Israel-Gaza war live: Israeli officials criticise ‘very disappointing’ threat from Joe Biden to stop arms supplies

09/05/2024

Palestinians living in the Ez-Zeytun neighbourhood evacuate.

LIVE – Updated at 13:11

Gilad Erdan says move by Joe Biden stems from political pressure after campus protests and with US election coming soon.

13:11

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has retreated on his earlier position and lifted many of the trade restrictions he imposed on Israel, Israel’s foreign minister said on Thursday, according to Reuters.

First aid shipment to US-built pier sets sail from Cyprus

13:02

Cypriot officials have confirmed that a vessel carrying aid to a pier built by the United States off Gaza set sail from Cyprus on Thursday.

Reuters reports that the US flagged Sagamore left the port of Larnaca in the morning. US officials have said the vessel will be used to offload supplies onto a floating pier built to expedite aid into the besieged enclave.

Cyprus opened a sea corridor in March to ship aid directly to Gaza, where deliveries via land have been severely disrupted by border closures and Israel’s military offensive.

A senior Biden administration official last month said aid going ashore would still be subject to inspection by Israeli authorities, raising the prospect of additional delays in getting desperately-needed supplies to Palestinians.

That is seemingly at odds with Cyprus’ stated objective which was to screen cargoes on the island with Israeli oversight to eliminate bottlenecks at the other end. Two Cypriot officials said they were not aware of further checks. “No other inspection is foreseen beyond what the mechanism that is carried out in Cyprus prescribes,” one of them told Reuters.

12:33

The UK’s foreign secretary Lord Cameron has again said the UK would not support a major Israeli assault on Rafah without a clear plan for protecting civilians.

But he said there was a major difference between the US situation, where President Joe Biden has warned he will stop supplying some weapons to Israel if there is a Rafah offensive, and the UK, the Press Association reports.

Answering questions following a speech in London, he said: “There’s a very fundamental difference between the US situation and the UK situation. The US is a massive state supplier of weapons to Israel. We do not have a UK government supply of weapons to Israel, we have a number of licences, and I think our defence exports to Israel are responsible for significantly less than 1% of their total. That is a big difference.

“On Rafah, we are clear that we would not support some major operation in Rafah unless there was a very clear plan for how to protect people and save lives, and all the rest of it. We have not seen that plan, so in the circumstances we will not support a major operation in Rafah.

“We have very clear licensing procedures, some of the toughest and most rigorous in the world. We follow them through very closely and that’s what we’re doing, and will continue to do, in the period ahead.”

11:56

Pro-Palestinian protesters briefly interrupted the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, during a Senate hearing, calling for a free Palestine while raising their palms painted red.

Austin confirmed that the US paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns the country was approaching a decision to launch a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Here is a video of the moment when protesters interrupted the Senate hearing:

11:37

The second semi-final of this year’s Eurovision song contest will take place in Sweden on Thursday, with Israel’s performance expected to draw attention due to large pro-Palestinian protests planned in host city Malmö, reports Reuters.

About 100,000 visitors have gathered in the southern Swedish city for the annual song contest, which is taking place amid protests and boycotts over the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

Swedish authorities have heightened security and are bracing for possible unrest during Eurovision week. According to Reuters, police officers have been seen patrolling the streets of Malmö and, from water scooters, on the city’s canals.

Metal barricades and large concrete blocks have been put up around Malmö arena, which is hosting the competition, with police guarding the venue and checking visitors’ bags.

Reuters reports that tens of thousands are expected at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in central Malmö at 1pm GMT (2pm BST) on Thursday. A smaller nearby pro-Israel demonstration is scheduled for 4pm GMT (5pm BST).

There is high security around the delegations from all the countries, according to Malmö police. “We’re keeping a bit of an extra eye on Israel of course, because of the situation,” Lotta Svensson, a police incident commander, told Reuters on Sunday.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organises the event, has resisted calls for Israel to be excluded but asked the country to modify the lyrics of its original song ‘October Rain’, which appeared to reference the Hamas attack.

11:18Eleni Courea

Eleni Courea is a political correspondent for the Guardian.

