Israel-Gaza war live updates: Blinken presses Israel on Gaza’s future; Houthi attack repelled in Red Sea

10/01/2024

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Wednesday, after encountering resistance in earlier meetings with Israeli officials over the treatment of Palestinians and a plan for Gaza’s future. In the southern Red Sea, U.S. and British forces shot down a barrage of drones and missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, in the latest attack on international shipping, U.S. Central Command said.

Here’s what to know

Abbas will later meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Jordan for a summit on Gaza. Blinken is next heading to Cairo.
The International Court of Justice at The Hague will hold hearings this week on South Africa’s case accusing Israel of actions that amount to genocide in its war in Gaza. South Africa will present its case Thursday, and Israel will do so Friday.
Israel has arrested 38 Palestinian journalists, mostly from the occupied West Bank, since the war broke out, Reporters Without Borders said in a statement; 31 remain in Israeli prisons. The group described the wave of arrests as “unprecedented.” The Israel Defense Forces told The Washington Post it “takes all operationally feasible measures to mitigate harm [to] civilians including journalists. The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists.”
The IDF said an airstrike killed a Hezbollah commander Tuesday who was responsible for “dozens of terror activities against Israel using explosive UAVs,” or drones. In a statement on Telegram, Hezbollah denied that such a commander had been killed: “The Mujahid brother in charge of the UAV unit in Hezbollah was never subjected to any assassination attempt.”
At least 23,357 people have been killed in Gaza and 59,410 wounded since the war began, the Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.

6:05 AM: Blinken meets Abbas to coordinate postwar planning

TEL AVIV — Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Wednesday, in his latest meeting aimed at developing a postwar plan for Gaza.

Blinken’s motorcade hopped through Israeli checkpoints to reach Ramallah following meetings with Israeli leaders on Tuesday in which he pressured officials to improve Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Blinken said he would discuss governance changes that the Palestinian Authority could adopt as the Biden administration promotes the possibility that a “revitalized” version of the authority could govern both the West Bank and Gaza. Blinken’s plan relies on creating a pathway to a Palestinian state — something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to never allow.

Blinken did not comment on how Israeli officials received his proposal, but he reiterated that Israel must rein in extremist settlers who have attacked Palestinian homes, as well as Israel’s expansion of settlements on Palestinian land. “Extremist settler violence carried out with impunity, settlement expansion, demolitions, evictions, all make it harder, not easier, for Israel to achieve lasting peace and security,” Blinken said.

According to a State Department summary of the meeting, Blinken “noted increased volatility in the West Bank and discussed U.S. efforts to address extremist violence.” Blinken “also underscored the United States’ position that all Palestinian tax revenues collected by Israel should be consistently conveyed to the Palestinian Authority in accordance with prior agreements,” the statement said.

Abbas raised the issue of withholding funds with Blinken, according to WAFA, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas also reiterated to Blinken that Gaza is an integral part of the Palestinian state, and no deal could be accepted that would see it cut off or its residents expelled. “We will not allow it to happen,” Abbas said.

By: John Hudson

5:59 AM: Largest Houthi attack so far in Red Sea repelled by U.K., U.S., official says

The British warship HMS Diamond off the coast of Scotland in 2020, in a photo provided by the Ministry of Defense.

The United States and United Kingdom “repelled the largest attack by the Iranian-backed Houthis in the Red Sea to date,” British Defense Minister Grant Shapps said on social media. Britain’s HMS Diamond, along with U.S. warships, destroyed “multiple attack drones” overnight, he said.

“The UK alongside allies have previously made clear that these illegal attacks are completely unacceptable and if continued the Houthis will bear the consequences,” Shapps said. “We will take the action needed to protect innocent lives and the global economy.”

The comments follow a barrage of attack drones and missiles launched from Yemen late Tuesday by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels toward international shipping lanes in the Red Sea, where dozens of commercial vessels were in transit, U.S. Central Command said. The attack, the 26th of its kind since Nov. 19, did not result in reported injuries or damage, Centcom added.

