Israel-Palestine live: Netanyahu rejects Hamas ceasefire proposal, vows ‘total victory’

At least 27,019 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli attacks since 7 October, the Palestinian health ministry said on Thursday.

Another 66,139 have been wounded in the beseiged enclave, the ministry said.

In his seminal The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon could be writing about Gaza when he said: “In all armed struggles, there exists what we might call the point of no return. Almost always it is marked off by a huge and all-inclusive repression which engulfs all sectors of the colonial people.” 

In Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, that point has arrived.

From Gaza to the Red Sea, on all fronts the West is now unmasked as a lawless killing machine in terror of losing control. Genocide, starvation and war are its only answers to the fact that the Global South, and the nations of the Middle East (if not their leaders) no longer wish to live under US hegemony.

Jean-Paul Sartre, in his preface to Fanon's work, wrote of western colonialism: “Our Machiavellianism has little purchase on this wide-awake world that has run our falsehoods to earth one after the other. The settler has only recourse to one thing: brute force… the native has only one choice, between servitude and supremacy.”

Read more: What Frantz Fanon can tell us about the West’s colonial war in Gaza 

Nine petitioners, among them former Israeli military chiefs Moshe Ya'alon and Dan Halutz, have submitted an appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court calling to declare the country's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unfit for office.

The petition argues that Netanyahu, facing criminal charges while holding the position of prime minister, is in an obvious conflict of interest, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Thursday.

The petitioners cite events before and after 7 October, claiming that Netanyahu's actions are motivated by personal interests rather than those of the country, the public, or the well-being of the captives and their families.

Additionally, they assert that there are indications that Netanyahu's health condition is deteriorating, warranting his removal.

Dozens of Israeli settlers under the protection of police have stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Thursday. 

Witnesses said they entered in separate groups and conducted mock tours through the mosque's courtyard.

US President Joe Biden is homing in on a new doctrine involving an unprecedented push to immediately advance the creation of a demilitarised but viable Palestinian state, The New York Times' Thomas Friedman says.

The plan, Friedman writes, "would involve some form of US recognition of a demilitarised Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would come into being only once Palestinians had developed a set of defined, credible institutions and security capabilities to ensure that this state was viable and that it could never threaten Israel," Friedman said.

"If the administration can pull this together - a huge if - a Biden Doctrine could become the biggest strategic realignment in the region since the 1979 Camp David treaty," Friedman added.

Activists protesting the transfer of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip blocked a major intersection on the road to the Ashdod seaport, Israel on Thursday morning.

The police blocked the entry of vehicles to the port to prevent the protesters from blocking the passage of aid shipments through the border crossings.

Israeli forces opened fire as they stormed the headquarters of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

In a post on X, PRCS said 12 people were killed at the hospital yesterday, including a PRCS employee and volunteer. Six others were wounded.

The Israeli attack on the humanitarian organisation for the third time.

“The shooting also resulted in bullets penetrating five vehicles, including three ambulances,” it said.

Al-Amal Hospital has been under siege by Israeli forces for days, with the PRCS warning that medical supplies, fuel and food are running critically low inside.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) needs to be shut down.

"It's time for the international community and the UN itself to understand that Unrwa's mission must be terminated," Netanyahu told visiting UN delegates, according to a statement from his office.

"It seeks to preserve the issue of Palestinian refugees. We must replace Unrwa with other UN agencies and other aid agencies, if we want to solve the Gaza problem as we plan to do."

Thomas White, the director of Unrwa affairs in Gaza, said on Wednesday that his staff was forced to flee Khan Younis because of intense fighting over the past week.

"We've lost a health clinic, major shelters- facilities that were supporting the people of Khan Younis," White said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Read more: Netanyahu says Unrwa mission 'must be terminated'

The EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said he expects the bloc's foreign ministers to sign off on a naval mission protecting shipping lanes in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden when they meet on 19 February.

"Maritime security in the Red Sea has significantly deteriorated over the last weeks and we are very much advancing the work of a new maritime operation in order to act in a purely defensive mode to protect merchant vessels," Josep Borrell confirmed after an informal meeting of defence ministers in Brussels.

"Our goal is to establish and launch this mission, Aspides, at the latest on 19 February, I hope, and I'm sure we will," he added. Foreign affairs ministers from across the bloc are scheduled to meet in the Belgian capital on that date and stamp the plan with their approval. 

