Israel-Gaza war: US mediators making progress on ceasefire deal but still ‘gaps to close’, says Biden – as it happened

It is has gone 5pm in Gaza and Tel Aviv. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Israel-Gaza war coverage here and on the Middle East here.

Here is a recap of the latest developments:

• Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed that its negotiating team, led by the Mossad intelligence chief David Barnea, had returned to Israel after talks with mediators in Doha on Thursday. Speaking after the team’s return, Netanyahu said Israel needed control of the Palestinian side of Gaza’s border with Egypt to stop weapons reaching Hamas. It is a condition that conflicts with Hamas’s position that Israel must withdraw from all Gaza territory after a ceasefire.

• US president, Joe Biden, acknowledged “difficult, complex issues” remain between Israel and Hamas, but that progress was being made in reaching a ceasefire deal. “There’s a lot of things in retrospect I wish I had been able to convince the Israelis to do, but the bottom line is we have a chance now. It’s time to end this war,” he said after a Nato summit in Washington DC.

• A senior Hamas official has blamed Israel for a failure to build on momentum created when the group dropped a key demand in the US-drafted ceasefire offer a week ago to clear the way for a deal. “Israel hasn’t made a clear stance over Hamas proposal. After discussion with the mediators in Doha, Qatar, Israel told them the delegation would go back for consultation with the Israeli government,” the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. “There is an attempt at stalling and wasting time,” the official said. There was no immediate comment from Israel.

• Reuters reported on Friday that Israeli and Egyptian ceasefire negotiators were in talks about an electronic surveillance system along the border between Gaza and Egypt that could allow Israel to pull back its troops from the area if a ceasefire is agreed. According to the Times of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu’s office called the report “absolute fake news”. But despite the denial from Netanyahu’s office, the Times of Israel later reported that two officials involved in the hostage talks had told the publication “that Israeli negotiators have in fact been discussing the possibility of an IDF withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt as part of a potential ceasefire deal”.

• Hamas is suggesting during ceasefire negotiations that an independent government of non-partisan figures run postwar Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a member of the Hamas political bureau said on Friday. Hossam Badran said in a statement: “The administration of Gaza after the war is a Palestinian internal matter without any external interference, and we will not discuss the day after the war in Gaza with any external parties.”

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• Israeli strikes killed another 32 people in the Gaza Strip, the health ministry in Gaza said on Friday. Hamas media reported “more than 70 airstrikes” in several parts of the territory, including locations in Gaza City in the north, Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre, along with Khan Younis and Rafah in the south.

• Israel’s military on Friday said troops are continuing operations in Rafah, near the Egyptian border. “Over the past day, the troops eliminated numerous terrorists in close-quarters combat and aerial strikes, and dismantled terrorist infrastructure in the area,” an Israeli military statement said.

• Joe Biden said on Thursday that he is “disappointed” with the problem-plagued effort to deliver aid to Gaza via a temporary pier, which US officials say will soon permanently end. The $230m military pier has repeatedly been detached from the shore because of weather conditions since its initial installation in mid-May. The project also faced issues with the distribution of assistance due to conditions onshore.

• In central Gaza, Israeli troops said they killed an unspecified number of militants “who posed a threat” while soldiers “located a weapons production workshop” and “a large amount of funds used for terrorist activity,” according to the statement. In far-northern Gaza’s Beit Hanoun, Israeli aircraft struck targets in an area from which projectiles were fired into southern Israel on Thursday, the military added.

• About 60 bodies were found under the rubble of Gaza City’s eastern Shujaiya neighbourhood, Gaza’s civil defence agency said. The discovery came after Israeli troops ended a two-week operation which Gaza’s civil defence and residents said had left the area in ruins. Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said 85% of buildings are now uninhabitable and Shujaiya has been left a “disaster zone”.