The United Nations Security Council is due to vote Wednesday on a U.S.-led resolution that would demand an immediate halt to attacks by the Houthis on commercial vessels in the Red Sea. Last week, the United States and several allies released a statement calling for the “immediate end of these illegal attacks” and describing the developments in the Red Sea as “profoundly destabilizing.”

The latest attack reflects an ongoing escalation in the region, which faces risk of spillover from the war in Gaza. The Houthis, a rebel movement that took control of Yemen’s capital in 2014, have said they are attacking ships in retaliation for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Their efforts have significantly disrupted shipping in one of the busiest maritime routes in the world, prompting some shipping companies to reroute.

Tuesday night’s attack was particularly large, including 18 one-way attack drones, two anti-ship cruise missiles and one anti-ship ballistic missile, Centcom said.

By: Kelsey Ables and Adela Suliman

3:57 AM: Democrats say Biden must notify Congress about Israel arms transfers

Israeli soldiers stand next to a self-propelled artillery howitzer near the border with the Gaza Strip on Dec. 16.

More than a dozen Senate Democrats said Tuesday that they will seek to block President Biden’s request to skirt congressional oversight of arms transfers to Israel, the latest signal of frustration among members of his own political party who have recoiled at the stunning civilian death toll resulting from Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

Led by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), the push comes as more Democrats, historically stalwart backers of the Jewish state, have urged the president to step up efforts to rein in America’s chief ally in the Middle East. International human rights groups have accused Israel of conducting indiscriminate bombing in Gaza amounting to war crimes.

The Biden administration, which rushed to back Israel after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, has been unusually secretive about its ongoing military support program, and is seeking to exempt its arms transfers from a mandatory congressional notification process that applies to all other foreign arms sales.

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By: Abigail Hauslohner

3:25 AM: More food aid needed in Gaza, WHO warns, amid looming famine

Palestinians line up to receive food in Rafah on Tuesday amid U.N. warnings of a looming famine.

There is urgent need for food assistance across Gaza, especially in the north, the World Health Organization’s emergency medical teams coordinator in Gaza said Tuesday, amid repeated warnings by aid agencies of a looming famine in the besieged enclave.

“The food situation in the north is absolutely horrific; there’s almost no food available,” Sean Casey told reporters in Geneva via video from Rafah in southern Gaza. “Everybody we talk to begs for food. … They are constantly telling us that we need to come back with food.”

The risk of famine in Gaza is increasing every day, the United Nations reported recently, with the Strip’s entire population facing crisis levels of acute food insecurity.

Bottlenecks in humanitarian corridors and unsafe conditions are hampering aid delivery efforts, agencies say.

“Even if there is no cease-fire, you would expect humanitarian corridors to operate … in a much more sustained way than what’s happening now,” said Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the West Bank and Gaza. “It’s too little. It’s too late, and specifically in the north.”

The WHO said six planned humanitarian missions in the past two weeks have been canceled.

By: Niha Masih

3:11 AM: Blinken meets with Israel’s leaders in bid to avert broader war

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Tel Aviv before meeting with Israeli leaders on Tuesday.

Disagreements between the United States and Israel over the Jewish state’s treatment of Palestinians emerged during Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Israel on Tuesday as leaders aired opposing views over when Palestinians can return to northern Gaza and receive tax revenue collected by Israel.

“These are their revenues,” Blinken told reporters here. “They should have them.” Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has vowed not to transfer any tax money to Gaza as long as he remains in that job.

Blinken traveled to Israel on Monday to present a plan for Gaza’s future based on his discussions with Arab and Turkish leaders during a tour of the region. But he received little public response from Israeli officials.

Gaps between Israeli and Arab leaders remain wide. Far-right members of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are calling for the mass removal of civilians from Gaza. Israeli officials have dismissed U.S. calls for a “revamped and revitalized” Palestinian Authority to play a role in a postwar, Hamas-free Gaza.

Blinken is pushing regional leaders to seize the crisis as an opportunity in the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict. He told Israeli officials Monday that ending the war would allow the country to improve relations with its Arab neighbors. Those ties were notably warming until Hamas launched a lethal attack on Israeli communities in October and Israel responded with its campaign to eradicate the militant group. Blinken has said postwar rebuilding with non-Hamas Palestinians at the center could be a pathway to eventual statehood.

