Middle East crisis: consensus among US and Arab allies on need for immediate, sustained Gaza ceasefire, says Blinken – as it happened

Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:

• The French ambassador to the UN security council addressed reporters on Thursday regarding Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, saying, “The first bridge to cross … is to have this Ramadan ceasefire now.” His comments come after the US, which has vetoed numerous ceasefire resolution in the UN security council, drafted a new resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and hostage deal in Gaza.

• US secretary of state Antony Blinken said that negotiating teams are working “every single day” on a deal to get a ceasefire in Gaza in conjunction with a deal to release the remaining hostages taken from Israel into Gaza by Hamas. He added that there are still “real challenges” to a deal and he can’t put a timeline on it, Reuters reports.

• Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, said on Thursday that he plans to invite Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before the US Congress. The comments come a week after Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, called for elections in Israel which could oust Netanyahu, claiming the prime minister has “has lost his way”.

• Cyprus is planning to get “as many boats as possible” to Gaza along a maritime corridor, Cyprus’s foreign minister, Constantinos Kombos, said, Agence France-Presse reports. In a meeting on Thursday, Cyprus hosted representatives from 36 countries, UN agencies and humanitarian groups in the port of Larnaca, where the first aid vessel set sail to Gaza earlier this month.

• World Health Organization chief Tedros Ghebreyesus said that the “future of an entire generation is in serious peril” in Gaza. Adding that children are dying from the effects of malnutrition and disease, and from a lack of adequate water and sanitation, the WHO director-general said: “Recent efforts to deliver food by air and sea are welcome, but only the expansion of land crossings will enable large scale deliveries to prevent famine.”

• Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has said that she will visit the Middle East on Sunday. It will be her seventh visit since the 7 October attack inside southern Israel by Hamas.

• A second ship, the Jennifer, capable of transporting up to 600 tons, will ply the newly inaugurated sea corridor connecting Cyprus with Gaza as soon as weather conditions allow. “It will go either at the end of this week or the beginning of next due to weather conditions,” Cyprus’s foreign ministry spokesperson Theodoros Gotsis told the Guardian of the second aid mission.

• Satellite images analysed by the UN’s Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) showed that 35% of the Gaza Strip’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged by Israel since October. Khan Younis City had been hit “particularly hard”, it said, with 6,663 newly destroyed structures.

“Now it’s time to save lives … The [Palestinian] death toll … needs to stop now. This is why I will encourage the security council to take action … before the weekend,” France’s ambassador to the UNSC, Nicolas de Rivière, said at a press conference on Thursday.

“We cannot procrastinate again and again,” he added.

“The first bridge to cross … is to have this Ramadan ceasefire now,” he said.

Antony Blinken, talking in Cairo, has said that in addition to progress being made towards a ceasefire in Gaza, there has been progress towards the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

21 Mar 202414.45 EDT

Joanna Walters

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said that negotiating teams are working “every single day” on a deal to get a ceasefire in Gaza in conjunction with a deal to release the remaining hostages taken from Israel into Gaza by Hamas.

He added that there are still “real challenges” to a deal and he can’t put a timeline on it, Reuters reports.

Joe Biden had previously forecast that there would be a deal for a temporary ceasefire before the start of Ramadan on 10 March, which obviously did not happen.

Blinken, in Cairo for talks, once again urged Israel to “do more” to get more aid into Gaza, while international figures at the United Nations have already accused Israel of deliberately starving the Palestinians in the besieged territory.

21 Mar 202414.39 EDT

Consensus among US and Arab allies on need for immediate, sustained ceasefire in Gaza – Blinken

Joanna Walters

US secretary of state Antony Blinken spoke moments ago in the Middle East, where he said that he believes a ceasefire deal for Gaza is still possible.

Blinken has flown once again to Cairo for a new round of talks, which have taken on new urgency in the face of famine unfolding in Gaza as it remains under Israeli blockade and bombardment. He said there is consensus among Arab allies and the US on the need for an immediate and sustained ceasefire.

The secretary said that the US is continuing to push for an agreement to be reached in Doha, the capital of Qatar. The Qataris have been acting as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist militancy that controls Gaza and led the attack on southern Israel on 7 October last year, killing more than 1,200 people and taking about 240 people hostage, many of whom are still being held by Hamas and connected groups in the Palestinian territory.

