The White House said Thursday that the U.S. has submitted a new Gaza ceasefire proposal that has Israeli support. Hamas officials gave the Israeli-approved draft a cool response, but said they wanted to study the proposal more closely before giving a formal answer.
President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy had expressed optimism this week about brokering an agreement that could halt the Israel-Hamas war, allow more aid into Gaza, and return more of the 58 hostages still held by Hamas, around a third of whom are alive.
Experts say a nearly three-month Israeli blockade of Gaza — slightly eased in recent days — has pushed the population of roughly 2 million Palestinians to the brink of famine.
Israel’s war in Gaza has killed around 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally. The war began with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which left around 1,200 dead.
Here's the latest:
Witnesses in Gaza describe more chaos at US-backed food distribution sites
Turmoil erupted again Thursday as tens of thousands of desperate Palestinians tried to collect food from distribution sites in the Gaza Strip run by a new U.S.- and Israeli-backed foundation.
More than a dozen Palestinians described chaos at all three aid hubs on Thursday, with multiple witnesses reporting a free-for-all of people grabbing aid, and they said Israeli troops opened fire to control crowds.
At the hub in central Gaza, Aisha Na’na said she only managed to grab sticks for firewood. “We had come to get food for our children, but it was all in vain — we returned with nothing,” she said.
The distribution points are guarded by armed private contractors, and Israeli forces are positioned in the vicinity. Over the past three days, there have been reports of gunfire at GHF centers, and Gaza health officials have said at least one person has been killed and dozens wounded.
Aid-seekers are shot at the new distribution hubs, says a surgeon and witnesses
Dr. Khaled Elserr, a surgeon at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, told the AP he treated two people wounded at distribution centers on Thursday — a 17-year-old girl and a man in his 20s. Both had gunshot wounds in the chest and stomach, he said, adding that other casualties had come in from the centers but that he did not have an exact number.
A 41-year-old man, who spoke on condition he be identified only by his first name Shehada for fear of reprisals, said the crowd descended on the food boxes, and pushing and shoving got out of control.
Shehada said the contractors pulled back and Israeli troops shot at people’s feet. His cousin was wounded in the left foot, he said. “The gunfire was very intense,” he said. “The sand was jumping all around us.”
In a statement Thursday, GHF said no shots had been fired at any of its distribution centers the past three days and there have been no casualties, saying reports of deaths “originated from Hamas.”
Hamas says it's studying the new Gaza ceasefire proposal
The Palestinian militant group has yet to formally respond to the latest proposal for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, which Israel has accepted.
UN, Aid Agencies condemn US-Israel-Backed Gaza aid effort after fatal incident
“The Zionist response, in essence, means perpetuating the occupation and continuing the killing and famine,” Bassem Naim, a top Hamas official, told The Associated Press. He said it “does not respond to any of our people’s demands, foremost among which is stopping the war and famine.”
Nonetheless, he said the group would study the proposal “with all national responsibility.”
UN says Israel denied its attempts to pick up aid at Gaza border for 3 days this week
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Thursday that no U.N. trucks were given permission to move into the Kerem Shalom holding area to pick up desperately needed food and other aid on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. He did not yet have information for Thursday,
Since Israel reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing 10 days ago – after blocking all aid deliveries since March 2 – nearly 900 trucks have been approved to enter Gaza and almost 600 have been offloaded on the Gaza side, he said.
But almost all if the aid has not reached U.N. warehouses because of security constraints, Dujarric said, and none has yet been distributed.
Israel says it intercepted a missile from Yemen
Yemen’s Houthi rebels took responsibility for firing the long-range missile Thursday evening, which Israel’s military says was intercepted as air-raid sirens sounded in parts of the country. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
Israel halted a national soccer championship match in Tel Aviv due to the Houthi missile attack, which came as the tempo of negotiations on a ceasefire in Gaza has increased.
The Houthis have targeted Israel throughout the war in Gaza in solidarity with Palestinians. The Houthi missiles have mostly been intercepted, although some have penetrated Israel’s missile defense systems, causing casualties and damage.
Palestinian militants were once firing volleys of rockets each day out of Gaza, but that dwindled to nearly zero over the course of the 19-month war.
White House says Israel accepted a new US proposal for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza
“I can confirm that special envoy (Steve) Witkoff and the president submitted a ceasefire proposal to Hamas that Israel backed and supported,” White House press Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Israeli forces raid West Bank foreign exchange shops; one killed, dozens injured
But Leavitt said talks were ongoing and Hamas had not yet accepted terms of the proposal.
Witkoff on Wednesday said the U.S. administration was close to presenting a new proposal.
The new proposal was intended to return surviving as well as dead hostages still being held in Gaza in exchange for an an extended truce in fighting.
Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza kills 22 people, including nine women and children
The airstrike hit a family home in Bureij, an urban refugee camp in central Gaza, according to the officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah. An AP journalist viewed the hospital records of the dead from the strike.
Strikes in northern Gaza late Wednesday and early Thursday hit a house, killing eight people, including two women and three children, and a car in Gaza City, killing four, local hospitals said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in populated areas.
Israeli military orders evacuation of a hospital in northern Gaza, staff says
Dr. Rami al-Ashrafi said Thursday that the Israeli army wants to evacuate everyone in Al-Awda Hospital in the heavily devastated Jabaliya area.