But Blinken has not offered details on how the United States would overcome the obstacles that have bedeviled every previous U.S. administration that has tried to clear the way for a Palestinian state.

Blinken and his Israeli counterparts did agree on at least one point: The United Nations should assess conditions in northern Gaza, where Israeli bombardment has flattened homes and civilian infrastructure, to determine when residents might return. But when that can happen remains a sticking point.

Blinken told reporters that Gazans should be able to return as soon as they can safely do so. But Israeli officials told Israeli media that they will not allow for the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza until Hamas releases Israeli hostages. The Biden administration opposes that condition as a form of collective punishment.

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By: John Hudson and Rachel Pannett

2:31 AM: U.S. accused of misusing Security Council veto to prevent cease-fire

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield vetoes Russia’s amendment calling for a cease fire in Gaza to a U.N. Security Council proposal to demand that Israel and Hamas allow aid access to the Gaza Strip at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Dec. 22.

The United States was accused at the United Nations Tuesday of misusing its Security Council veto power to prevent implementation of a U.N. majority demand for a cease-fire in Gaza.

Amid long-standing calls for revamping the council structure, Irish Ambassador Fergal Mythen expressed his government’s “opposition to each and every use of the veto.” Chile’s Ambassador Paula Varvaez called it “the crudest possible expression of power” that “erodes the credibility of the whole multilateral system.”

The comments came in a General Assembly debate over a Dec. 22 U.S. veto that killed a Russian-proposed amendment to restore cease-fire wording to a pending council resolution. The measure’s Arab sponsors, in an effort to avoid what would have been the third American veto of a measure to stop the fighting in Gaza, had agreed instead to call for creation of “conditions” for a cease-fire. Following the failed Russian amendment, the United States abstained from voting on the resolution, allowing it to pass.

Tuesday’s General Assembly session came under a rarely invoked U.N. rule allowing the assembly to debate any Security Council veto and demand the vetoing power explain itself.

Delivering that explanation, U.S. alternate U.N. representative Robert A. Wood said it was “unfortunate” that one of the five veto-wielding nations (U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France) among the 15 council members “continues to put forward amendments and ideas that are disconnected to the situation on the ground.” The United States and Israel have said a cease-fire before Israel has achieved its objective of destroying Hamas’s leadership and military capabilities would be a victory for Hamas and leave Israel in danger of a repeat of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that left 1,200 Israelis dead.

Wood repeated that U.S. “direct diplomacy” had led to an early December pause that got more humanitarian aid into Gaza and the release of some Hamas-held hostages, and he welcomed the December resolution’s call for “urgent steps to immediately allow safe, unhindered and expanded humanitarian access and create conditions” for an eventual stop in the fighting. But it was unclear what effect those “urgent steps” have had in southern Gaza, where there has been little if any increase in the number of trucks carrying aid into the enclave, which have averaged little more than 100 per day since the resolution’s passage.

In Tuesday’s assembly debate, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan said Hamas was responsible for “looting” aid trucks and delaying aid to Gaza civilians. The United Nations, in turn, has held Israel responsible for the delays with its insistence on lengthy inspections of the vehicles and refusal to open more than one entry into southern Gaza from Egypt and one from Israel.

Asked about the Israeli charge of Hamas looting, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said he had not seen any reports of aid being looted.

“We have seen videos of desperate people trying to get access to trucks,” Dujarric said. “I can only begin to imagine what it would be like if you’re seeing one truck full of aid and you don’t know when there’s going to be another one, that you may take matters into their own hands. This is [a] desperate, desperate, desperate, desperate situation.”

U.N. humanitarian agencies have also said that the intensity of current Israeli air and ground attacks in southern Gaza has severely impeded distribution of aid to civilians said to be nearing famine conditions. The civilian death toll now exceeds 23,000, according to Gazan health authorities.

By: Karen DeYoung