Region

After more than four months of a war that has flattened vast swathes of Gaza, displaced most of the territory's population and pushed people to the brink of starvation, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted it must press ahead into Rafah for "complete victory".

Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven into Gaza's southernmost city, seeking shelter in a sprawling makeshift encampment near the Egyptian border.

"We were displaced from Gaza City to the south," said Ahlam Abu Assi. "[Then] they told us to go to Rafah, so we went to Rafah.

"We can't keep going and coming," she added. "There is no safe place for us."

At least 28,576 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel's assault on the Palestinian territory, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

 “We will fight until complete victory and this includes a powerful action also in Rafah after we allow the civilian population to leave the battle zones,” Netanyahu said in a statement on his official Telegram account.

Australia, Canada and New Zealand were the latest to warn Israel not to launch a ground offensive in Rafah, issuing a joint statement saying it would be “devastating” for the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped there.

“There is simply nowhere else for civilians to go,” they said.

Ceasefire talks 

The Israeli forces said troops had carried out “targeted raids” in the southern city of Khan Yunis overnight and killed a “number of terrorists”, as well as striking what it said was “underground terrorist infrastructure”.

The Hamas-run health ministry said 107 people, “mostly women and children”, had been killed in the overnight attacks.

In Cairo, efforts to secure a ceasefire entered a third day, with negotiators from the United States, Qatar and Egypt trying to broker a deal that would suspend the fighting and see the release of the roughly 130 hostages still in Gaza, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

CIA Director William Burns joined the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service for talks with mediators on Tuesday, while a Hamas delegation was in Cairo on Wednesday.

But there was no sign of immediate progress in the latest efforts.

Israeli media reported that the country’s delegation was told not to return to Cairo and rejoin negotiations until Hamas softens its stance.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas, who governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank, called on Hamas to “rapidly” agree to a truce and stave off further tragedy for Palestinians.

Meanwhile, a reported peace plan was slammed by two powerful Israeli far-right ministers on Thursday, who said they would “in no way agree”.

The Washington Post reported that US President Joe Biden’s administration and a small group of Arab allies were working out a comprehensive plan for long-term peace which sets a timeline for creating a Palestinian state.

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, both extreme-right settlers living in the occupied West Bank, both hit out at the plan, saying a Palestinian state “is an existential threat to Israel”.

Hospitals ‘besieged’ 

As fighting continued on the ground, the Hamas-run health ministry said one person was killed and several wounded in shelling on Nasser Hospital — one of the largest medical sites in southern Gaza which has been the site of heavy fighting for weeks.

Doctors Without Borders has condemned the Israeli military’s order to evacuate thousands of patients, staff and displaced people from the hospital.

The organisation said its staff are continuing to treat patients there “amid near impossible conditions”.

Nurse Mohammed Al Astal told AFP the facility had been “besieged” for a month, with no food or drinking water left.

“At night, tanks opened heavy fire on the hospital and snipers on the roofs of buildings surrounding Nasser hospital opened fire and killed three displaced people,” he said.

The World Health Organisation said it was denied access to the hospital and lost contact with its staff there, while its Palestine representative said most of its mission requests have been denied since January.

Speaking from Rafah, Rik Peeperkorn said Gaza’s hospitals were “completely overwhelmed”.

Patients were frequently undergoing unnecessary amputations of limbs that could have been saved under ordinary circumstances, he said.

The United Nations says there are no fully functioning hospitals left in Gaza.

‘War in the north’ 

With regional tensions high, the Israeli forces said on Wednesday that rocket fire from Lebanon killed an Israeli soldier, while Lebanese sources said Israeli strikes had killed 10 people, eight of them civilians.

Since the outbreak of the Hamas-Israeli war, Hizbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israeli troops, with tens of thousands displaced on both sides.

But the worst single-day civilian death toll in Lebanon since October raised fears of a broader conflict between Israel and Hizbollah.

There have been growing international warnings after Israel vowed to push ahead with a major operation in southern Gaza's Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinians remain trapped.

Humanitarians have warned that carrying out aid operations in the area could soon be impossible.

"We are reaching the barriers of language and describing the humanitarian situation," ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric told a Geneva briefing for diplomats on events in Gaza.