• The US has stepped up efforts to target violent Israeli settlers, adding new individuals and organisations to a growing sanctions list and warning banks to check transactions linked to all Israeli “outposts” in the occupied West Bank. The new sanctions cover the far-right group Lehava, already listed by the UK, and two founding members of Tsav9, a campaign group that blocked aid from reaching Gaza. The new measures also target outposts, suggesting the Biden administration is prepared to take at least some steps to confront Israel’s creeping land grab on the West Bank.

• About 40 bodies were found in an initial search of two Gaza City districts after Israeli troops ended an offensive, said Gaza’s civil defence agency on Friday. Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said the bodies were found in the Tal al-Hawa and al-Sinaa districts. “Up to now, about 40 bodies have been found,” Bassal said, adding that dozens more were feared buried under the rubble.

• Bassal added that the Sabha medical centre, near the Gaza City district of Shujaiya, which provides care for 60,000 residents, had been destroyed in the new fighting. “And the corpses under the rubble speed up the spread of disease,” he said. The health ministry said 32 bodies had been taken to different hospitals across the territory after night-time Israeli airstrikes and bombing.

• Dozens of residents returned to Gaza City on Friday to check the damage after civil emergency teams put out fires in the early hours. Reuters footage showed roads and buildings wrecked and the news agency reported of bodies wrapped in white shrouds and bearing the names of the dead women and men laying on the floor at al-Ahli hospital.

• In Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Hamas media said four people working for the al-Khair Foundation, a Muslim NGO based in the UK and Turkey, were killed in an airstrike at an aid distribution centre.

• Israeli military acknowledged on Thursday that it had “failed” to protect the Be’eri kibbutz, where more than 100 people died during Hamas’s 7 October attacks. A summary of the inquiry, made public after being presented to kibbutz residents, said there had been a “lack of coordination” in the military response.

• About 6,400 Palestinians reported as missing to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) since the outbreak of the war in Gaza on 7 October are yet to have been found, the group has said. Many are believed to be trapped under debris, buried without identification, or held in Israeli detention while others have been separated from their loved ones, who have been unable to contact them.

• Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said it is not possible for Nato to continue its partnership with the Israeli administration, reports Reuters.“Until comprehensive, sustainable peace is established in Palestine, attempts at cooperation with Israel within Nato will not be approved by Turkey,” Erdoğan said at a news conference at the Nato summit in Washington DC.

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• The UN’s health agency has said that only five trucks carrying medical supplies were allowed into Gaza last week. “More than 34 of our trucks are waiting at the Al Arish crossing, and 850 pallets of medical supplies are awaiting collection. A further 40 trucks are waiting at Ismailiya in Egypt,” the World Health Organization (WHO) director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday via the social media platform X.

• Staff at Al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza say there has been a rise in injured patients from Gaza City in recent days since the Israeli military ramped up its attacks on the area, according to the development charity ActionAid. Doctors at the hospital are “working to treat the new arrivals despite experiencing a critical lack of vital medical supplies, equipment and fuel” the charity said.

• The Israeli government’s security cabinet has approved a plan to extend compulsory military service for men to 36 months from the current 32 months, Israel’s Ynet news outlet reported on Friday. The 36-month rule will stay in force for the next eight years, Ynet reported. The measure is likely to be submitted to a vote in a meeting of the full cabinet on Sunday, it said.

• Israel’s military said on Friday that one of its soldiers was killed in combat near the border with Lebanon a day earlier. The military identified the dead man as a 33-year-old sergeant. It did not specify how he died, but Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said he was killed in a drone strike. Israel’s military also said on Friday that a day earlier it had struck a military post in southern Syria in retaliation after a projectile was fired from Syria into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

• Dutch judges on Friday refused an urgent request by a trio of rights groups to penalise the Netherlands for not respecting a ban on supplying F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel. “It has not been demonstrated that the state is not complying with the ban or does not intend to continue to comply with the ban,” the judges said. “Therefore, there is no penalty for a violation.”

• The Australian National University (ANU) is launching a review into its investment portfolio, acknowledging “changing expectations” in the community around deriving revenue from weapons manufacturers. It follows an announcement by the University of Sydney to hold a similar review after weeks of lobbying from pro-Palestine student encampments.

