French children were finally freed, now we must work relentlessly for the release of all the other hostages," she said, adding that five French nationals were still missing or believed to be held captive.