Israel-Gaza war live: Biden only published partial version of Gaza ceasefire proposal, says Netanyahu | Israel-Gaza war

Lebanon’s Hezbollah armed group said on Monday it had launched a squadron of drones towards the headquarters of the Israel military’s Galilee formation, Reuters reported. We don’t have much more information on this at the moment but will update the blog as soon as we get some.

Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has accused Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to “whitewash” a deal to wind down the war in Gaza that is being advanced by the US president, Joe Biden, and repeated a threat to quit the government.

He told his parliamentary faction that Netanyahu invited him to read the proposal but the prime minister’s aides twice failed to produce the document. Any plan must entail toppling Hamas, Ben-Gvir was quoted by Reuters as having said.

Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners – the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir – immediately voiced opposition to the new truce plan when Shabbat ended on Saturday night, threatening to resign if it goes ahead.

Biden had said the proposal would involve an initial six-week truce with a partial Israeli military withdrawal and the release of some hostages while the two sides negotiated “a permanent end to hostilities”.

Faisal Ali is a Guardian multimedia journalist

Earlier today, the UN released its analysis of satellite images of Gaza revealing that Israel’s attack on the Strip has destroyed, damaged or possibly damaged 55% of its structures. The UN’s satellite centre, which carried out the analysis, said about 137,297 structures had been affected, with the central governorate of Deir al-Balah and Gaza in the north faring the worse.

We’ve compiled some satellite images via Planet Labs to illustrate the scale of destruction from before the war and after in Gaza’s two largest cities, Khan Younis and Gaza City. Here is a graphic showing the areas around Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood near its port:

And here is Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest city:

Here is a Guardian investigation which used satellite imagery and open-source evidence to detail the mass destruction of buildings and land in three neighbourhoods in Gaza:

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that the US president, Joe Biden, in advancing a plan to wind down the war in Gaza, had published only some of the details.

“The war will be stopped for the purpose of returning hostages and then we will proceed with other discussions,” David Mencer, an Israeli government spokesperson, quoted Netanyahu as saying.

This appeared to be reiteration of Israel’s refusal to call off the offensive against Hamas entirely before the group is destroyed, echoing Netanyahu’s statement on Saturday in which described the commitment to a permanent ceasefire before Hamas military and government capacity is destroyed as a “non-starter”.

Netanyahu said on Saturday:

Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.

Under the proposal, Israel will continue to insist these conditions are met before a permanent ceasefire is put in place. The notion that Israel will agree to a permanent ceasefire before these conditions are fulfilled is a non-starter.

What was the Israeli proposal Joe Biden outlined last week?

• The first phase of the proposal involves a six-week ceasefire when Israeli forces would withdraw from “all populated areas” of Gaza, some hostages – including the elderly and women – would be freed in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, Palestinian civilians could return to their homes in Gaza and 600 trucks a day would bring humanitarian aid into the devastated enclave.

• In this phase, Hamas and Israel would negotiate a permanent ceasefire that Biden said would last “as long has Hamas lives up to its commitments.” If negotiations took more than six weeks, the temporary ceasefire would extend while they continued.

• In the second phase, Biden said there would be an exchange for all remaining living hostages, including male soldiers, Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza and the permanent ceasefire would begin.

Labour leader Keir Starmer has hinted that UK arms sales to Israel could be reviewed under a Labour government during a campaign event in Bury.

He said: “I think our government should follow the US lead on this in relation to arms sales and review the licences to see whether any of them would be or are being used in the Rafah offensive.”

During a Q/A with reporters after a speech he made on his commitment to the UK’s nuclear deterrent, Starmer said that he had been pressing the government to share the legal advice it had been receiving regarding weapons sales, adding: “If we’re privileged to come into power, we’ll be able to see that advice or commission our own.”

Jason Burke

Hamas still strong in areas ‘cleared’ by Israel in northern Gaza, say experts

There may be more Hamas militants in the north of Gaza, supposedly cleared by Israeli forces months ago, than in Rafah, the southern city in the territory described by Israeli officials as the extremist Islamist organisation’s “last stronghold”, analysts believe.

More than 1 million people have fled Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, after instructions from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the biggest wave of displacement since the early months of the conflict. The IDF has said repeatedly that four Hamas brigades – the militant Islamist organisation’s biggest remaining force – is based in Rafah.

But though Israeli forces have now invaded Rafah, it was fighting in Jabaliya, the second-most populous town in northern Gaza, that was described last month by IDF officials as “perhaps the fiercest” yet seen in the seventh-month-long conflict.

Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 36,479 Palestinians and wounded 82,777 since 7 October, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said on Monday.

Forty Palestinians have been killed and 150 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry said in a statement.

About 55% of all structures in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed, damaged or possibly damaged since the war erupted in October, according to preliminary satellite analysis by the UN.