University vice-chancellors need to “show leadership” in response to student protests over Israel’s military action in Gaza, the education secretary has said.

Gillian Keegan told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that she wanted “our campuses to be a safe place where students feel welcomed, where students can express different views”.

Pro-Palestine encampments have been set up by students at more than a dozen universities across the UK against the war in Gaza, including in Cambridge and Oxford.

Referring to the encampments, Keegan said: “We have seen how this can escalate very quickly in other countries.” Pro-Palestinian student protesters in the US have clashed with police.

Keegan’s comments came as Rishi Sunak was hosting a meeting at Downing Street with vice-chancellors from leading UK universities on tackling antisemitism. Vice-chancellors from Leeds, Bristol, Middlesex and Sussex were among the first to arrive for the meeting, followed by about 12 more university leaders who all remained silent as they entered Downing Street.

WHO says it has only three days of fuel left for its medical operations in southern Gaza

11:07

The World Health Organization (WHO) says it has only three days of fuel for its medical operations in southern Gaza, and shortages have already forced one of three hospitals in the city of Rafah to shut down, reports the Associated Press (AP).

The Rafah border crossing with Egypt has been closed since Israel’s military took control of the Palestinian side early on Tuesday, blocking the entry of vital humanitarian aid.

Israel said it reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing, the other main aid entry point, on Wednesday. However, the World Food Programme (WFP) says no aid has entered, and there is no one to receive it on the Palestinian side. The UN says northern Gaza is already in a state of “full-blown famine.”

Israel says Biden threat to stop arms ‘very disappointing’

10:41

Two top Israeli officials criticised US president Joe Biden on Thursday for threatening to stop certain arms supplies to Israel if it invades Rafah, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“This is a difficult and very disappointing statement to hear from a president to whom we have been grateful since the beginning of the war,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, said on public radio in Israel’s first reaction to Biden’s warning.

Israel has defied international objections by sending in tanks and conducting “targeted raids” in the eastern areas of Rafah. It says Rafah is home to Hamas’s last remaining battalions but the city on the border with Egypt is also crammed with displaced Palestinian civilians.

“If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used … to deal with the cities,” Biden told CNN, in his starkest warning to Israel since the start of the war.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs,” Biden said. “It’s just wrong.”

According to AFP, Erdan said Biden’s comments would be interpreted by Israel’s foes Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah as “something that gives them hope to succeed”.

“If Israel is restricted from entering an area as important and central as Rafah where there are thousands of terrorists, hostages and leaders of Hamas, how exactly are we supposed to achieve our goals?” he said.

“This is not a defensive weapon. This is about certain offensive bombs. In the end the State of Israel will have to do what it thinks needs to be done for the security of its citizens.”

Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said his government would pursue its goals in Gaza despite the US threat.

“We will achieve complete victory in this war despite President Biden’s push back and arms embargo,” he said in a statement.

“We must continue the war until Hamas is totally eliminated and our hostages are back home. This involves conquering Rafah completely and the sooner the better.”

US threat to stop weapons shipments ‘frustrating’, says Israel’s ambassador to the UN

10:34

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, in an interview with Israeli Channel 12 TV news, said the US’ warning it could pause some weapons shipments was “a very disappointing decision, even frustrating.” He suggested the move stemmed from political pressure on US president Joe Biden from Congress, the US campus protests and the upcoming election, reports the Associated Press (AP).

The decision also drew a sharp rebuke from House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who said they only learned about the military aid holdup from press reports, despite assurances from the Biden administration that no such pauses were in the works. According to the AP, the Republicans called on Biden in a letter to swiftly end the blockage, saying it “risks emboldening Israel’s enemies,” and to brief lawmakers on the nature of the policy reviews.

“If we stop weapons necessary to destroy the enemies of the state of Israel at a time of great peril, we will pay a price,” said Republican senator Lindsey Graham. “This is obscene. It is absurd. Give Israel what they need to fight the war they can’t afford to lose.”

However, independent senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a Biden ally, said in a statement the pause on big bombs must be a “first step.”

“Our leverage is clear,” Sanders said. “Over the years, the United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel. We can no longer be complicit in Netanyahu’s horrific war against the Palestinian people.”