One of the last functioning medical centers in northern Gaza, the hospital has been encircled by Israeli troops and has come under fire in recent days.
Speaking by phone to The Associated Press, al-Ashrafi said there are 82 staffers, including doctors, and seven patients left at the hospital. A total of 30 patients and 57 staff were already evacuated Tuesday, he said
Israeli authorities issued evacuation orders last week for large parts of northern Gaza ahead of offensives against Hamas, although the army did not order the hospital itself to evacuate.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said last week that Israeli military operations and evacuation orders in Gaza “are stretching the health system beyond the breaking point.”
Israeli military says a civilian engineer was killed in northern Gaza
The Israeli military didn’t offer details on how the unnamed civilian contractor was killed Thursday or what kind of engineering work they were doing for the army. The brief statement offered condolences to employee’s family.
UK slams new Israeli settlements as an obstacle to Palestinian statehood.
“The U.K. condemns these actions,” Foreign Office Minister Hamish Falconer said on the X social media platform. “Settlements are illegal under international law, further imperil the two-state solution, and do not protect Israel.”
The British government last week imposed new sanctions on three people, two illegal settler outposts and two organizations that they said were supporting violence against the Palestinian community in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said at the time that the illegal settlements were spreading across the West Bank with support of the Israeli government.
Israel authorizes 22 more Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank
This would include new settlements and the legalization of outposts already built without government authorization.
Defense Minister Israel Katz called Thursday's settlement decision “a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel.”
The Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now said the announcement was the most extensive move of its kind since the 1993 Oslo accords that launched the now-defunct peace process.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want it to be the main part of their future state. Most of the international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to resolving the decades-old conflict.
Israel has already built well over 100 settlements across the territory that are home to some 500,000 settlers. The settlements range from small hilltop outposts to fully developed communities with apartment blocks, shopping malls, factories and parks.
The West Bank is home to 3 million Palestinians, who live under Israeli military rule.
Israeli strike kills a municipal worker in southern Lebanon
An Israeli drone strike killed a municipal worker in southern Lebanon, the state-run National News Agency said.
Israel's latest strikes in Gaza kill 38 people including children
The man was on his way to work on a well supplying water to homes when he was killed in the town of Nabatieh al-Fawqa, the agency said. Lebanon’s Health Ministry also reported one person killed in the strike.
The Israeli army said in a statement that it had killed a “Hezbollah terrorist” who was “rehabilitating a site used by” the group “to manage its fire and defense array."
A U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement brought the latest war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to an end in late November, but Israel has continued to launch near-daily strikes on Lebanon since then. Lebanon has complained that Israel is violating the ceasefire while Israel says it is striking Hezbollah facilities and officials to prevent the group from rearming.
Palestinians describe more chaos at Israeli and US-backed aid hub
Palestinians described more scenes of chaos on Thursday at an aid distribution hub in the Gaza Strip established by a new Israeli and U.S.-backed foundation.
They said large crowds pushed their way through metal turnstiles as security contractors struggled to control the crowd. People scattered as gunfire rang out, though it was not clear who fired or if there were any casualties.
One woman said she had waited for hours before leaving with only a small bag of lentils.
“We have no bread to feed our children. I couldn’t get a single bag of flour,” she said in tears, declining to give her name. “I want to eat. I’m hungry.”
The hubs set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation are guarded by private security contractors, with Israeli forces stationed nearby. Gaza’s Health Ministry and the United Nations said dozens of people were wounded by gunfire as they sought aid on Tuesday. GHF denied its forces fired on anyone, and the Israeli military said it only fired warning shots.
The U.N. and other humanitarian organizations have rejected the new aid system, saying it will not be able to feed Gaza’s 2.3 million people and that it lets Israel use food to control the population.
GHF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Israeli military says it demolished a long attack tunnel in southern Gaza
The Israeli military says troops recently located and destroyed an attack tunnel stretching several hundred meters (yards) in the southern Gaza Strip.
It said the tunnel was found in a self-declared security zone, apparently referring to the now mostly evacuated southern city of Rafah, which Israeli forces have severed from the rest of the territory.
The army said the tunnel had several exits, some rigged with explosives. It said militants emerged from one of the shafts during the operation and were killed.
Hamas built hundreds of miles (kilometers) of tunnels beneath Gaza in the years leading up to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war. Its fighters use them to shelter from Israeli airstrikes and move around undetected. Hamas has also held hostages in the tunnels.
Israeli newborn dies after mother was killed in West Bank attack
An Israeli baby who was delivered after his mother was fatally shot in an attack in the West Bank has died.
A Palestinian militant opened fire on Tzeela Gez’ car as her husband drove her through the Israeli-occupied West Bank on May 14. The couple was heading to the hospital to give birth. She later died from her wounds, but doctors delivered the baby by emergency cesarean section.
Hamas praised the attack but did not claim it. The military announced days later that its forces had killed the suspected attacker.
“It is with great sadness and pain that we learned this morning of the death of baby Ravid Chaim, son of Tzeela and Hananel Gez,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “There are no words that can offer consolation for the murder of a newborn baby along with his mother.”