Middle East crisis live: US suggests it is not rethinking military aid to Israel amid growing concern over Rafah | Israel-Gaza war

Both the White House and the US state department have been consistent today in repeating the US position as being in favor of an “extended humanitarian pause” in fighting in Gaza – but without calling for an official ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas.

The White House moments ago, in the media briefing in the west wing, welcomed news that the Israeli military had freed two hostages during a raid by special forces in Rafah overnight.

John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said there can be no end to the Gaza crisis until Hamas releases all hostages, Reuters adds.

The White House said it cannot confirm that civilians were killed in the overnight raid on Rafah by Israel to retrieve hostages.

Meanwhile the US state department said it is not Washington’s assessment that the Israeli air strikes in Rafah overnight during the hostage rescue represents the launch of a full scale offensive in the area. The departments concur with Israel that it believes Hamas military battalions are operating in Rafah. The state department briefing has just finished. The White House briefing is ongoing.

The White House is reiterating that Israel must have a credible plan to protect the people in Rafah before launching an all-out offensive to try to eliminate Hamas from the southern Gazan city.

The US is not opposing Israeli aspirations to “go into Rafah to remove Hamas”, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said in the White House media briefing moments ago.

But “it’s not advisable to go in in a major way without a credible plan for the million people taking refuge in Rafah. Israel has an obligation to protect them,” Kirby said.

The US state department is currently conducting a press briefing and spokesman Matthew Miller is responding to questions about whether the US is motivated to withdraw US funding and arms for Israel in order to pressure the state to de-escalate its military offensive in Gaza.

Under questioning from reporters, Miller has said that the US is using tools of persuasion to pressure Israel but indicated those tools do not include the threat of holding back on funding and military assistance, while saying America’s leverage on Israel is currently “not enough”.

Miller is focusing on public comments coming from US leadership, led by US president Joe Biden, who has cranked up his criticism in recent days of Israel’s violent destruction in Gaza.

“When the US stands up and says something public, that matters,” Miller said.

He added: “We have seen the government of Israel respond to it, not always the way we want or to the degree that we want.”

Miller said the US does not have “a magic wand” to fix international problems and influence policy. But reporters are pushing back by saying, yes, but the US does have the “wand” in the shape of unstinting financial support for Israel’s military might, which is fundamentally different from what another reporter characterised as “finger wagging” so far by the US to Israel.

Unhelpfully, the White House is now conducting it’s press briefing, so we’ll bring you highlights from that asap. Sticking with State Department for now.

The armed wing of Hamas said on Monday that three of eight Israeli hostages who were seriously injured following Israeli airstrikes had died from their wounds, Reuters reports.

We will postpone the announcement of the names and pictures of the dead for the coming days until the fate of the remaining wounded becomes clear,” the Al Qassam Brigades said in a statement.

More details to when they emerge. This statement follows the Israeli assault in Rafah overnight in which special forces and other military rescued two hostages held by Hamas, while dozens died in collateral destruction wrought by Israeli air strikes. The hostages were being held in the city of Rafah in the far south of Gaza, on the border with Egypt, where Palestinian residents and refugees are packed in.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk is urging world powers to “restrain rather than enable” Israel as fears of a looming ground incursion grow among more than one million Palestinians trapped in Gaza’s far south.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to send ground troops into the crowded Rafah area as part of his goal of eliminating Hamas. His declarations have sparked international alarm, Agence France-Presse reports.

The agency further reports:

A potential full-fledged military incursion into Rafah – where some 1.5 million Palestinians are packed against the Egyptian border with nowhere further to flee – is terrifying, given the prospect that an extremely high number of civilians, again mostly children and women, will likely be killed and injured.

Sadly, given the carnage wrought so far in Gaza it is wholly imaginable what would lie ahead in Rafah.

“Beyond the pain and suffering of the bombs and bullets, this incursion into Rafah may also mean the end of the meagre humanitarian aid that has been entering and distributed with huge implications for all of Gaza, including the hundreds of thousands at grave risk of starvation and famine in the north,” Turk said in a statement on Monday.

Lisa O’Carroll

The EU’s foreign affairs chief has called on US to stop sending arms to Israel as it did in 2006 when Tel Aviv failed to heed a growing international backlash over the then war with Lebanon.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative, also sharply criticised Benjamin Netanyahu plan to launch an offensive in Rafah, where many Palestinans have fled for safety.

It comes as a Dutch appeals court ordered the Netherlands government to block the delivery of parts for F-35 fighter jets to Israel over concerns they are being used to violate international law, something Israel denies.

“Netanyahu doesn’t listen to anyone. [He says] they are going to evacuate [the people]. Where? To the moon? Where are they going to evacuate this people to? he told reporters in Brussels after a meeting with the head of UNRWA, the UN agency funding Palestinian schools and hospitals.

With his patience clearly tested over the continuing bombing of Gaza, Borrell told reporters that leaders, including Joe Biden, who decry the killing, needed to stop arming Israel.

“How many times have you heard the most prominent leaders of the world saying too many people are being killed.

“President Biden has said this [killing] is too much, said it is not proportional.

