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

Yemen's Houthi movement targeted one US and one UK ship with naval missiles, the group's military spokesperson said on Tuesday. 

Both ships were hit, he added, vowing to continue attacks against "hostile parties" in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, in addition to Israeli-bound and Israeli-owned vessels. 

An Israeli air strike on a house in Khan Younis killed at least six Palestinians on Tuesday, according to media reports. 

The shelling targeted an apartment in the Hamad residential complex in western Khan Younis where Israeli forces have been intensifying their attacks in recent weeks. 

American police have arrested a suspect in the stabbing of a Palestinian-American in Texas, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has said. 

Following a pro-Palestine rally on Sunday night, a man approached a group of Muslim Americans returning from the demonstration and started to verbally abuse them, according to Cair. 

He then attempted to "rip their Free Palestine flag off their car" before starting a fight and stabbing a 23-year-old Palestinian-American in the chest. 

The victim was taken to hospital for treatment. His wounds were described as serious and potentially life-threatening. 

Police arrested a 36-year-old suspect for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, Cair said.

The UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, condemned the Israeli shelling of a UN food convoy headed to northern Gaza, where aid officials believe there are "pockets of famine". 

Albanese said the naval shelling of the aid truck on Monday was a "flagrant violation" of international humanitarian law.

"Targeting humanitarian aid convoys is a flagrant IHL violation, which undermines desperate relief efforts/ exacerbates human suffering, contrary to what ICJ ordered 12 days ago," Albanese said on social media platform X. 

She added that "urgent measures" must be taken against Israel, not the UN. 

The Israeli army has begun investigating the reported killing of 12 Israeli citizens by troops on 7 October, Haaretz reported on Tuesday. 

During the Hamas-led attack on towns near the Gaza frontier, an Israeli tank shelled a house in Kibbutz Be'eri, killing at least 12 Israelis, two survivors previously said. 

The commander who led the fighting in Be'eri, Barak Hiram, said he ordered the shelling of the house knowing there were Israeli citizens inside. He said the group of Israelis were being held hostage by Palestinian fighters and that negotiations with them had failed. 

The Israeli military had planned to probe the incident once the war was over. However, as fighting decreased, the army decided to launch the investigation now, Haaretz said. 

Houthi rebels in Yemen are tapping into troves of commercially available maritime intelligence to locate and attack vessels in the Red Sea, current and former western defence officials and maritime experts say. 

The Houthis' use of publicly available ship navigation data and other information that can be obtained with paid subscriptions on maritime intelligence sites is an unprecedented case of an Iran-backed group deploying open-source information widely accessible in the West against the US and its allies.

“The Houthis have shown that with a computer and internet access, and maybe the help of a VPN, just how much data is available in the maritime space,” Corey Ranslem, chief executive of maritime risk advisory and security company Dryad Global, told Middle East Eye.

The Houthis, once a mountain rebel group, whom one US lawmaker derided as “goat herders”, have catapulted to global prominence for their audacious maritime drone and missile attacks, which they say are on behalf of besieged Palestinians in Gaza.

Their attacks have disrupted global trade rippling across continents, denting Egypt’s Suez Canal revenue and shuttering Tesla and Volvo factories in Europe.

Read more: How the Houthis mined commercial intelligence to sabotage global trade

The Israeli dossier on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees Unrwa has not provided evidence of the alleged involvement of staff members in the Hamas-led attack in Israel on 7 October, Channel 4 reported on Monday. 

The document, reviewed by the British broadcaster, bases the allegations on "intelligence information, documents and identify cards" purportedly seized by troops in the ongoing invasion of Gaza. It states that "more than 10 Unrwa staffers took part in the events of 7 October" without elaborating further. 

Good morning Middle East Eye readers, 

It's just after 7:30 in Palestine and Israel. Here are the latest developments of day 123 of Israel's war on Gaza: 

• Israeli fighter jets continued to bomb Palestinians across the Gaza Strip at an intense rate 

• Shelling in Rafah overnight has killed at least four people. Artillery shelling and raids were also reported in Khan Younis and northern Gaza 

• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken finished a visit to Saudi Arabia and is due to fly to Egypt today. His regional tour, which will include stops in Qatar and Israel, comes amid a push to end the war. 

