Food aid to Gaza ‘three times more likely’ to be blocked by Israel than other aid, says UN – as it happened

• Hamas has said Israel’s proposal that it received from Qatari and Egyptian mediators did not meet any of the demands of Palestinian factions. But the Palestinian militant group also said on Tuesday it was considering a new framework for a truce proposed during the latest round of negotiations in Cairo. The three-part proposal would halt fighting for six weeks to facilitate an exchange of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

• Defying international condemnation over the proposal, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said a date had been set for an invasion of Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, without specifying when. Many western countries, including the US, have voiced strong opposition to the proposed Israeli ground invasion as any attack on Rafah is likely to cause many more civilian casualties and worsen an already acute humanitarian crisis across Gaza. Israel says it has a plan to evacuate civilians ahead of its offensive, and Israel’s defence ministry on Monday published a tender seeking a supplier of tents. The Israeli official later confirmed that the tents were part of the Rafah preparations.

• At least 33,360 Palestinians have been killed and 75,993 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement.

• Israel has, for the first time, used a seaborne missile defence system to shoot down a drone approaching from the Red Sea that had set off sirens in the port city of Eilat, the military said. “Overnight, for the first time ever, an IDF Sa’ar 6-class corvette missile ship successfully intercepted a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) that had approached from the east and had crossed into the area of the Gulf of Eilat,” the military said on Tuesday.

• The UN agency for Palestinian refugees must remain “the backbone of any humanitarian response” for the 2 million people in Gaza if mass starvation is to be avoided, the Unrwa director of planning, Sam Rose, has said. This warning came as Israel was accused of blocking far more convoys carrying food aid within Gaza, where famine is looming, than convoys carrying other kinds of aid. “Food convoys that should be going particularly to the north, where 70 percent of people face famine conditions, are … three times more likely to be denied than any other humanitarian convoys with other kinds of material,” Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN’s humanitarian agency, told reporters in Geneva.

• Turkey will impose restrictions on the export of products from 54 different categories to Israel until a ceasefire is declared in Gaza, the Turkish trade ministry said. The ministry said the measures would take effect immediately, adding that the restrictions would include iron and steel products and construction equipment, among other things. In response, Israel vowed to take steps against Turkey, accusing it of violating trade deals between the two countries.

• France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, has suggested that the international community should pressure Israel by potentially imposing sanctions to force it to allow more aid into Gaza. “There must be levers of influence and there are multiple levers, going up to sanctions to let humanitarian aid cross checkpoints,” he told French outlets RFI radio and France 24.

• Israeli warplanes struck a Syrian military position overnight in response to rocket fire on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, the military said on Tuesday. The Israeli military said on Tuesday that “warplanes attacked Syrian army military infrastructure overnight in the Mahajjah area” – about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the demilitarised zone separating the opposing forces. The Israeli army said it identified a rocket launch from Syrian territory on Monday that caused no casualties. It said artillery struck the source of the fire.

We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.

The commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards navy said on Tuesday that Israel’s presence in the United Arab Emirates was a threat to Tehran and this “should not happen”.

Reuters reports:

Iran has threatened to retaliate for suspected Israeli airstrikes on its consulate in Syria’s capital last week that killed seven Revolutionary Guards officers including two senior commanders, stoking tensions between the Middle East arch enemies already simmering over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The UAE, situated across the Gulf from Iran, became the most prominent Arab nation to forge diplomatic ties with Israel in 30 years under a U.S.-brokered accord in 2020, though Abu Dhabi also has normal diplomatic and commercial relations with Tehran.

“We know that the Zionists (Israel) were not brought to the UAE for economic purposes but rather for security and military work. This is a threat to us and should not happen,” Revolutionary Guards Navy Cmdr Alireza Tangsiri said, according to Iran’s semi-official Student news agency.

Tangsiri added that the Gulf, as well as the Gulf of Oman outside the strait of Hormuz through which a major amount of the world’s seaborne oil passes, were no places for Israelis.