Reuters reports that Blinken said about a ceasefire deal:

There’s still difficult work to get there, but I continue to believe it’s possible.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said he agreed with Blinken on planning “concrete steps” to increase aid to Gaza and continuing coordination.

21 Mar 202414.21 EDT

Julian Borger

Washington’s draft UN security council resolution on Gaza marks a shift in the US position, but it is a nuanced shift, retaining the linkage between a ceasefire and hostage release while loosening that linkage and emphasising that an immediate end to hostilities is the priority.

The primary focus for now is the hostage negotiations underway in Qatar which are moving into high gear again, with CIA and Mossad chiefs, William Burns and David Barnea expected to fly into Doha on Friday.

The US draft resolution is designed to provide a sense of urgency to those talks. It also represents an attempt by the Biden administration to keep pressure on Hamas while seeking to regain some international credibility and mend ties with allies after three vetoes of UN ceasefire resolutions.

The latest veto was cast on 20 February, on an Algerian ceasefire resolution. At the time the US envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, insisted that an unconditional ceasefire could derail the talks on a hostage deal, which Washington portrayed as the best way to a sustainable truce. The US mission at the UN circulated an alternative text which the security council “underscores its support for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza as soon as practicable, based on the formula of all hostages being released”.

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A month has passed since then, however. There has been no hostage deal and Gaza has slipped much further towards absolute catastrophe, with a UN panel of experts warning that a famine is imminent. The US is struggling to avoid the accusation of complicity in that disaster, and February’s version of the text now looks all the more complacent.

The new version of the draft resolution circulated on Thursday morning represents stronger language.

Read the full piece here.

21 Mar 202414.08 EDT

US House speaker to invite Netanyahu to address Congress

Adam Gabbatt

Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, said on Thursday that he plans to invite Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to speak before Congress.

The comments come a week after Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, called for elections in Israel which could oust Netanyahu, claiming the prime minister has “has lost his way”.

Republican support for Netanyahu has remained staunch, despite the death toll in Gaza rising to more than 30,000 in the face of Israel’s continued military action.

“I would love to have him come in and address a joint session of Congress,” Johnson said on Thursday morning, in an interview with CNBC. “We’ll certainly extend that invitation.”

Having babies in Gaza is “just a frightening experience”, Unrwa senior deputy director Scott Anderson said.

Following his visit to Gaza, where Israeli forces have decimated nearly all of the strip’s healthcare facilities since 7 October while killing more than 31,000 Palestinians, Anderson delivered a video address outside Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza City.

He said:

As we toured the hospital today, I saw a sign that said ‘We’re having a baby’ which normally is a joyous time … For the people that are in Gaza city, having babies is not a joyous experience, it’s a frightening experience. Mothers are concerned they won’t be alive in two weeks. They are concerned that the hospital won’t be here in two weeks. And they’re trying to have babies early to give up their lives to preserve their baby’s …

This is entirely a man-made disaster, a man-made situation, and what we did to create this situation, man can do to save the situation.

In a report released earlier this month amid Israel’s deadly war on Gaza, the UN found that an estimated 37 mothers are killed every day. Meanwhile, more than four out of five women report that their family eats half or less of the food they used to before the war began.

The scarcity in food across the strip comes amid the restricted caloric intake, or “humanitarian minimum”, Israel’s own officials set on Palestinians in Gaza years ago.

Cyprus is planning to get “as many boats as possible” to Gaza along a maritime corridor, Cyprus’s foreign minister, Constantinos Kombos, said, Agence France-Presse reports.

In a meeting on Thursday, Cyprus hosted representatives from 36 countries, UN agencies and humanitarian groups in the port of Larnaca, where the first aid vessel set sail to Gaza earlier this month.

The meeting “is about integrating all the states and entities that are participating in order to have a synchronised pace for our actions”, said Kombos, adding that the goal was to get “as many boats as possible [to leave for Gaza] … utilising and leveraging … our geographical position in the area”.

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Working alongside the Turkish Red Crescent, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society distributed food parcels to displaced families in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Thursday:

Following a since-deleted tweet in which Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy claimed earlier this month that there were “no limits” on the entry of aid into Gaza, as well as Levy’s claims that the UN closes the Kerem Shalom crossing on Saturdays, UK foreign secretary David Cameron addressed the claims in a reply to MP Alicia Kearns, who raised aid entry concerns to him.

In his letter, Cameron wrote:

In response to the Israeli spokesman claims you quote in your letter, I can confirm that the UN has not requested that the Kerem Shalom crossing is closed on Saturdays. It is our understanding that Israel closes it due to the Sabbath.