The Red Cross chief told the diplomats their countries were responsible for ensuring the Geneva Conventions are upheld.

"It is not in your interest to offload [that] responsibility... onto humanitarian actors," she said.

"If the way operations are conducted today limit our operational space to a minimum... we will not be able to resolve the problem," she added.

"It doesn't make sense to criticise humanitarian actors for not doing more. You have to enable us to do more." 

Christopher Lockyear, head of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, agreed.

In the current situation, "when we are talking about humanitarian assistance, we're talking about an illusion of aid", he said.

United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths warned the diplomats not to "look to the humanitarian community as a rescue brigade for the people compressed into that area" in southern Gaza.

"Conditions do not allow it," he said.

"It will not be our fault if people suffer," he insisted. "It will be the fault of those who decide to make this happen."

Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have been driven into Gaza's southernmost city by Israel's relentless military campaign, seeking shelter in a sprawling makeshift encampment near the Egypt border. 

Despite pressure from foreign governments and aid agencies not to invade, Israel insists it must push into Rafah and eliminate Hamas battalions.

Griffiths rejected Israel’s suggestion that people could move to safety before the onslaught.

“Evacuation to a safe place in Gaza is an illusion,” he said.

“We must be entirely realistic,” he said warning that the possibility that the military operation will spark a panicked “spillover” into Egypt was a “nightmare... that is right before our eyes”.

Violent provocations by the rebels, who say they are showing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza by attacking shipping, have prompted subsequent US and British air raids.

"I am engaging the Yemeni parties and relevant regional actors to support deescalation in the Red Sea to protect the mediation space in Yemen," Hans Grundberg told the Security Council.

"Three things need to happen in the immediate term to create an off-ramp to this dangerous escalatory cycle," Grundberg said.

He called for regional deescalation, for all parties to refrain from "military opportunism" and for progress towards a mediated agreement to be protected.

The Iran-backed Houthis have been fighting a Saudi-led coalition since 2015, months after they seized the capital Sanaa and most of Yemen's population centers, forcing the internationally recognised government south to Aden.

As recently as December, painstaking negotiations were gaining ground and the United Nations said the warring parties had agreed to work towards "the resumption of an inclusive political process".

The Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, as well as in the Gulf of Aden, in addition to Western retaliation, have thrown the peace process up in the air.

However, "in my latest exchanges, I have received assurances that all parties prefer the path to peace", Grundberg said.

Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the fighting and from indirect causes such as disease and malnutrition. More than 18 million Yemenis need "urgent support", according to the UN's humanitarian agency OCHA.

The Houthis' attacks have prompted some shipping companies to detour around southern Africa to avoid the Red Sea, a vital route that normally carries about 12 per cent of global maritime trade.

"Yemen is not a footnote to a wider regional story," Grundberg warned.

"The regional escalation does not negate the urgent needs in Yemen for a nationwide ceasefire."

Mediators in Egypt were racing to secure a ceasefire and free the remaining hostages before Israel proceeds with a full-scale ground incursion into the Gaza Strip's crowded far-southern city of Rafah.

A Hamas source told AFP that a delegation was headed to Cairo to meet Egyptian and Qatari mediators, after Israeli negotiators held talks with the mediators on Tuesday.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Hamas to "quickly complete a prisoner deal, to spare our Palestinian people from the calamity of another catastrophic event".

CIA Director William Burns had joined Tuesday's talks with David Barnea, head of Israel's Mossad intelligence service, which Egyptian media said had been mostly "positive".

US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby described the negotiations as "constructive and moving in the right direction".

 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an outspoken critic of Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war, also arrived in Cairo on Wednesday for talks with President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.

With regional tensions high, Israel launched strikes on Lebanon hours after fire from Lebanon wounded multiple people in northern Israel, according to medics.

The strikes in south Lebanon killed four civilians including two children and wounded nine other people, a Lebanese security source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Since the outbreak of Israeli offensive on Gaza on October 7, more than 240 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them Hizbollah fighters but also including over 30 civilians.

Hizbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israeli troops since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, with tens of thousands displaced on both sides of the border.

Rafah fears 

The potential for mass civilian casualties in Rafah has triggered urgent appeals, even from close allies, for Israel to hold off sending troops into the last major population centre they have yet to enter in the more than four-month-old war.

