Israel publishes plan for new West Bank settlement as regional tensions simmerIsrael has published plans for one of its proposed new settlements in the occupied West Bank, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Wednesday, upping the ante a day before planned new Gaza peace talks seen as vital to preventing a regional war.The far-right minister said the move was a response to actions by the Palestinian West Bank leadership and countries which have recognised a Palestinian state, Reuters reported.“No anti-Israel or anti-Zionist decision will stop the development of the settlement. We will continue to fight against the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state. This is the mission of my life,” said Smotrich.Most United Nations member states consider settlements built in the West Bank and other territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war to be illegal under international law. Israel disputes this, citing the Jewish people’s historical and biblical ties to the land.Israel announced in June it was going to legalise five outposts in the West Bank, establish three new settlements, and seize huge swathes of land where Palestinians seek to create an independent state, further inflaming Palestinian anger.ShareKey eventsShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureIsraeli armoured vehicles drive on a road during a raid in Tubas city in the occupied West Bank on 14 August 2024. Photograph: APAImages/REX/ShutterstockShareIsrael publishes plan for new West Bank settlement as regional tensions simmerIsrael has published plans for one of its proposed new settlements in the occupied West Bank, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Wednesday, upping the ante a day before planned new Gaza peace talks seen as vital to preventing a regional war.The far-right minister said the move was a response to actions by the Palestinian West Bank leadership and countries which have recognised a Palestinian state, Reuters reported.“No anti-Israel or anti-Zionist decision will stop the development of the settlement. We will continue to fight against the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state. This is the mission of my life,” said Smotrich.Most United Nations member states consider settlements built in the West Bank and other territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war to be illegal under international law. Israel disputes this, citing the Jewish people’s historical and biblical ties to the land.Israel announced in June it was going to legalise five outposts in the West Bank, establish three new settlements, and seize huge swathes of land where Palestinians seek to create an independent state, further inflaming Palestinian anger.ShareSmoke rises following an Israeli air strike as internally displaced Palestinians sit next to their tents in Khan Younis camp, southern Gaza Strip, 13 August 2024. Photograph: Haitham Imad/EPAShareEdmund BowerWhen 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded in the port of Beirut it launched 75-year-old Georges Abi Khalil from his bed. At least 220 people were killed and more than 7,000 wounded in the explosion on 4 August 2020 that blew out the doors and windows of Abi Khalil’s one-bedroom apartment and caused $4bn of damage throughout the city.Sitting in the same apartment, four years later, Abi Khalil and his 69-year-old wife, Afaf, recall how their church and local charities assisted in the aftermath. “You wouldn’t believe how many people came out to help us,” says Abi Khalil.As with many others in Beirut, they had already been financially wiped out the previous year, victims of the 2019 economic crisis that erased their life savings. With the crisis entering its fifth year, the couple still need support, but any government and charitable assistance available then has all but dried up.Abi Khalil is interrupted by two loud bangs: sonic booms caused by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) jets buzzing the city at low altitude. The IDF flyovers have been increasing over the past week following Hezbollah’s promise of “rage and revenge” in retaliation for two Israeli assassinations. Afaf gasps, briefly mistaking the noise for the opening blows of a full-scale war that the Lebanese government says could displace a quarter of the population. “We’re so tired,” says Afaf. “We can’t handle a war.”According to a World Bank report, 44% of Lebanese people live in poverty, triple that of 10 years ago. Georges and Afaf receive no pension and no welfare. A local charity, Loubnaniyoun, pays for their medication and brings them one hot meal a day. However, the charity can now only support 50 vulnerable families in Lebanon as its funding has declined by 50% in the past year due to donor fatigue.ShareHere is more from the US envoy, Amos Hochstein, who is visiting Beirut.Hochstein warned Wednesday the clock was ticking for a Gaza ceasefire that could also help end 10 months of cross-border exchanges between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel.His visit comes a day before ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel are set to resume, with top diplomats scrambling to avert all-out war after Iran and Hezbollah vowed revenge for recent high profile killings, AFP reports.Hochstein told a Beirut news conference that he and parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, discussed:
The framework agreement that’s on the table for a Gaza ceasefire, and he and I agreed there is no more time to waste and there’s no more valid excuses from any party for any further delay.
The deal would also help enable a diplomatic resolution here in Lebanon and that would prevent an outbreak of a wider war.