He went on to add:

It is of enormous frustration that UK aid for Gaza has been routinely held up waiting for Israeli permission. For instance, I am aware of some UK funded aid being stuck at the border for just under three weeks waiting for approval.

The main blockers remain arbitrary denials by the government of Israel and the lengthy clearance procedures, including multiple screenings and narrow opening windows in daylight hours.

On Tuesday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed that Levy was suspended, the Jerusalem Post reports. A reason was not provided.

Since October, Israeli forces have killed more than 31,000 Palestinians across Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel’s attacks on the narrow strip have left about 2 million survivors forcibly displaced amid a severe food shortage that is an “entirely man-made disaster”, as described by UN chief António Guterres.

Reuters is carrying some quotes from the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. He said “The future of an entire generation is in serious peril.”

Adding that children are dying from the effects of malnutrition and disease, and from a lack of adequate water and sanitation, the WHO director-general said:

Recent efforts to deliver food by air and sea are welcome, but only the expansion of land crossings will enable large scale deliveries to prevent famine. Once again, we ask Israel to open more crossings and accelerate the entry and delivery of water, food, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid into and within Gaza.

He said that WHO requests to deliver supplies to the enclave were often blocked or refused.

Israel, which insists on inspecting all aid being delivered into Gaza, has repeatedly claimed there is no limit to what would be admitted. Nevertheless, a coalition of aid groups has warned that famine is imminent in northern Gaza with people suffering “catastrophic levels of hunger”, and on Monday Oxfam said Israeli authorities were preventing “a warehouse full of international aid” from reaching the Gaza Strip.

In his statement, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said:

WHO and our partners have been conducting high-risk missions to deliver medicines, fuel and food for health workers and their patients, but our requests to deliver supplies are often blocked or refused.

Damaged roads and continuous fighting, including in and close to hospitals, mean deliveries are few and slow. A planned mission to al-Shifa today had to be cancelled due to lack of security.

Once again, we ask Israel to open more crossings and accelerate the entry and delivery of water, food, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid into and within Gaza.

Once again, we call for health care to be protected, and not militarized. Once again, we call for the release of hostages. And once again, we call for an immediate ceasefire.

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has said that she will visit the Middle East on Sunday. It will be her seventh visit since the 7 October attack inside southern Israel by Hamas.

It has gone 5.20pm in Gaza, Tel Aviv and Beirut, and 6.20pm in Sana’a. Here is a recap of the latest developments:

• The US has drafted a new UN security council resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, amid mounting pressure on Israel to halt its military campaign and allow the delivery of substantial amounts of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory. Details of the resolution, which calls for “an immediate ceasefire tied to the release of hostages” in Gaza, were disclosed by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, as he toured the Middle East.

• EU leaders gathered in Brussels on Thursday for a two-day meeting during which they discussed the war in Gaza amid deep concern about Israeli plans to launch a ground offensive in the city of Rafah. Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs said the lack of food and medicines in Gaza was “a failure of humanity” and Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, called for “an immediate pause in the fighting”.

• Officials from 36 countries and UN agencies gathered in Cyprus on Thursday to discuss how to expedite aid to Palestinians in Gaza via a sea route launched last week. It was attended by Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, as well as Curtis Ried, chief of staff of the US national security council.

• A second ship, The Jennifer, capable of transporting up to 600 tons, will ply the newly inaugurated sea corridor connecting Cyprus with Gaza as soon as weather conditions allow. “It will go either at the end of this week or the beginning of next due to weather conditions,” Cyprus’s foreign ministry spokesperson Theodoros Gotsis told the Guardian of the second aid mission. “Currently there are about 240 tons [of aid] on board but loading will continue,” he said.

• Blinken on Thursday discussed with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi the negotiations to secure an immediate ceasefire for at least six weeks and the release of all hostages kidnapped by Hamas, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. Blinken was in Egypt after visiting Saudi Arabia a day earlier. He also discussed with Sisi the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel.

• Satellite images analysed by the UN’s Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) showed that 35% of the Gaza Strip’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Khan Younis City had been hit “particularly hard”, it said, with 6,663 newly destroyed structures.

• Half the population of the Gaza Strip is at imminent risk of famine as food shortages approach catastrophic levels for more than a million people, the World Bank has warned. Almost six months after the war between Israel and Hamas began, the Washington-based Bank said urgent action was needed to prevent widespread deaths from starvation within the next two months.

