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

Canada will impose sanctions on Israeli settlers who incite violence in the West Bank and introduce new sanctions on Hamas leaders, Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said on Sunday, after the United States took similar action last week.

On Thursday, the US sanctioned four Israeli men accused of being involved in violence in the occupied territory.

In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Sunday, Joly said some settlers "will be sanctioned" and "we will also bring new sanctions on Hamas leaders".

"We're working actively on it," Joly said, speaking from Ukraine. "I'm making sure that while I'm in Ukraine, the work is being done in Ottawa and I look forward to doing an announcement soon."

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday said he was considering imposing sanctions on "extremist" settlers in the West Bank.

The mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, has said police presence was being ramped up at places of worship and major infrastructure points following an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that he called "bigoted" and "Islamophobic", according to Reuters.

The WSJ published the piece on Friday headlined "Welcome to Dearborn, America's Jihad Capital". The city's mayor and rights advocates from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee condemned the piece as anti-Arab and racist for suggesting the city's residents, including religious leaders and politicians, supported Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and extremism.

"Reckless. Bigoted. Islamophobic," Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said about the WSJ piece written by Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.

"Effective immediately - Dearborn police will ramp up its presence across all places of worship and major infrastructure points. This is a direct result of the inflammatory @WSJ opinion piece that has led to an alarming increase in bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric online targeting the city of Dearborn," the mayor added.

The WSJ did not respond to a request for comment. Stalinsky said he stood by his piece.

Rights advocates have noted a rise in Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian bias and antisemitism in the US since war broke out in the Middle East in October.

Among anti-Palestinian incidents that raised alarm were a November shooting in Vermont of three students of Palestinian descent and the fatal stabbing of a six-year-old Palestinian American boy in Illinois in October.

Yemen’s Houthis said on Sunday that continued aggression from the US and UK will achieve nothing. 

The comments were made by Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam, who added that it will not be easy to destroy Yemeni military capabilities, which have been rebuilt during years of tough conflict, referring to the country's now near 10-year civil war.
 

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to the Tel Nof Air Base that "every air strike in Gaza brings us closer to achieving our goals and returning the hostages", Haaretz reported on Saturday.

Gallant added: "I instructed the air force to turn to the north, and be ready for anything to happen there."
 

Humanitarian issues in Gaza will be a top priority for  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on his current trip to the Middle East, the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday.
 

CNN staff say the network is pro-Israel and censoring the Palestinian perspective in its coverage amounts to "journalistic malpractice".

The organisation is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda, a report in the Guardian states. 

"The majority of news since the war began, regardless of how accurate the initial reporting, has been skewed by a systemic and institutional bias within the network toward Israel," said one CNN staffer. "Ultimately, CNN's coverage of the Israel-Gaza war amounts to journalistic malpractice."

Emails obtained by the Guardian show accounts from six CNN staffers in multiple newsrooms, and more than a dozen internal memos stating that daily news decisions are shaped by a flow of directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict guidelines on coverage.

They include tight restrictions on Palestinian perspectives, while Israeli government statements are taken at face value. In addition, every story on the conflict must be cleared by the Jerusalem bureau before broadcast or publication.
 

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in an interview with NBC that the US "intend to take additional strikes and additional action to continue to send a clear message that the US will respond when our forces are attacked and our people are killed".

He added that he believes the strikes had a "good effect" on degrading militia groups' capabilities.

"We are prepared to deal with anything that any group or any country comes at us with," he said when asked about Iran's threats that US strikes will destabilise the region
 

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Sunday that Israeli forces targeted the vicinity of Gaza’s al-Amal Hospital, wounding two Palestinians.
 

A Palestinian doctor says Israeli forces in Gaza detained him when they attacked a hospital and subjected him to abuse during 45 days of captivity, including sleep deprivation and constant shackling and blindfolding before releasing him last week.

According to Reuters, Dr Said Abdulrahman Maarouf was working at al-Ahli al-Arab Hospital in Gaza City when it was surrounded by Israeli forces in December.

The doctor described having his hands cuffed, his legs shackled and his eyes masked for the nearly seven-week duration of his imprisonment.

He said he was told to sleep in places that were covered with pebbles without a mattress, pillow or cover and with loud music blaring.

"The torture was very severe in Israeli prison. I am a doctor. My weight was 87kg. I lost, in 45 days, more than 25kg. I lost my balance. I lost focus. I lost all feeling," he told the news agency. 

"However you describe the suffering and the insults in prison, you can never know the reality unless you lived through it," he said.
 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit out at National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. 

The interview centred on US ties to Israel.

"I don't need help to know how to navigate our relationship with the US and the international community, while standing up for our national interests," Netanyahu said. 

"That doesn't mean we don't have disagreements, but, so far, we have managed to overcome them with determined and considered decisions," he added.

The UN agency Unrwa’s commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, has told the Financial Times that Israel has yet to present any evidence to it over its accusations that around a dozen Unrwa staff had been involved in the 7 October attacks against Israel.

The allegations, made last month, resulted in a number of countries halting funding to the organisation, including the US, UK, Switzerland and Finland. 

Lazzarini said that he is still taking the allegations seriously and that an investigation is ongoing. 

The Financial Times also stated that it had seen the intelligence assessment which provided no evidence for the claims, which include an accusation that a staff member kidnapped a woman.

David Cameron, the UK’s foreign secretary, decried Houthi Red Sea attacks as “reckless” and called on them to be stopped immediately. 

He added that the Houthis have been “putting innocent lives at risk, threatening the freedom of navigation and destabilising the region”.

The comments come after the US and UK targeted the Houthis on Saturday night, for the third time since the Yemeni group started its attacks in solidarity with Gaza.
 

Palestinians in Gaza's Deir al-Balah say that Israel is using techniques of psychological warfare in an effort to turn civilians against Gaza officials.

"At around 8am, Israeli drones dropped leaflets with images of a child they killed and the infrastructure they damaged, employing psychological warfare against us," Asmaa Barakaat, a displaced Palestinian currently staying in Deir al-Balah, told Middle East Eye. 

"They called the leaflet a 'newspaper' and titled it 'GazaNew24'. It seems that this will be one of many of this newspaper as they labelled it 'issue 1' at the top corner," the 30-year-old said.

"The extent of the killing and devastation seems insufficient for Israel. They are now adopting a new strategy to stir our emotions and instil fear within us," she said.

"In the 'newspaper', they included a phone number linked to WhatsApp, encouraging civilians to become spies for Israel," she added.
 

Israeli forces have detained at least 14 Palestinians in overnight raids in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said that the arrests were made on Saturday evening, bringing the total number of Palestinians detained since 7 October to 6,512.  
 

Video footage from local Palestinian media shows destruction to al-Rashid street in Gaza. 

The street is known locally as the "beach road", as it stretches along the coast of Gaza. Before the war on Gaza, the street offered locals a plethora of choice when it came to restaurants, cafes and street vendors. 
 
Previously, residents told MEE that the road is "one of the most important streets in the Gaza Strip".