09:47Jennifer Rankin

Ireland, Spain and other EU countries could recognise Palestine as an independent state as soon as 21 May, Ireland’s public broadcaster has reported.

Two sources told RTÉ the date was being looked at.

Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and Malta issued a joint statement in March declaring they were ready to recognise Palestinian statehood when “the circumstances are right”.

The Guardian has contacted Ireland’s foreign ministry for comment.

The report comes as EU leaders come under growing pressure to respond to Israel’s operation in Rafah.

At least 67 MEPs have signed a letter urging EU leaders to convene “an urgent meeting … to discuss the EU response to the events in Rafah”. The MEPs – Greens, Socialists, radical left and a few liberals and centre right members – call for EU sanctions against Israel, as “the only adequate response to this horrendous and reckless military campaign in Rafah and the rest of the Gaza Strip”.

EU governments, who have the power to impose sanctions by unanimity, are highly unlikely to impose sweeping sanctions against Israel, but the letter is a testament to the strength of feeling on the left of the parliament.

The EU imposed sanctions on “extremist” settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in April.

Meanwhile Belgium is pushing to ban imports from territories occupied by Israel, but such a plan is highly unlikely to be supported by Germany, Austria and Hungary, strong supporters of Israel’s right to self-defence.

09:42

Here are some of the latest images on the newswires:

09:18

Israeli strikes on Syria early on Thursday targeted facilities belonging to Iraq’s al-Nujaba armed movement, a war monitor and the pro-Iran group said, with Damascus saying an unidentified building was attacked.

According to AFP, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “Israeli airstrikes targeted a cultural centre” and a “training facility” of the Iraqi al-Nujaba movement in the Sayyida Zeinab area south of Damascus.

Three members of the group were wounded according to the UK-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

AFP reports that a source within the Iraqi faction, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, confirmed that a “cultural centre” belonging to the group was destroyed in the “Israeli” attack, but reported no casualties. Al-Nujaba does “not have a declared military base in Syria”, the source added.

According to AFP, Syria’s defence ministry said that “at around 3.20 am today, the Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of the occupied Syria Golan Heights targeting a building in the Damascus countryside”.

The attack caused “some material damage”, said the statement carried by state media, adding that air defence systems shot down some of the missiles.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes on Syria, but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence there.

09:10

An Israeli airstrike on a car in southern Lebanon killed four people on Thursday, according to Lebanon’s civil defence, with security sources saying those killed were members of armed group Hezbollah.

According to Reuters, the Israeli military did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Thursday’s strikes.

Lebanon’s civil defence rescue force said it had pulled four bodies out of a car that had been scorched by an Israeli strike. Two security sources told Reuters the four killed were members of Hezbollah.

08:52

At least 34,904 Palestinians have been killed and 78,514 injured in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The Hamas-run health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

Ship carrying aid to US-built pier off Gaza leaves Cyprus

08:42

A vessel carrying aid to a pier built by the US off Gaza set sail from Cyprus on Thursday, marine tracking websites showed, according to Reuters.

The US flagged Sagamore left the port of Larnaca on Thursday morning. US officials have said the vessel will be used to offload supplies on to a floating pier built to expedite aid into Gaza.

Reuters reports that there was no immediate comment from Cypriot authorities, which had earlier said the ship would sail as soon as the floating platform was in place, subject to weather conditions.

08:26

An emergency doctor working in Rafah and nearby Khan Younis told AFP that with humanitarian access compromised, the health situation was “catastrophic”.

“The smell of sewage is rife everywhere,” said the doctor, James Smith. “It’s been getting worse over the course of the last couple of days.”

World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that hospitals in southern Gaza had only “three days of fuel left” because of the border closures.

“Without fuel all humanitarian operations will stop,” he said.

08:20

Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists reported heavy shelling in Rafah early on Thursday. According to AFP, the Israeli military later said it was also striking “Hamas positions” farther north in the centre of the Gaza Strip.

07:50

Israel’s former head of defence production and procurement on Thursday rejected the claim the country could manage without US arms, saying Israel would be forced to source arms elsewhere, reports Reuters citing Israeli public radio.

