Middle East crisis live: US warns Israel it will withhold arms funding if Gaza aid doesn’t improve

Dozens of UK and international global humanitarian organisations have warned that Israel’s assault on Gaza has escalated to a “horrifying level of atrocity” in a joint statement on Tuesday.

Northern Gaza is being wiped off the map, according to the joint statement by 38 humanitarian groups including Oxfam, ActionAid and Islamic Relief.

Under the guise of ‘evacuation’, Israeli forces have ordered the forced displacement of an estimated 400,000 Palestinians trapped in northern Gaza, including Gaza City. This is not an evacuation — this is forced displacement under gunfire.

“The world cannot continue to stand by as the Israeli government commits these atrocities,” the statement continues, as it calls on global leaders to “act now”.

This is not a time for silence – this is a time for action. The people of Gaza cannot wait. The world must intervene now before more innocent lives are lost.

Joanna Walters

Hezbollah’s acting leader declared today that the Lebanese militant group is focused on “hurting the enemy” by targeting Haifa and other parts of Israel, including Tel Aviv.

Sheikh Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s deputy chief, vowed in a televised speech to “defeat our enemies and drive them out of our lands.” It was his third appearance since Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a southern suburb of Beirut, the Associated Press reports.

The United Nations human rights office meanwhile called for an independent probe into an Israeli airstrike that hit an apartment block in Aito in northern Lebanon, killing at least 22 people, including 12 women and two children.

Israeli air strikes continue in Lebanon and Gaza. The strike in Aitou (the Guardian used this spelling, while AP uses Aito) occurred yesterday.

Joanna Walters

An Israeli air strike on Qana in southern Lebanon has killed 10 and wounded 15 today, according to multiple reports.

Al Jazeera English cited Lebanon’s national news agency in posting its report.

Qana is near the larger coastal city of Tyre.

There are reports that have not been independently verified that a residential building was hit.

It’s just past 10.30pm in Gaza, Beirut and Tel Aviv. Here’s where things stand:

• Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that Israel will decide alone on the form of any retaliation to Iran’s missile attack earlier this month, although it would listen to advice from Washington. The comments came after reports that the Israeli prime minister had given an assurance to the US president, Joe Biden, that Israel would not attack sites associated with Iran’s nuclear programme or oilfields before the US presidential election. A statement from Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday denied any such commitment. A US air defence battery arrived in Israel on Monday to bolster its protection against Iranian ballistic missiles.

• The Biden administration warned Israel to take immediate action to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza, or else face possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers. A letter written jointly by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, urged Israel to lift restrictions on the entry of assistance into Gaza within 30 days or face unspecified policy “implications”.

• A US state department spokesperson confirmed the authenticity of the letter and said it had been intended to be a private diplomatic communication. Matthew Miller eclined to go into specific when asked what consequences Israel might face for refusing to meet American demands for greater aid access. He said that a previous letter Blinken had written in April had increased humanitarian aid flows into Gaza.

• Israel continued to press its offensive in Gaza, with airstrikes killing a further 50 Palestinians on Tuesday. Palestinian health officials said at least 17 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house. Later on Tuesday, the Gaza health ministry said one doctor was killed when he tried to help the people wounded by Israeli strikes in Al-Falouja in Jabalia. It said Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 42,344 Palestinians and wounded 99,013 since 7 October 2023.

• The UN human rights office said on Tuesday the Israeli military appeared to be “cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip.” Tens of thousands of civilians have been trapped in the densely populated northern Gaza neighbourhood of Jabaliya by a new Israeli military operation there. Most are suffering appalling conditions and mounting casualties from Israeli shelling, bombs and missiles. The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the three hospitals in northern Gaza, said they were facing serious shortages of food, medication, and fuel, that could soon impact patients in their facilities.

• In Lebanon, Israel’s military launched several strikes in eastern areas on Tuesday, a day after Netanyahu vowed to “mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut”. The Lebanese health ministry said 41 people were killed and 124 were injured by Israeli strikes in Lebanon on Monday, meaning a total of 2,350 people have been killed in Lebanon since the fighting began between Hezbollah and Israel last October and the number of wounded has risen to 10,906. A US state department spokesperson said Washington has “made clear to Israel that we oppose the bombing campaign that they have been launching in recent weeks in Beirut.”

• The UN rights office said an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in northern Lebanon that killed at least 22 people needs to be independently investigated. It said it had received reports that most of the victims of the Israeli airstrike on the northern Lebanon village of Aitou were women and children. “We have real concerns with respect to … the laws of war,” a UNHCR spokesperson said. The apartment building hit in the airstrike was in the small village of Aito, in the country’s Christian heartland and far from Hezbollah’s main areas of influence in Lebanon’s south and east.

• More than a quarter of Lebanon is now affected by Israeli evacuation orders, according to the UN’s refugee agency. “People are heeding these calls to evacuate, and they’re fleeing with almost nothing,” Middle East director Rema Jamous Imseis told journalists on Tuesday. More than 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced over the past year. More than 400,000 children in Lebanon have been displaced in the past three weeks, a top official with the UN children’s agency said Monday, warning of a “lost generation” in the small country grappling with multiple crises and now in the middle of war.