We have to take advantage of this window for diplomatic action and diplomatic solutions. That time is now.
Late last month, an Israeli strike killed top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of the group, just hours before Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran in an attack blamed on Israel.SharePalestinian newborn twins, their mother and grandmother were killed by an Israeli strike on their Gaza apartment as their father picked up their birth certificates.Mohammed Abu Al-Qumsan had just picked up the certificates when he found out the twins had been killed, along with his wife and her mother, by a strike on the building where they were sheltering, according to Reuters.He waved the laminated documents, supposed to signify rare joy in the besieged Palestinian enclave, as a man held him while he wept at the morgue where their bodies were brought.Recalling the devastating phone call from people in the neighbourhood, Abu Al-Qumsan, 31, said:
My wife is gone, my two babies and my mother-in-law. I was told it’s a tank shell on the apartment they were in, in a house we were displaced to.
He and others carried his boy and girl, Asser and Ayssel, who were wrapped in white shrouds – a common sight in Gaza, where Israel’s land and air campaign has put hundreds of thousands of people regularly on the move in search of shelter.A man prayed as the bodies were placed in the back of a car and a crowd gathered and people looked on from the balcony of one of Gaza’s overwhelmed emergency rooms, at the Al-Aqsa Maryrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the centre of the coastal strip.Ten months after the Gaza war erupted, air strikes, artillery shells and severe shortages of medicine, food and clean water have brought one of the world’s most densely populated places to its knees.Hospital doctor Khalil al-Daqran said:
Today, it was registered in history that the occupation army targets newborn children who are barely four days old, twins along with their mother and grandmother.
ShareUpdated at 13.26 CESTPaul KarpIn Australia, Peter Dutton has escalated the Coalition’s rhetoric against Palestinians fleeing the Gaza war zone, claiming that none should be allowed to Australia “at the moment” due to an unspecified “national security risk”.The comments from the opposition leader on Wednesday contradict the assessment by the Asio spy chief, Mike Burgess, that rhetorical support for Hamas should not be an automatic bar to Palestinians receiving visas.Dutton’s rhetoric was immediately rejected by senior Albanese government figures, who noted security checks are the same as when the Coalition was in power.The Albanese government is now looking for ways to allow Palestinians who fled to Australia to stay longer, with the new home affairs minister, Tony Burke, declaring that no country should send people back to Gaza right now.ShareHamas to stay out of Gaza truce talksThe Palestinian Islamist group Hamas said on Wednesday it would not take part in a new round of Gaza ceasefire talks slated for Thursday in Qatar, dimming hopes for a negotiated truce that Iranian sources say could hold back an Iranian attack on Israel.The US has said it expects indirect talks to go ahead as planned in Qatar’s capital Doha on Thursday, and that a ceasefire agreement was still possible, Reuters reported. However, Axios reported that US secretary of state Antony Blinken has postponed a trip to the Middle East that had been expected to begin on Tuesday.Three senior Iranian officials have said that only a ceasefire deal in Gaza would hold Iran back from direct retaliation against Israel for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on its soil last month.The Israeli government said it would send a delegation to Thursday’s talks, but Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, requested a workable plan to implement a proposal it has already accepted rather than more talks.“Hamas is committed to the proposal presented to it on 2 July, which is based on the UN security council resolution and the Biden speech and the movement is prepared to immediately begin discussion over a mechanism to implement it,” senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.“Going to new negotiation allows the occupation to impose new conditions and employ the maze of negotiation to conduct more massacres,” he added.ShareUS envoy Amos Hochstein said on Wednesday that he believes a war between Israel and Lebanon’s powerful militant group Hezbollah can be avoided.When asked at a news conference after meeting Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a strong Hezbollah ally, whether Israel and Hezbollah could avoid a war, Hochstein replied: “I hope so, I believe so.”ShareIsrael’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 39,965 Palestinians and wounded 92,294 since 7 October the Palestinian health ministry said on Wednesday.A total of 36 Palestinians have been killed and 54 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry said in a statement.ShareIsraeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday killed at least 17 people, including five children and their parents, Palestinian health officials say.The latest strikes came on the eve of new talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the 10-month-long war.One strike hit a family home late on Tuesday in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, which dates back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.It killed five children, ranging in age from two to 11, and their parents, according to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.An Associated Press reporter who saw the bodies arrive said they had been dismembered by the blast and that the two-year-old had been decapitated.ShareUnited States president Joe Biden said achieving a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was “getting hard” but he expressed his resolve at securing an end to the hostilities.Leaders in the US, Egypt and Qatar had hoped ceasefire talks, to reach a deal between Israel and Hamas to pause the conflict in Gaza and see Israeli hostages returned to their families and Palestinian civilians returned to their homes, would begin in Doha or Cairo on Thursday.But Hamas official Ahmad Abdul Hadi has said the group will not participate in the talks, according to reports by Sky News and the New York Times.