Middle East conflict live updates: Cease-fire talks continue; U.S. paused shipment of bombs to Israel
The United States believes negotiations on a cease-fire and hostage release deal “should be able to close the remaining gaps” between Israel and Hamas, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, as talks continue in Cairo. The Biden administration has paused the shipment of thousands of bombs to Israel as U.S. concerns grow about the long-planned ground operation in Rafah — the first known delay in U.S. arms to Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
Here’s what to know
- Israel reopened the Kerem Shalom border crossing, Israeli officials said Tuesday, after a deadly Hamas rocket attack led to its closing. The crossing is one of the few entry points through which aid can be delivered to Gaza.
- Israeli troops seized the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza, disrupting the flow of aid into the Strip. Hamas accused Israel of trying to “exacerbate the humanitarian situation in the Strip by closing” the crossing. Wael Abu Omar, a Gaza border official, said travel and the flow of aid into the Strip had “stopped completely.”
- Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned Israeli settlers’ attack on a Jordanian aid convoy headed to Gaza, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a readout of a call between Blinken and his Jordanian counterpart. The incident marked at least the second time in less than a week that Israeli protesters attacked an aid convoy.
- At least 34,789 people have been killed and 78,204 injured in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children.
- Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and says 267 soldiers have been killed since the launch of its military operation in Gaza.
2:10 AM: U.S. paused shipment of thousands of bombs to Israel amid Rafah rift
Middle East conflict live updates: Cease-fire talks continue; U.S. paused shipment of bombs to Israel
The Biden administration paused the shipment of thousands of weapons to Israel, including controversial 2,000-pound bombs, amid mounting concern about the country’s plan to expand a military operation in southern Gaza that could dramatically increase the conflict’s death toll, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
“Israel should not launch a major ground operation in Rafah, where more than a million people are sheltering with nowhere else to go,” said a senior administration official, explaining the U.S. decision to pause the weapons shipments. “We are especially focused on the end-use of the 2,000-pound bombs and the impact they could have in dense urban settings as we have seen in other parts of Gaza.”
The disclosure marks the first known instance of a pause in U.S. arms transfers since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack into Israel that killed more than 1,200 people.
Since then, the United States has surged tens of thousands of bombs and missiles to its ally even as huge swaths of Gaza have been turned to rubble and the death toll among Palestinians has ballooned to more than 34,000, many of them women and children, according to local health authorities. President Biden has described the bombing as “indiscriminate,” but he has been reluctant to leverage weapons transfers to try to force a change in Israel’s behavior.
A second U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, described the move as a “shot across the bow” intended to underscore to Israeli leaders the seriousness of U.S. concerns about the offensive in Rafah, where an estimated 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are massed in camps near Gaza’s border with Egypt.
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By: John Hudson
2:10 AM: U.S. says gaps between Israel and Hamas can be closed in negotiations
The United States believes that negotiations over a cease-fire and hostage-release deal “should be able to close the remaining gaps” between Israel and Hamas, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday.
“Everybody is coming to the table,” including delegations from both Israel and Hamas, Kirby said of talks being held in Cairo. “That’s not insignificant. … We believe that where we see the text right now, we see no reason why they can’t overcome those remaining gaps.”
Asked how Hamas’s insistence that any cease-fire be permanent could be reconciled with Israel’s position that it would agree only to a temporary pause in fighting to secure the release of hostages, Kirby said: “I really don’t want to get into talking about the specific parameters. … At this very delicate stage, this very sensitive time, and where we are with the negotiations, I think it’s best to let the negotiators hammer out the existing gaps.”
Kirby added that the Biden administration remains concerned about a possible major Israeli ground offensive in Rafah, though he acknowledged that Israel has communicated that its current operation, which began Monday night, “is an operation of limited scope, scale and duration and aimed at cutting off Hamas’s ability to ship arms across the Rafah border.” He said it was “absolutely critical” that Israel allow the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, a major humanitarian aid artery that Israel has now closed, to be “opened up as soon as possible.”
President Biden, in his Monday conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, emphasized the need to also reopen the nearby Israeli crossing at Kerem Shalom, which Israel closed after a Hamas attack last weekend.
By: Karen DeYoung