• The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had killed more than 50 Palestinian gunmen over the past day in fighting around the Gaza Strip’s al-Shifa hospital, taking the number of fighters killed around the complex to 140 since it launched a raid on the complex on Monday. The military said it was continuing with its “precise operational activity in the Shifa hospital”.

• Hamas condemned Israeli “crimes” at al-Shifa hospital. It also denied that the hospital harboured militants and said those killed by the military were injured patients and displaced people. The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said at least 70 people had been killed in Gaza overnight.

• The occupied West Bank faced a “particularly violent” night on Wednesday into Thursday morning, said Al Jazeera journalist Laura Khan reporting from the area. She said the Israeli army had raided Tulkarem at dawn, an Israeli drone strike in Jenin had killed four men and in the south of Hebron soldiers had shot a man in the leg after he “tried to carry out a stabbing attack”. Khan also said “In Nablus, a witness account described how one man had his phone confiscated by an Israeli soldier and was brutally beaten for an hour, mostly in his face.” The Guardian was been unable to verify these incidents.

• The death toll rose to four on Thursday in an Israeli operation in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said. Two of the four Palestinians were killed by an airstrike and two by live bullets, the PRCS said.

• The military told AFP on Thursday that it had been carrying out an operation in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nur Shams, which adjoins the town of Tulkarem in the northern West Bank. “During the operation, an aircraft struck two terrorists who posed an immediate threat to the forces,” the Israeli army said. In total, nine Palestinians were killed in less than 24 hours in the West Bank, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

• 25 Palestinians, including two children, were detained overnight by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank, Wafa said, citing the Palestinian prisoner society.

• Arab ministers held talks with a Palestinian official in Cairo on Thursday to discuss efforts to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and were due to meet Blinken, who is seeking to secure a ceasefire of at least six weeks.

• 65 Palestinians were killed 92 were injured in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, according to the latest figures from the Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas. According to the statement, at least 31,988 Palestinians have been killed and 74,188 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

• Israel will take control of Rafah even if it causes a rift with the US, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday, describing the city packed with refugees as a final Hamas bastion harbouring a quarter of the group’s fighters. Strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer made the comments on the Call Me Back with Dan Senor podcast.

• A merchant vessel reported shots from a skiff approximately 109 nautical miles south of Yemen’s Nishtun, British security firm Ambrey said on Thursday. No damage or injuries were reported.

• A burning object was thrown at the Israeli embassy in The Hague on Thursday morning. Police in the Netherlands said they had arrested a suspect and that nobody was injured.

Arab ministers held talks with a Palestinian official in Cairo on Thursday to discuss efforts to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and were due to meet US secretary of state Antony Blinken, who is seeking to secure a ceasefire of at least six weeks, reports Reuters.

The ministers met with Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee general secretary Hussein al-Sheikh to discuss “efforts to stop the Israeli war against Gaza, the inevitability of achieving a ceasefire, and full access to aid,” the Egyptian foreign ministry’s spokesperson said.

Blinken was also due to meet with Sheikh – a confidant of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and an intermediary in contacts with Israel – along with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates’ state minister for international cooperation, according to an Egyptian foreign ministry note, said Reuters.

Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited control of the occupied West Bank, could play a role in administering Gaza once fighting ends, though Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed strong opposition.

Blinken had already met with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to discuss the negotiations to secure an immediate ceasefire in the war, now in its sixth month, and the release of all hostages kidnapped by Hamas, US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

They also discussed the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel.

Blinken had also met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

Lisa O’Carroll has also written about comments by Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, who has called for “an immediate pause in the fighting”. Rutte said this would allow for more aid to get into Gaza and be distributed, and also to “get the hostages released.” You can read more on the European live blog here.

My colleague Lisa O’Carroll is in Brussels and reporting from the EU leaders summit. She has been providign updates for the European live blog on comments made by Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs. She writes:

The lack of food and medicines in Gaza is “a failure of humanity” Josep Borrell has said on arrival to the EU leaders summit.

“What is happening today in Gaza is the failure of humanity, it is not a humanitarian crisis, it is the failure of humanity, it is not an earthquake, it is not a flood, it is bombing.”

“The only way you can stop the humanitarian crisis, human crisis is Israel respecting more civilians and allowing more support into Gaza.”

You can read more on Borell’s comments here and here.