He did not indicate whether Iran was considering any action in the region over Israel’s presence.

“We do not get hit without striking back, but we are also not hasty in our retaliation,” Tangsiri said, a few days after a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader warned that Israeli embassies were no longer safe.

The UAE’s normalisation with Israel paved the way for several other Arab states to follow suit, breaking a taboo on diplomatic ties without the creation of a Palestinian state.

Israel has been blocking far more convoys carrying food aid within Gaza, where famine is looming, than convoys carrying other kinds of aid, the UN has said.

A spokesperson for the UN’s humanitarian agency pointed to statistics from March showing that it was much more difficult to get clearance for delivering food than other aid in the besieged enclave.

“Food convoys that should be going particularly to the north, where 70 percent of people face famine conditions, are … three times more likely to be denied than any other humanitarian convoys with other kinds of material,” Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva.

Laerke also pointed to delays linked to the crossing point opening hours and the fact that Israel has barred Egyptian drivers and trucks from being in the same area at the same time as Palestinian drivers and trucks.

“That means there’s not a smooth handover,” Laerke said.

The main problem though was then getting authorisation and assurances that aid distribution can go ahead unimpeded, he said.

Israel is facing mounting international pressure to allow more aid into Gaza, which is facing a deepening humanitarian catastrophe. Israel says the main problem is with UN aid distribution within Gaza.

Cogat, the Israeli defence ministry body that manages the flow of aid, wrote on X earlier today that “741 humanitarian aid trucks were inspected and transferred to the Gaza Strip over the last 2 days”.

“Only 267 aid trucks were distributed by UN aid agencies inside Gaza (out of which 146 carried food),” it said.

“The aid is available, distribution is what matters.”

Israel says aid is moving into Gaza more quickly after international pressure to increase access, Reuters reports, but the amount is disputed. And the United Nations (UN) says it is still much less than the bare minimum to meet humanitarian needs.

Israel said 419 trucks – the most since the conflict began – entered on Monday; though the Red Crescent and United Nations gave much lower figures – with the UN saying many were only half-full because of Israeli inspection rules.

Aid agencies have complained Israel is not ensuring enough access for food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies. And the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has accused the nation of using starvation as a weapon of war.

The UN humanitarian agency (OCHA) spokesperson Jens Laerke has also pointed to severe restrictions on delivery of aid inside Gaza itself last month; saying Israel had denied permission for half the convoys it tried sending to the north in March – with UN aid convoys three times more likely to be refused than any other.

The Israeli military department responsible for aid transfers denies it is hindering humanitarian relief into Gaza, saying there is no limit on supplies for civilians and blaming delays on the United Nations, which it says is inefficient.

Israel will complete the elimination of Hamas’ brigades, including in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, and nothing will prevent this, Reuters quotes the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying.

There is no force in the world that will stop us. There are many forces that are trying to do so, but it will not help, since this enemy, after what it did, will never do it again.

Netanyahu has defied international condemnation to say he has set a date for an invasion of Gaza’s southernmost city – though he did not specify what it would be.

Many western countries, including the US, have voiced strong opposition to the proposed Israeli ground invasion as any attack on Rafah is likely to cause many more civilian casualties and worsen an already acute humanitarian crisis across Gaza.

9 Apr 202407.56 EDT

Unrwa vital to avert starvation in Gaza, says agency official

Patrick Wintour

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees must remain “the backbone of any humanitarian response” for the 2 million people in Gaza if mass starvation is to be avoided, the Unrwa director of planning, Sam Rose, has said.

Israel is continuing to impede Unrwa convoys to northern Gaza, where 300,000 people are facing famine, he said. “Our space is continuing to be squeezed at a time when the international community urgently needs to get as much assistance as possible to people in the north.”

More than half of the 16 countries that suspended funding of Unrwa – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East – after Israel claimed 12 of the 13,000 Unrwa staff in Gaza had taken part in the attack on Israel on 7 October have already decided to resume funding.