A civil case accusing US President Joe Biden and other senior administration officials of being complicit in Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza has been dismissed by a US federal court judge on jurisdiction grounds rather than on the merits of the case. 

Judge Jeffrey S White, however, did “implore” the defendants to examine their role in the war on Gaza.

Here is what the judge said:

• “There are rare cases in which the preferred outcome is inaccessible to the court. This is one of those cases.”
• “The court is bound by precedent and the division of our coordinate branches of government to abstain from exercising jurisdiction in this matter.”
• “Yet, as the ICJ has found, it is plausible that Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide.”
• “This court implores defendants to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.”

Good morning Middle East Eye readers,

We are on day 118 of the Israeli war on Gaza and the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza since 7 October now stands at 26,900, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

In its latest update the Palestinian health ministry has said that at least 65,949 have been wounded in attacks by the Israeli military.

More than 8,000 are missing and believed to be dead and buried under rubble. 

Here are the major developments from the last few hours: 

• Israel is “almost systematically” denying aid deliveries to northern Gaza, says Leo Cans, MSF’s head of mission for Palestine
• Israel’s spy chief reportedly briefed the war cabinet on a deal involving a pause in fighting in Gaza and the release of captives
• A spokesperson for Yemen's Houthi movement said their naval forces carried out an operation targeting a US merchant vessel
• US confirms strikes against 10 Houthi drones
   

Good evening readers of Middle East Eye. On the 117th day of the war in Gaza, the US said it was readying its response to the attack in Jordan that killed three American soldiers.

The response, which the US said could last weeks, comes as US, Qatari, Egyptian and Israeli officials continue discussions over a possible agreement between Israel and Hamas that could see a pause in fighting for weeks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on X that Israel is pursuing another deal but that there are "red lines", and that the country would not agree to pull troops from Gaza, or release thousands of "terrorists", referring to Palestinian prisoners.

The death toll in Gaza, meanwhile, inches closer to 27,000 Palestinians. UN relief chief Martin Griffiths told the Security Council today that aid entering Gaza continues to be blocked.

Local residents told MEE the bodies of 50 Palestinians were discovered at the grounds of the Khalifa bin Zayed elementary school in Beit Lahia after Israeli forces withdrew from the area.

Videos uploaded on social media sites showed several of the body bags tied with white plastic zip ties.

According to eyewitnesses assisting in identifying the deceased, Israeli forces reportedly executed the Palestinians nearly two months ago on a road near the school.

Here's what else you need to know about the 117th day of the war on Gaza:

• A spokesperson for Yemen's Houthi movement said their naval forces carried out an operation targeting a US merchant vessel.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the mission of Unrwa should be terminated.

• US President Joe Biden is struggling to deal with how Biden's support for Israel has hurt his relations with the Arab American population of Michigan, a battleground state in the upcoming presidential election, campaign managers told Politico.

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked the State Department to conduct an assessment of the policy options around recognising a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza, according to Axios. The UK is also considering recognising a Palestinian state.

• The situation in Khan Younis' hospitals remains dire. Hospitals have run out of food and the Palestine Red Crescent Society said earlier on Wednesday that Israeli forces stormed al-Amal Hospital's square.

• Thomas White, director of Unrwa affairs in Gaza, said that the staff for the UN aid agency for Palestinians has been forced to flee Khan Younis because of the intense fighting over the past week.

The Israeli prime minister said in a video uploaded to X that the government is working on a hostage deal with Hamas, but that A hostage deal outline is in the works, but Netanyahu clarified that an agreement would not come "at any cost".

Netanyahu said Israel would not agree to end its war, pull troops from Gaza, or "release thousands of terrorists".

White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan and UK Defence Minister Grant Shapps held a meeting to discuss the prevention of conflict escalation in the Middle East and defending against Houthi attacks.

A group of UN experts released a statement on Wednesday praising the recent ruling by the International Court of Justice, saying that the court order is a "significant milestone in the decades-long struggle for justice by the Palestinian people".

The experts said the ruling, in which the court ordered Israel to commit to preventing a genocide in Gaza, "tilts the balance toward a global order based on justice and international law".

"The court order is urgently needed to protect the very existence of the Palestinian people from potentially genocidal actions the Court has ordered Israel to halt and prevent," the experts said.