Houthis say they targeted ships in Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean

07:27

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis targeted two ships, the MSC DEGO and the MSC GINA, in the Gulf of Aden using a number of ballistic missiles and drones, the group’s military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said in a televised speech on Thursday.

According to Reuters, Sarea said the group also targeted the MSC VITTORIA in the Indian Ocean and again in the Gulf of Aden.

07:22

Israel’s United Nations ambassador Gilad Erdan said on Thursday the US’ decision to pause weapons transfers to Israel will significantly impair the country’s ability to neutralise Hamas’s power, reports Reuters citing Israeli public radio.

06:58

Israeli protesters are blocking aid trucks headed from Jordan to Gaza, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz is reporting.

Hundreds of residents of Israel’s southern-most city, Eilat, joined the protest blocking the convoy at the border crossing with Jordan, the newspaper reported. It cited the Tsav 9 group which organises the protests as saying it had also set up other road blocks along the way.

Convoys carrying aid to Gaza, where Israel has been accused of causing a man-made famine, have recently had to change their route due to Israeli protesters blocking shipments, Haaretz wrote.

06:52

Iran will have to change its nuclear doctrine if its existence is threatened by Israel, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Kamal Kharrazi has said, according to Reuters, raising concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapon.

“We have no decision to build a nuclear bomb, but should Iran’s existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine,” Kharrazi said, as reported by Iran’s Student News Network on Thursday, adding that Tehran has already signalled it has the potential to build such weapons.

Reuters reports further:

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei banned the development of nuclear weapons in a fatwa in the early 2000s, reiterating his stance in 2019 by saying: “Building and stockpiling nuclear bombs is wrong and using it is haram (religiously forbidden) … Although we have nuclear technology, Iran has firmly avoided it.”

However, Iran’s then-intelligence minister said in 2021 that western pressure could push Tehran to seek nuclear weapons.

“In the case of an attack on our nuclear facilities by the Zionist regime (Israel), our deterrence will change,” Kharrazi added.

In April, Iran and Israel reached their highest level of tensions, with Tehran directly launching about 300 missiles and drones against Israel as retaliation for a suspected deadly Israeli strike on its embassy compound in Damascus.

06:42Rory Carroll

Students at Trinity College Dublin have ended a five-day encampment after the university pledged to cut ties with Israeli companies.

Student leaders claimed victory on Wednesday night for a US-style campaign that had disrupted the campus and blocked access to the Book of Kells.

Senior management made a deal with protesters, the university said in a statement. “Trinity will complete a divestment from investments in Israeli companies that have activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and appear on the UN blacklist,” it said. “Trinity will endeavour to divest from investments in other Israeli companies.”

Trinity’s supplier list contains just one Israeli company, which will remain until March 2025 for contractual reasons, said the statement.

The encampment began on 3 May when pro-Palestinian protesters set up dozens of tents in Fellows’ Square, similar to actions in the US, Europe and India in response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

In contrast to confrontations in the US where police forcibly evicted demonstrators at several universities, there was no attempt to remove the protest. Eoin O’Sullivan, a senior dean who led talks with the students, thanked them for their “engagement”.

06:33

Republicans have been criticising Biden’s threat to halt more weapons shipments to Israel. Senator Mitt Romney said the president’s “dithering … is bad policy and a terrible message to Israel”.

After an earlier Biden administration announcement that it had paused a shipment of thousands of bombs to Israel, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson questioned the president’s “ironclad” commitment to Israeli security. In a letter to the president they wrote:

Daylight between the United States and Israel at this dangerous time risks emboldening Israel’s enemies and undermining the trust that other allies and partners have in the United States.

06:21

Syrian air defences have shot down Israeli missiles fired from the Golan Heights towards Damascus’ outskirts targeting a building in the countryside, Syria’s defence ministry has said, according to Reuters. The news agency writes:

Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since the 7 October attack by Palestinian armed group Hamas on Israeli territory.

On 1 April, an Israeli strike targeted the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, killing a senior commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps as well as other military officers, triggering Iran’s first direct attack onto Israeli territory.