Key ally the United States has said it will not back any ground operation in Rafah without a “credible plan” for protecting civilians.

Rafah — where more than 1.4 million Palestinians are trapped — is the main entry point for desperately needed relief supplies and UN agencies have warned of a humanitarian disaster if an assault goes ahead.

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said any military operation “could lead to a slaughter”.

Terrified civilians have been locked in a desperate search for safety.

“My three children were injured, where can I go?” Dana Abu Chaaban asked at the city’s border crossing with Egypt, where she was hoping to be allowed across with her bandaged-up sons.

Pressure has grown on Egypt to open its border to Palestinian civilians, hundreds of thousands of whom have sought shelter in makeshift camps by the border where they face outbreaks of disease and a scarcity of food and water.

“For 100 days we enter the crossing and beg them to let us cross, or to do anything to help us,” Habiba Nakhala said.

US President Joe Biden has said civilians in Rafah “need to be protected”, calling them “exposed and vulnerable”.

But Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stood firm and said that “complete victory” cannot be achieved without the elimination of Hamas’s last battalions in Rafah.

‘Critically important’ 

As the truce talks go on in Cairo, the Israeli forces kept up its bombardment of Gaza, with strikes on both Rafah and the southern city of Khan Yunis, where there has been heavy fighting.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said on Wednesday that 104 people had been killed overnight.

The World Health Organisation sounded a warning on Wednesday about an under-siege hospital in Khan Yunis, which it said it had been unable to contact for weeks.

“Civilians have been called to evacuate, which is extremely dangerous,” Rik Peeperkorn, the representative for the UN agency in the occupied Palestinian territory, told reporters.

Requests to assess and restock the hospital with medical supplies had been denied, he said, adding that “without support... this hospital might become non-functional too”.

Peeperkorn said Nasser was “a key hospital for all of Gaza. We cannot lose that hospital... this hospital is critically important”.

‘Terrible hell’ 

Some Gazans in Rafah were already packing up their belongings in readiness to move but others vowed to stay put, fearing even greater misery in the bombed out hometowns they fled.

But there are mounting fears about food supplies and starvation across other parts of Gaza.

Ahlam Abu Assi said she “would rather die” in Rafah than return to the famine-like conditions facing relatives who stayed in Gaza City.

“My son and his children have nothing to eat. They cook a handful of rice and save it for the next day,” she told AFP. “My grandson cries from hunger.”

"When the attack on Gaza stops and there is a ceasefire, the fire will also stop in the south" of Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address, but warned: "If they [Israel] broaden the confrontation, we will do the same."

Hizbollah fighters have traded near-daily fire with Israel since the war broke out on October 7 between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Fears have been growing of another full-blown conflict between Israel and Hizbollah, with tens of thousands displaced on both sides of the border and regional tensions soaring.

Late last month, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israeli troops would "very soon go into action" near the country's northern border with Lebanon.

Recent weeks have seen a flurry of diplomatic activity in Beirut, with foreign ministers including from Germany, France and Britain visiting in efforts to dial down tensions.

"All the delegations that have come to Lebanon over the past four months... have only one goal: the security of Israel, protecting Israel" and returning displaced north Israeli residents to their homes, Nasrallah said.

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said on Monday he had put forward "proposals" during a recent visit to Lebanon.

Several diplomatic sources, requesting anonymity, told AFP the French plan involved Hizbollah fighters withdrawing to 10-12 kilometres from the border.

"Let nobody think Lebanon is weak and afraid, or that they can impose conditions" including over the withdrawal of Hizbollah fighters, Nasrallah said.

He warned that if Israel decided to wage war on Lebanon, those displaced from northern Israel “will not return” and Israeli officials should “prepare shelters, hotels, schools and tents for 2 million people” who would be displaced.

Last week, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz warned that “time is running out” to reach a diplomatic solution in south Lebanon.

“Israel will act militarily to return the evacuated citizens” to its northern border area if no diplomatic solution is reached, he said.

The cross-border violence since the start of the Hamas-Israel war has killed at least 243 people on the Lebanese side, most of them Hizbollah fighters but also including 30 civilians, according to an AFP tally.