The analysis showed more than 137,000 buildings affected, Unosat, the UN satellite analysis agency, wrote in a post on X.

The estimate is based on a satellite image taken on 3 May, and compared with images taken in May a year earlier, last September, and on 15 October – just over a week after Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.

The fresh satellite image was also compared to images taken during several dates in November, then again during the first months of this year, according to Unosat.

“According to satellite imagery analysis, Unosat identified 36,591 destroyed structures,” the agency said in a statement.

In addition, it said it had seen “16,513 severely damaged structures, 47,368 moderately damaged structures, and 36,825 possibly damaged structures for a total of 137,297 structures”.

“These correspond to around 55 percent of the total structures in the Gaza Strip and a total of 135,142 estimated damaged housing units,” it said.

UNOSAT said the image comparisons showed the governorates of Deir Al-Balah, in the centre, and Gaza, in the north, had suffered the worst damage between 1 April and 3 May.

Comparing satellite images on those dates indicated that an additional 2,613 structures had been damaged in Deir Al-Balah, while another 2,368 had been damaged in Gaza governorate in just over a month.

Within Deir Al-Balah, the Nuseirat municipality suffered the greatest number of newly damaged structures during that period, at 1,216, Unosat said.

The agency stressed that the findings were still part of a preliminary analysis, which had yet to be validated in the field.

• The Rafah border crossing critical to aid deliveries into Gaza from Egypt cannot operate again unless Israel relinquishes control and hands it back to Palestinians on the Gaza side, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said. “It is difficult for the Rafah crossing to continue operating without a Palestinian administration,” he said in a press conference with his Spanish counterpart in Madrid.

• A group of UN experts have called for all countries to recognise a Palestinian state to ensure peace in the Middle East. The experts, including the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said recognition of a Palestinian state was an important acknowledgment of the rights of the Palestinian people and their struggle towards freedom and independence.

• Benny Gantz said he made it clear to the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in their phone call yesterday that he views returning hostages as a “priority on the war’s timeline”. Gantz – part of the Israeli war cabinet, alongside prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant – said Israel will do “whatever is necessary” to achieve this goal.

• Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, praised Hamas’s 7 October attack against Israel and predicted the “destruction” of Israel. He was quoted as saying the attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed, “was a decisive blow to the Zionist regime” and put Israel “on the path that will only end in its destruction”.

• Palestinian health officials said Israeli airstrikes killed 11 people overnight into Monday, including a woman and three children, in central Gaza, according to the Associated Press.

• The Maldives says it will ban Israelis from entering the country, known for its luxury resorts, with the office of the president making the announcement as public anger rises over the war in Gaza. The Maldives president, Mohamed Muizzu, has “resolved to impose a ban on Israeli passports”, a spokesperson for his office said in a statement, without giving details of when the new law would take effect.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has praised Hamas’s 7 October attack against Israel and predicted the “destruction” of Israel, AFP reported.

Khamenei, 85, was speaking at an event to mark 35 years since the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic which replaced a US-backed monarchy.

He said the 7 October Hamas attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed, “was a decisive blow to the Zionist regime” and put Israel “on the path that will only end in its destruction”.

Iran has said it had no advance knowledge of Hamas’s 7 October attack but has praised it since.

Khamenei said the attack “happened at the right time” and “destroyed a major international conspiracy for the Middle East,” a possible reference to US-led moves to broker diplomatic ties between Israel and Arab powers.

As the war in Gaza has raged, Iran and Israel came to the brink of war in mid-April when Tehran launched a barrage of rockets and missiles at Israel, most of which were intercepted with the orchestrated help of US, UK and Jordan.

Last week, Iran started registration of candidates for an early election next month after the death of president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.

Once seen as a possible successor to Khamenei, Raisi’s sudden death has triggered a race among hardliners to influence the selection of Iran’s next leader.

A group of UN experts have called for all countries to recognise a Palestinian state to ensure peace in the Middle East.

The experts, including the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said recognition of a Palestinian state was an important acknowledgment of the rights of the Palestinian people and their struggle towards freedom and independence.

They said:

This is a pre-condition for lasting peace in Palestine and the entire Middle East – beginning with the immediate declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza and no further military incursions into Rafah.

A two-state solution remains the only internationally agreed path to peace and security for both Palestine and Israel and a way out of generational cycles of violence and resentment.

The call came less than a week after Spain, Ireland and Norway officially recognised a Palestinian state, prompting anger from Israel, which has found itself increasingly isolated over its war on Gaza.

The three European governments said the move was intended to support a two-state solution and foster peace in the Middle East. They hope their decision will spur other EU states to follow suit. Denmark’s parliament later rejected a proposal to recognise a Palestinian state.

Israel has repeatedly condemned moves to recognise a Palestinian state, saying they bolster Hamas, the Palestinian militant group which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007.