Israel has also been trading fire across its northern border with Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

Summary

06:11

Welcome back to our live coverage of the crisis in the Middle East. Here’s a rundown of the latest developments:

Joe Biden has said he will halt more shipments of US weapons to Israel if its military launches a major offensive on Rafah, the only city in Gaza that has not yet been razed by Israel. The US president said he had made it clear to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if the Israeli military goes into Rafah “I’m not supplying the weapons”.

An Israeli official told Reuters that Israel sees no sign of a breakthrough in Egyptian-mediated talks on a truce with Hamas that would free some Gaza hostages, but is keeping its delegation of what it describes as “mid-level” negotiators in Cairo for now.

Israel will not agree to end the war and leave Hamas in power, an Israeli government spokesperson reiterated on Wednesday.

Hamas said on Wednesday it was unwilling to make more concessions to Israel in the ceasefire negotiations. “Israel isn’t serious about reaching an agreement and it is using the negotiation as a cover to invade Rafah and occupy the [Rafah] crossing,” Izzat El-Reshiq, a member of Hamas’ political office in Qatar, said in a statement.

Hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip have only three days of fuel left, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, due to closed border crossings. “The closure of the border crossing continues to prevent the UN from bringing fuel. Without fuel all humanitarian operations will stop. Border closures are also impeding delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.

Tedros also said al-Najjar, one of the three hospitals in Rafah, was no longer functioning due to the ongoing hostilities in the vicinity and the military operation in Rafah.

Qatar called on the international community on Wednesday to prevent a “genocide” in Rafah after Israel’s seizure of the Gaza city’s crossing with Egypt and threats of a wider assault. In a statement the Gulf state appealed “for urgent international action to prevent the city from being invaded and a crime of genocide being committed”.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat), the Israeli military body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs, said the Kerem Shalom crossing reopened early on Wednesday. But Juliette Touma, the director of communications for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), said no aid had entered as of midday Wednesday and that the UN agency had been forced to ration fuel, which is imported through Rafah.

CIA director William Burns was reported to be holding talks with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israeli officials on Wednesday. A source familiar with his travel shared the report with Reuters as Burns was headed to Israel from Cairo, where ceasefire negotiations had been taking place.

Aid for Gaza was being loaded on to a ship in Cyprus on Wednesday in what was expected to be the first cargo to be delivered using a US pier built to expedite supplies to Gaza. Konstantinos Letymbiotis, a Cyprus government spokesperson, said a US jetty built to handle aid shipments to Gaza had been completed. It was unclear when the vessel would depart.

António Guterres, the UN secretary general has said that a full-scale assault on Rafah “would be a human catastrophe”. Posting on X on Wednesday, Guterres wrote: “Countless more civilian casualties. Countless more families forced to flee yet again – with nowhere safe to go.”

The United Arab Emirates said on Wednesday it strongly condemns Israel’s takeover of the Rafah border crossing on the Palestinian side and warned of the consequences of military escalation.

02:29

We’re pausing our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war here but you can read our full report on the main developments today below:

Biden warns Israel US will halt some arms shipments if Rafah offensive goes ahead

02:24

President Joe Biden has publicly warned Israel for the first time that the US would stop supplying it weapons if Israeli forces make a major invasion of Rafah, the last remaining city in Gaza that has not been razed in the Israeli offensive.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah …, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said in an interview with CNN.

Biden acknowledged US weapons have been used by Israel to kill civilians in Gaza, where Israel has mounted a seven-month-old offensive aimed at annihilating Hamas. Israel’s campaign has so far killed 34,789 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Israel this week ordered 100,000 Palestinians to leave Rafah, where 1.4 million people are sheltering and attacked the city, but described it as a “limited” operation. Reuters reports further:

A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington had carefully reviewed the delivery of weapons that might be used in Rafah and as a result paused a shipment consisting of 1,800 2,000-pound (907-kg) bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs.

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said the decision was taken out of concern for Rafah, where Washington opposes a major Israeli invasion without civilian safeguards.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” he said when asked about 2,000-pound bombs sent to Israel.

Biden said the US would continue to provide defensive weapons to Israel, including for its Iron Dome air defence system.

“We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently,” he said. “But it’s, it’s just wrong. We’re not going to – we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.”