• Israeli troops cleared landmines and established new barriers on the frontier between the occupied Golan Heights and a demilitarised strip bordering Syria, according to a report, in a sign Israel may expand its ground operations against Hezbollah while bolstering its own defences. The move suggests Israel may seek to strike Hezbollah for the first time from further east along Lebanon’s border, at the same time creating a secure area from which it can freely reconnoitre the armed group and prevent infiltration, security sources told Reuters.

• An assailant shot dead an Israeli policeman and wounded five other people near the southern city of Ashdod on Tuesday in what police called a “terrorist” attack. The gunman was killed during the attack at the Yavne interchange along the highway connecting Ashdod to Tel Aviv, authorities said.

• Netanyahu told Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in a phone call on Tuesday that he was opposed to agreeing to a “unilateral ceasefire” in Lebanon, his office said. The call came as Macron increased pressure on Israel to abide by UN decisions, telling his cabinet that the Israeli leader “must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN”, according to a report.

• Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said she will visit Lebanon on Friday as she demanded security guarantees from Israel for her country’s troops there just days after UN peacekeeper bases came under attack. Italy’s government has been a strong supporter of Israel in the year since Hamas’s 7 October attacks but has sharply criticised attacks on Unifil and Israeli calls for the peacekeepers to withdraw.

• The UK Foreign Office announced sanctions against seven organisations that support illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank, but held back from penalising two extremist members of the Israeli government, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and the national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

• Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, said the country is not going to “wait” for the rest of the EU to take action against extremist Israeli settlers amid growing frustration in Dublin and Madrid over Brussels’ perceived inaction. It comes as Ireland looks afresh at drafting legislation which could block imports of products made in the occupied territories.

• The Israeli military said it captured three members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces in south Lebanon. On Sunday, the Israeli military said it had captured a Hezbollah fighter from an underground tunnel shaft in south Lebanon.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in a phone call on Tuesday that he was opposed to agreeing to a “unilateral ceasefire” in Lebanon, his office said.

According to the Israeli prime minister’s office:

The prime minister said in the conversation that he is opposed to a unilateral ceasefire, which does not change the security situation in Lebanon, and which will only return it to the way it was.

Israel has repeatedly insisted that there must be a buffer zone along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon where there is no presence of Hezbollah fighters.

Netanyahu informed Macron that Israel “would not agree to any arrangement that does not provide this and which does not stop Hezbollah from rearming and regrouping,” the statement from his office said, AFP reported.

The call came as Macron increased pressure on Israel to abide by UN decisions, telling his cabinet that the Israeli leader “must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN”, a participant in the meeting told the news agency.

The US has voiced concern to Israel over bombings of Beirut in its campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah, US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. He told reporters:

We have made clear to Israel that we oppose the bombing campaign that they have been launching in recent weeks in Beirut.

Miller said Israel has a right to go after “legitimate terrorist targets” but that Washington has had “real concerns over the nature of the campaign rollout across Beirut in the last few weeks”. He added:

We have seen strikes diminish in recent days and will continue to watch it very carefully.

On the letter sent by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, Miller denied any link to the upcoming US general election.

The letter urges Israel to take steps within 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or face potential restrictions on US military aid. That would fall after 5 November election. Miller said:

We didn’t think it was appropriate to send a letter and just say this has to happen overnight.

The US state department has confirmed reports that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and defense secretary Lloyd Austin warned Israel to take urgent steps to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within the next 30 days or face losing access to US weapons funding.

Blinken and Austin wrote a letter to Israel on Sunday to make “clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today”, US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Tuesday.

For Israel to continue qualifying for foreign military financing, the level of aid getting into Gaza must increase to at least 350 trucks a day, Austin and Blinken said in their letter. Israel must also institute additional humanitarian pauses and provide increased security for humanitarian sites. Miller said:

We are making clear to the government of Israel that there are these changes that need to be implemented, that we give them an appropriate period of time to implement it.

The Israeli government has provided assurances to the Biden administration that it will avoid striking Iran’s nuclear or oil sites when it responds to Tehran’s missile attack earlier this month, according to reports.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has told Washington that he is willing to strike military facilities in Iran, the Washington Post reported, citing two US officials.

US officials said Israel had agreed to focus its next attack on military targets in Iran instead of sites related to Iran’s oil industry or its uranium enrichment efforts.

According to AP, the Biden administration believes that sending a US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel and about 100 soldiers to operate it has eased some of Israel’s concerns about possible Iranian retaliation and general security issues.

No final decision is believed to have been made, the New York Times reported, adding that an Israeli retaliation could still be large in scale, possibly prompting Iran to continue the cycle of attacks.

The Israeli pledge only relates to its next attack against Tehran, according to the Post, meaning it could still pursue more ambitious targets later on.

Israel has offered assurances to the US that it will not strike Iranian nuclear or oil sites, two US officials told the AP news agency on the condition of anonymity.

The US has said it would not support Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities while there has been concern that such a could trigger a global recession.