You can read the full story here:

Israel has, for the first time, used a seaborne missile defence system to shoot down a drone approaching from the Red Sea that had set off sirens in the port city of Eilat, the military said on Tuesday.

Eilat has been a frequent target for launches by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen as a show of support for Hamas.

Israel positioned missile boats in the Red Sea after the start of its war in Gaza, the military said. One of those missile boats has shot down the drone with the new system called the C-Dome, Reuters reported.

“Overnight, for the first time ever, an IDF Sa’ar 6-class corvette missile ship successfully intercepted a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) that had approached from the east and had crossed into the area of the Gulf of Eilat,” the military said.

Nicaragua has asked the international court of justice (ICJ) to order Germany to halt military arms exports to Israel and to resume its funding of the UN Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa, saying there is a serious risk of genocide in Gaza.

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At least 33,360 Palestinians have been killed and 75,993 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

Most of the casualties have been women and children, the health ministry has said, and thousands more bodies are likely to remain uncounted under rubble across Gaza.

The foreign minister, Penny Wong, says the recognition of a Palestinian state is “the only hope to break the endless cycle of violence” in the Middle East and a two-state solution would help ensure long-term security for Israel and further undermine Hamas.

In a speech on Tuesday, Wong also again called on the Netanyahu government to abandon plans for a Gaza ground invasion in Rafah, urging Israel to make “major and immediate changes” to its military campaign to protect civilians and warning of imminent starvation among besieged Palestinians.

“Because the simple truth is that a secure and prosperous future for both Israelis and Palestinians will only come with a two-state solution – recognition of each other’s right to exist,” Wong told an ANU National Security College conference.

You can read the full story by my colleague, Josh Butler, here:

An Israeli airstrike on a municipality building of al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip killed the head of the municipality council, Hatem Al-Ghamri, and four other civilians, the Hamas-run government media office and medics said.

The Israeli military said it killed Ghamri, who it described as a military operative in Hamas’ Maghazi Battalion involved in rocket launches against Israel.

Hamas said Ghamri was a civil service official and described his killing as an “assassination”.

An Israeli airstrike on a house in Deir Al-Balah killed one Palestinian and injured 20 other people, Hamas said.

In Rafah, the southern city on the Egyptian border, a missile fired from a drone reportedly killed one man and injured several others. These claims have not yet been independently verified.

Unrwa, the UN Palestinian refugee agency, which is the main UN agency in Gaza, has said it urgently needs more access to the besieged enclave.

The agency says it has delivered more than 10m food units and 24m litres of water to Palestinians in the enclave since the war began in October, but this has not been enough to meet the needs of the population.

UN sources have said Israel wants to dismantle Unrwa, which provides humanitarian assistance and basic services in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and is a critical part of social infrastructure in Gaza.

Israel has accused Unrwa staff members of participating in the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed, and called the agency “a front for Hamas”.

Unrwa has said the contracts of those staff members have been immediately terminated with an investigation launched.

Unrwa has reportedly not been able to deliver food to the north since 29 January, where famine looms.

• Hamas has said Israel’s proposal that it received from Qatari and Egyptian mediators did not meet any of the demands of Palestinian factions. But the Palestinian militant group also said on Tuesday it was considering a new framework for a truce proposed during the latest round of negotiations in Cairo. The three-part proposal would halt fighting for six weeks to facilitate an exchange of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

• Defying international condemnation over the proposal, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said a date had been set for an invasion of Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, without specifying when. Many western countries, including the US, have voiced strong opposition to the proposed Israeli ground invasion as any attack on Rafah is likely to cause many more civilian casualties and worsen an already acute humanitarian crisis across Gaza. Israel says it has a plan to evacuate civilians ahead of its offensive, and Israel’s defence ministry on Monday published a tender seeking a supplier of tents. The Israeli official later confirmed that the tents were part of the Rafah preparations.