“Well if you believe that too many people are being killed maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed. That is logical,” said Borrell.

“In 2006 the world … the US already took this decision. They already a took the decision to halt the supply of arms to Israel because Israel didn’t want to stop the war. Exactly the same thing happens today. Everybody goes to Tel Aviv begging ‘Please, don’t do that, protect civilians; don’t kill so many. How many is too many?”

UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini revealed the organisation was facing a funding gap of hundreds of millions of euro after some countries paused or suspended payments in the light of allegations that some of its staff were involved in the 7 October Hamas attacks.

Before the allegations the UN agency had funds sufficient to operate until July including a now at risk €82m tranche from the EU in early March.

Now, Lazzarini said it would be “negative” to the tune of €30m to €40m in March, “significantly negative” from April. “Just to cover salaries of 30,000 staff across the region, we need at minimum €60m just .. for the salaries.

He warned that if UNRWA was closed it would have “devastating” consequences in terms of food supplies and post-war on education of “traumatised boys and girls”.

Ashifa Kassam

The Dutch government has been ordered to halt the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, after a Dutch appeals court ruled that there was a “clear risk” that the planes could be used to violate international humanitarian law.

Several human rights organisations launched the legal challenge in December, calling for the continued transfer of aircraft parts to be reevaluated in the context of Israel’s current military actions in Gaza.

On Monday the appeals court appeared to side with campaigners. “It is undeniable that there is a clear risk that the exported F-35 parts are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law,” the court said in its ruling.

The Dutch government said it would file an appeal with the country’s supreme court, amid concerns that the order had over-stepped the state’s responsibility to formulate its own foreign policy.

“The delivery of US F-35 parts to Israel in our view is not unjustified,” the country’s trade minister, Geoffrey van Leeuwen, said. He said the F-35s were crucial for Israel’s security and its ability to protect itself from threats in the region, “for example from Iran, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon”.

The Netherlands is home to one of three European regional warehouses that contain US-owned F-35 parts to be shipped to various partners, including Israel, as per existing export agreements.

The appeals court said it was likely that the F-35s were being used in Gaza. “Israel does not take sufficient account of the consequences for the civilian population when conducting its attacks,” the court decision noted, adding that the military offensive in Gaza has “caused a disproportionate number of civilian casualties, including thousands of children.”

Israel’s aerial and ground offensive in the densely populated Gaza Strip has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and displaced most of the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes.

Israel launched its offensive in response to cross-border raid by Hamas on southern Israel during which 1,200 Israelis were killed and hundreds more taken hostage. Israeli officials have said that Hamas deliberately uses civilians to protect its military infrastructure and fighters, a charge denied by the Islamist group.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell made a thinly veiled call on Monday for the United States to rethink its military aid to Israel due to the high number of civilian casualties in the war in Gaza.

Borrell recalled that US president Joe Biden said last week that Israel’s response to the 7 October Hamas attack had been “over the top” and US officials had repeatedly said that too many civilians were being killed in Gaza, Reuters reported.

“Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed,” Borrell told reporters after a meeting of EU development aid ministers in Brussels.

“If the international community believes that this is a slaughter, that too many people are being killed, maybe we have to think about the provision of arms,” he added.

• The UK announced new sanctions on “four extremist Israeli settlers who have committed human rights abuses against Palestinian communities in the West Bank,” the Foreign Office said.

• Israel freed two Israeli hostages in Rafah on Monday under the cover of airstrikes which local health officials said killed 67 Palestinians and injured dozens in the southern Gaza city that is the last refuge of about a million displaced civilians. The freed hostages were named by the Israel Defense Forces as Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, who were taken from the Nir Yitzhak kibbutz in the 7 October Hamas attacks.

• There are growing international concerns about the prospect of a ground offensive on the southern city of Rafah. The Australian government warned that Israel’s plans for a military offensive on Rafah could have “devastating consequences” for Palestinian civilians sheltering there. The foreign minister, Penny Wong, also suggested on Monday that a failure to ensure special care for more than 1 million civilians in the area, many in makeshift tents, would “cause serious harm to Israel’s own interests”. The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, meanwhile, said he is “extraordinarily concerned” about Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats to launch attacks on Rafah with no evacuation plan and no prospect of refugee camps in Egypt. On Monday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, said: “I am especially concerned by the recent attacks on Rafah where the majority of Gaza’s population has fled the destruction.” The official spokesperson for Rishi Sunak, the UK’s prime minister, said they were “deeply concerned” about the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah. Echoing these concerns, the UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, said Israel should “stop and think seriously” before taking further action in Rafah, adding that many of the people in the city had already fled from other areas and have nowhere else to go.

• A Dutch appeals court ordered the Dutch government to block all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel within seven days, according to Reuters. “It is undeniable that there is a clear risk the exported F-35 parts are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law,” the court said.

• Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed 28,340 Palestinians and injured 67,984 since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said.

• The UK government has a duty not just to support the orders of the International Court of Justice, but to change UK policy by suspending the supply of arms to Israel, David Cameron has been told by 30 UK-based organisations including legal and atrocity prevention groups.