02:18

Police have used pepper spray to clear a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at George Washington University and arrested dozens of demonstrators just as city officials were set to appear before hostile lawmakers in Congress to account for their handling of the two-week-old protest. The Associated Press reports: The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability canceled the hearing after the crackdown, with its chairman and other Republicans welcoming the police action. House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “it should not require threatening to haul D.C.’s mayor before Congress to keep Jewish students at George Washington University safe.” Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said she and Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith decided to clear the camp because of signs that “the protest was becoming more volatile and less stable.” Among them were indications that protesters had “gathered improvised weapons” and were “casing” university buildings with the possible intention of occupying them, police said. But Moataz Salim, a Palestinian student at George Washington who has family in Gaza, said the authorities merely “destroyed a beautiful community space that was all about love.” “Less than 10 hours ago, I was pepper sprayed and assaulted by police,” he told a news conference held by organizers. “And why? Because we decided to pitch some tents, hold community activities and learn from each other. We built something incredible. We built something game-changing.”

02:01

At least 34,844 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive in Gaza and 78,404 Palestinians injured, according to the territory’s health ministry. Thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings. Here are some of the latest images from Gaza:

01:50Peter Beaumont

Israel’s national security minister presented himself before the television cameras to make a statement on Sunday, shortly after leaving a meeting with the country’s prime minister.

Invoking divine support, Itamar Ben-Gvir said he had “warned the prime minister that if God forbids it, Israel will not enter a ceasefire”. He said Benjamin Netanyahu “promised that Israel would enter Rafah, that the war would not end, and promised that there will be no irresponsible deal”.

The following Tuesday, Israeli troops had entered the Philadelphi corridor on the southern border with Egypt and taken control of the Rafah border crossing, hoisting Israeli flags from the terminal.

The sequencing of the two events was revealing. Faced once again with the threat posed by a fringe and extremist politician – who Netanyahu had elevated into government – the prime minister had given every appearance of blinking, underlining his reliance on far-right coalition allies such as Ben-Gvir and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.

The two are widely assessed to hold Netanyahu’s future political survival in their hands. While Netanyahu could survive them quitting his coalition over a ceasefire deal with Hamas or the failure to launch a full-scale assault on Rafah, the politics of the Israeli right threaten him in more fundamental ways.

Israel ‘not serious’ about ceasefire negotiations, Hamas says

01:38

Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Wednesday it was unwilling to make more concessions to Israel in negotiations over a ceasefire for Gaza, although talks were still under way in Cairo aimed at pausing Israel’s seven-month-old offensive.

Izzat El-Reshiq, a member of Hamas’ political office in Qatar, said in a statement late on Wednesday that the group would not go beyond a ceasefire proposal it accepted on Monday, which would also entail the release of some Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinian women and children detained in Israel, Reuters reported. Reshiq said:

Israel isn’t serious about reaching an agreement and it is using the negotiation as a cover to invade Rafah and occupy the crossing.

Israel continued tank and aerial strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Wednesday and has threatened a major assault on it. Its forces moved in via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Tuesday, cutting off a vital aid route and the only exit for the evacuation of wounded patients.

01:27

Israeli authorities destroyed around 50 homes belonging to Bedouins in the Negev desert on Wednesday, AFP reported, with Israel’s far-right national security minister saying they were “illegal constructions”.

Bulldozers flattened the houses in the Wadi al-Khalil village, sparking anger among members of its 500-strong community. Resident Sleiman Abu Asa said:

There are more than 500 people here. (Now) the children and the women have nowhere else to go … They are demolishing our homes, leaving us stranded outside.

We don’t deserve this. We’ve sought a solution for years, hoping for a fair resolution, yet the state has obstructed all our options.

Israel considers the homes built in Wadi al-Khalil to be illegal. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir reiterated this in remarks posted online Wednesday.

The Wadi al-Khalil homes are “illegal constructions”, he said, warning anyone who “violates the law in the Negev” desert of southern Israel.

The destruction, he said, was “an important step” indicating the government’s authority would not be challenged. “The police will fight anyone who seizes land and tries to build another reality on the ground,” said Ben Gvir.