• Turkey will impose restrictions on the export of products from 54 different categories to Israel until a ceasefire is declared in Gaza, the Turkish trade ministry said. The ministry said the measures would take effect immediately, adding that the restrictions would include iron and steel products and construction equipment, among other things. In response, Israel vowed to take steps against Turkey, accusing it of violating trade deals between the two countries.

• France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, has suggested that the international community should pressure Israel by potentially imposing sanctions to force it to allow more aid into Gaza. “There must be levers of influence and there are multiple levers, going up to sanctions to let humanitarian aid cross checkpoints,” he told French outlets RFI radio and France 24.

• Israeli warplanes struck a Syrian military position overnight in response to rocket fire on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, the military said on Tuesday. The Israeli military said on Tuesday that “warplanes attacked Syrian army military infrastructure overnight in the Mahajjah area” – about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the demilitarised zone separating the opposing forces. The Israeli army said it identified a rocket launch from Syrian territory on Monday that caused no casualties. It said artillery struck the source of the fire.

Israel vowed on Tuesday to take steps against Turkey, accusing it of violating trade deals between the two countries after Ankara announced trade restrictions over the war in Gaza (see earlier post at 07.44 for more details).

“Turkey is unilaterally violating the trade agreements with Israel, and Israel will adopt the necessary steps against it,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, sharply criticised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the decision.

“Erdoğan is once again sacrificing the economic interests of the people of Turkey for his support of the Hamas murderers in Gaza who raped, murdered and desecrated the bodies of women, girls, adults and burned children alive,” he wrote in a post on X.

“Israel will not submit to violence and extortion and will not condone the unilateral violation of the trade agreements and will take parallel measures against Turkey that will harm the Turkish economy.”

Israel is now preparing an “expanded list of products” it intends to stop importing from Turkey, the ministry said, including construction materials like steel and cement.

Israel’s security is at the “core” of German foreign policy, the UN’s highest court heard on Tuesday, where Berlin is defending itself against a claim that it is furnishing Israel with weapons being used on Gaza.

“Our history is the reason why Israel’s security has been at the core of Germany foreign policy,” Germany’s representative told the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

“Where Germany has provided support to Israel, including in a form of export of arms and other military equipment, the quality and purposes of these supplies have been grossly distorted by Nicaragua,” Tania von Uslar-Gleichen said.

Nicaragua has brought Germany before the ICJ to demand that judges impose emergency measures to stop Berlin from providing Israel with weapons and other assistance.

Lawyers for Nicaragua argued that Germany is in breach of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, set up in the wake of the Holocaust, by furnishing Israel with weapons.

In January, the ICJ imposed provisional measures ordering Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and acts of genocide in Gaza. The orders came in a case filed by South Africa accusing Israel of breaching the Genocide Convention.

Israel strongly denies its military campaign amounts to breaches of the Genocide Convention.

France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, has suggested that the international community should pressure Israel by potentially imposing sanctions to force it to allow more aid into Gaza.

“There must be levers of influence and there are multiple levers, going up to sanctions to let humanitarian aid cross checkpoints,” he was quoted by Al Jazeera as having told French outlets RFI radio and France 24.

“France was one of the first countries to propose European Union sanctions on Israeli settlers who are committing acts of violence in the West Bank. We will continue if needed to obtain the opening of humanitarian aid,” he added.

The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Turk, said last month that Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid for Gaza may amount to a starvation tactic that could be a war crime.

Famine is “projected and imminent” in the northern half of Gaza, a UN-backed report said last month, and according to Oxfam the number of people facing “catastrophic levels” of hunger has nearly doubled since December.

Israel denies blocking aid, saying shortages are a result of logistics failures by humanitarian organisations or Hamas diverting supplies.

But aid agencies say that delivery has been severely hampered by a combination of logistical obstacles, damaged roads, a breakdown of public order and lengthy bureaucratic controls imposed by Israel.

Some aid groups have said sending truck convoys north has been too dangerous because of the military’s failure to ensure safe passage.