• A cargo ship sailing off the coast of Yemen's Hodeidah was hit with a projectile, leading to minor damage. 

• Amir Ohana, the Israeli parliament speaker, said on Monday during an official visit to the US that Israel was seeking the "complete defeat of Hamas" in the war. 

Good evening Middle East Eye readers,

Israeli forces have killed at least 113 Palestinians in air strikes across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Monday. 

This brings the death toll since 7 October to at least 27,478 with almost 67,000 wounded and 7,000 missing, who are either believed to be dead and buried under rubble. 

Israeli forces have shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian boy at a military checkpoint near the entrance to al-Eizariya town, east of occupied East Jerusalem.

In other developments:

• Itochu Corp’s aviation unit will end its strategic cooperation with Israeli defence company Elbit Systems by the end of the month after the ICJ ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians and do more to help civilians.
• The Royal Jordanian Air Force alongside the Dutch Air Force have made humanitarian aid drops in the vicinity of the Jordanian Field Hospital 77 in northern Gaza, according to the Jordanian army.
• The Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Monday that "time is running out" to reach a diplomatic solution in the south of Lebanon, as tensions flare between the two countries, with daily cross-border fire.
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Saudi Arabia as part of his latest tour of the Middle East.
• UN chief Philippe Lazzarini said on Monday that in around four months of war, at least 100,000 people in Gaza have been killed, wounded or are currently missing. 
• McDonald's experienced its first quarterly sales deficit in almost four years, stemming from poor growth in its international business unit and due to customers boycotting the firm for its perceived support of Israel, the BBC has reported.
• The White House announced on Monday that the Biden administration is firmly against a proposal from US House Republicans to pass a separate bill solely for aid to Israel.

The White House announced on Monday that the Biden administration is firmly against a proposal from US House Republicans to pass a separate bill solely for aid to Israel.

It emphasised that President Joe Biden would veto such a bill should it be presented to him.

This stance is part of the administration's broader effort to advocate for a comprehensive legislative package that encompasses support for Israel, Ukraine, and border security.

McDonald's experienced its first quarterly sales deficit in almost four years, stemming from poor growth in its international business unit and due to customers boycotting the firm for its perceived support of Israel, the BBC has reported.

Sales growth in the division covering the Middle East, China, and India was just 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2023, significantly underperforming market forecasts.

The company's operations in Malaysia, Indonesia, and France were impacted, with the most substantial effects observed in the Middle East, according to chief executive Chris Kempczinski, said on Monday.

"So long as this war is going on... we're not expecting to see any significant improvement [in these markets]," Kempczinski said.

The Pentagon said on Monday that the recent US strikes on Iran-affiliated targets in Iraq and Syria probably resulted in casualties, although an assessment was still in progress.

"It's fair to conclude that there likely were casualties associated with these strikes," Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder told reporters.

Ryder also mentioned that since the strikes on Friday, US troops in Syria had been targeted in two separate attacks, yet there were no injuries.

State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Monday that the United States did not provide Iraq with advance notice before carrying out strikes against three locations within the country on Friday.

He added that Iraq was notified immediately following the strikes.

"Iraq, like every country in the region, understood that there would be a response after the deaths of our soldiers. As for this specific response on Friday, there was not a pre-notification. We informed the Iraqis immediately after the strikes occurred," Patel told reporters.

UK Defence Minister Grant Shapps said on Monday that strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen have not entirely diminished the group's desire to interfere with Red Sea shipping.

"These attacks have had a significant effect on degrading Houthi capabilities. But the Houthis' intent to continue disrupting the Red Sea has not been fully diminished," Shapps told parliament.

Video footage shared by the UN organisation Unrwa shows the extent of devastation caused by Israeli bombing in Gaza.

The video shows an Unrwa health centre completely demolished. 

“This is an unprecedented level of destruction and forced displacement, taking place in front of our eyes,” the organisation said.