Before Israel’s creation in 1948, the Negev desert was home to approximately 92,000 Bedouins. But only 11,000 remained within Israel’s borders after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, according to Adalah, an advocacy group for Arab minorities in Israel.

Many of them refused to be resettled in the cities, and Bedouins have continued to face difficulties in Israeli society ever since.

Today there are around 300,000, half of whom live in cities and half in villages not recognised by Israel, according to Adalah. These villages lack most basic services, such as garbage collection.

According to Arab Israeli activist Taleb el-Sana a total of 48 homes were flattened by Israeli bulldozers on Wednesday, “leaving children and women homeless”. He said:

An entire village was wiped out just because its inhabitants are Arab [and] … under the pretext of unlicensed construction …

[Israel] doesn’t allow [Bedouin] citizens to obtain building permits and then demolishes their homes under the pretext of a lack of permits.

01:17Julian Borger

Netanyahu’s repeated defiance of US warnings not to pursue an offensive on Rafah had been based on an assumption that curbing the US weapons supply could inflict more political damage on Biden than on the Israeli prime minister, and that Netanyahu could cause havoc for the president at home at the height of an election year.

The Biden White House is now seeking to turn that assumption on its head. Administration officials are prohibited from using the words “red” and “line” together in a sentence, after Barack Obama’s unfulfilled ultimatum to Syria over chemical weapons. But for Biden, it was a critical juncture: a red line in all but name.

US officials are talking of a hinge point in the relationship, in which this suspended arms package could be just the first manifestation, depending on how Israel now acts in Rafah.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) do not need these bombs to invade Rafah. They have more than enough stockpiles to reduce it to rubble. The significance of Biden’s move is symbolic – all the more so because such actions towards Israel are exceedingly rare. The last US president to put an arms shipment on hold was Ronald Reagan.

01:10

Joe Biden was also asked about the anti-war protests that have consumed US campuses in recent weeks. Protesters have accused Biden of funding a genocide in Gaza and called on universities to divest from Israeli companies and companies that supply the Israeli military.

Asked about the demonstrations, Biden told CNN: “Absolutely, I hear the message.”

But he warned against protests that veer into hate speech or antisemitism. He said:

There is a legitimate right to free speech and protest. There’s a legitimate right to do that, and they have a right to do that. But there’s not a lesson legit legitimate right to use hate speech. There’s not a legitimate right to threaten Jewish students. There is not a legitimate right to block people’s access to class. That’s against the law.

01:03

Some initial reaction to Biden’s statement from Jonathan Conricus, the former Israeli military spokesman:

09 May 2024 00:58

In the CNN interview, Joe Biden said that Israel’s actions in Rafah had not so far crossed a red line, because the military had not yet entered heavily populated areas. He said:

They haven’t gone into the population centres. What they did is right on the border. And it’s causing problems with, right now, in terms of – with Egypt, which I’ve worked very hard to make sure we have a relationship and help.

The Biden administration has been keen to avoid the phrase red line after Barack Obama’s unfulfilled ultimatum to Syria over chemical weapons.

However the Biden administration has repeatedly warned prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to go ahead with an offensive in Rafah without a credible plan to evacuate civilians.

Biden said he had told Netanyahu that US support was limited:

I’ve made it clear to Bibi [Netanyahu] and the war cabinet: They’re not going to get our support, if in fact they go on these population centres.

He also described warning Netanyahu about the risks of becoming bogged down in Gaza, drawing parallels to the American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I said to Bibi, ‘Don’t make the same mistake we made in America. We wanted to get bin Laden. We’ll help you get Sinwar [the Hamas leader in Gaza]. It made sense to get bin Laden; it made no sense to try and unify Afghanistan. It made no sense in my view to engage in thinking that in Iraq they had a nuclear weapon.

Opening summary

09 May 2024 00:44

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Middle East crisis with me, Helen Livingstone.

US President Joe Biden has said he will halt more US weapons shipments to Israel if prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a large scale invasion of Rafah, the only remaining city in Gaza that has not been raised by Israel’s military assault and where 1.4 million Palestinians have sought shelter.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN, in a reference to the 2,000-pound bombs that Biden paused shipments of last week.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said.