“We’ll see what Iran does and we’ll see what happens if there is any attack. But I’m not giving up,” Biden told reporters after arriving in New Orleans.United Nations Security Council members have called for a Gaza ceasefire deal, AP reported.But the council, which voted in June to embrace a United States proposal for a ceasefire, took no further action at Tuesday’s emergency meeting on Israel’s weekend airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza.ShareThe US military said on Tuesday it destroyed two Houthi vessels in the Red Sea.More to follow on this as we get it.ShareThree-month-old baby Reem Abu Hayyah is the only member of her family to survive an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip late on Monday.A few miles to the north, Mohamed Abuel-Qomasan lost his wife and their twin babies – just four days old – in another strike.More than 10 months into its war with Hamas, Israel’s relentless bombardment of the isolated territory has wiped out extended families, AP reported.The Israeli strike on Monday destroyed a home near the southern city of Khan Younis, killing 10 people.The dead included Reem Abu Hayyah’s parents and five siblings, ranging in age from five to 12, as well as the parents of three other children.All four children were wounded in the strike.“There is no one left except this baby,” said her aunt Soad Abu Hayyah.“Since this morning, we have been trying to feed her formula, but she does not accept it, because she is used to her mother’s milk.”The strike that killed Mr Abuel-Qomasan’s wife and newborns – a boy, Asser, and a girl, Ayssel – also killed the twins’ maternal grandmother.ShareOpening summaryHello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.The US has approved the sale of $20bn in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel, as the Pentagon says it is “committed to the security of Israel”.Secretary of state Antony Blinken approved the sale of F-15 jets and equipment worth nearly $19bn along with tank cartridges valued at $774m, explosive mortar cartridges valued at over $60m and army vehicles worth $583m, the Pentagon said in a statement.The Boeing Co F-15 fighter jets were expected to take years to produce, and deliveries were expected to begin in 2029. Other equipment would begin delivery in 2026, according to the Pentagon.The US, Israel’s biggest ally and weapons supplier, has sent Israel more than 10,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs and thousands of Hellfire missiles since the start of the Gaza war in October, US officials told Reuters in June.The approval comes as western diplomats have scrambled to prevent a major conflagration in the Middle East, after Iran and its allies blamed Israel for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month.

Iran has rejected western calls not to retaliate against Israel for the killing in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, late last month. “Such demands lack political logic, are entirely contrary to the principles and rules of international law, and represent an excessive request,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanani, said. A report on Tuesday from the official IRNA news agency said President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a phone conversation late on Monday with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, said that the west’s silence about “unprecedented inhumane crime” in Gaza, and Israeli attacks elsewhere in the Middle East, was “irresponsible” and encouraged Israel to put regional and global security at risk.

Only a ceasefire deal in Gaza stemming from hoped-for talks this week would hold Iran back from direct retaliation against Israel for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on its soil, three senior Iranian officials have told Reuters. A ceasefire in Gaza would give Iran cover for a smaller “symbolic” response, one of the sources said.

Asked on Tuesday if he thought Iran might forgo a retaliatory strike if a Gaza ceasefire was reached, Joe Biden said: “That’s my expectation.” The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Washington’s goal in the Middle East is to “turn the temperature down,” deter and defend against any future attacks, and avoid regional conflict. “That starts with finalising a deal for an immediate ceasefire with hostage release in Gaza. We need to get this over the finish line,” she told a UN security council meeting.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s ultranationalist national security minister, defied longstanding rules to lead hundreds of Israelis in singing Jewish hymns and performing religious rituals on the raised compound in Jerusalem’s Old City known as al-Haram al-Sharif to Muslims. Under a longstanding but fragile arrangement, Jews can visit the site but not pray there. The compound is the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest for Jews, who call it the Temple Mount. Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Ben-Gvir’s visit “deviated from the status quo” and that Israel’s policy on the Temple Mount remained unchanged.
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