The Times of Israel reports that Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has responded to a Reuters report that Israel is discussing the option of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrawing from the Gaza-Egypt border as part of a potential ceasefire deal, by calling it “absolute fake news”.

But despite the denial from Netanyahu’s office, the Times of Israel later reported that two officials involved in the hostage talks had told the publication “that Israeli negotiators have in fact been discussing the possibility of an IDF withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt as part of a potential ceasefire deal”.

The civil defence agency in Hamas-run Gaza told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Friday that about 40 bodies had been found in an initial search of two Gaza City districts after Israeli troops ended an offensive.

Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said the bodies were found in the Tal al-Hawa and al-Sinaa districts. The agency and residents said Israeli troops had pulled out after days of battles with Hamas militants but this was not immediately confirmed by the military, reports AFP.

“Up to now, about 40 bodies have been found,” Bassal said, adding that dozens more were feared buried under the rubble.

Israeli forces moved into Tal al-Hawa again this week after ordering civilians to evacuate on Monday. Residents have reported widespread new destruction, according to AFP.

Israel warned virtually all of Gaza City that it was now a “dangerous” combat zone.

“There are many calls for help but we just cannot reach them,” Bassal said. “We just do not have enough crews.” He added that the Sabha medical centre, near the Gaza City district of Shujaiya, which provides care for 60,000 residents, had been destroyed in the new fighting. “And the corpses under the rubble speed up the spread of disease,” he added.

The health ministry said 32 bodies had been taken to different hospitals across the territory after night-time Israeli airstrikes and bombing. On Thursday, the civil defence agency said 60 bodies had been found in Shujaiya after an Israeli withdrawal.

Home to more than a quarter of Gaza’s residents before the war, Gaza City was largely razed to the ground in late 2023, but hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had returned to homes in the ruins before Israel once again ordered them out, writes Reuters.

Dozens of residents returned again on Friday to check the damage after civil emergency teams put out fires in the early hours. Reuters footage showed roads and buildings wrecked. Bodies wrapped in white shrouds and bearing the names of the dead women and men lay on the floor at al-Ahli hospital, reported the news agency.

Speaking to Reuters, Musa al-Dahdouh recalled heavy aerial and tank fire and said Israeli forces had detained and interrogated his two sons and their wives and children before allowing them to leave.

“My mother is in a wheelchair, my wife as well, as she has metal in her arms and legs. My grandson is paralysed in the legs, his father had to carry him on his back,” he said.

In Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Hamas media said four people working for the al-Khair Foundation, a Muslim NGO based in the UK and Turkey, were killed in an airstrike at an aid distribution centre.

People in Batn al-Hawa neighbourhood fear losing their homes to Israeli settlers determined to seize more land, writes the international security correspondent of the Guardian, Jason Burke.

You can read his piece on how hundreds of Palestinians face the threat of eviction in East Jerusalem, here:

Here are some of the latest images coming in via the newswires:

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Dutch judges on Friday refused an urgent request by a trio of rights groups to penalise the Netherlands for not respecting a ban on supplying F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

In a landmark verdict in February, an appeals court ordered the Netherlands to stop delivering parts for fighter jets used by Israel in its offensive in the Gaza Strip. But the rights groups went back to court in June, saying that the ban has not prevented parts actually ending up in Israeli planes.

Their lawyers accused the Dutch government for continuing “to deliver (parts) to other countries, including the United States”.

The three groups asked The Hague district court in an urgent request to impose a €50,000 a day fine on the state for not respecting the verdict.

According to AFP, their lawyers said F-35 parts exported by the Netherlands continued to reach Israel via other routes including the so-called “Global Spares Pool” – a joint stock of spare parts maintained by countries that operate the F-35.

The Hague district court’s judges agreed on Friday, but stressed February’s judgment “said nothing about the route that parts take via other countries for the production of the F-35”.

The February judgment had a “more limited scope” than the rights group’s current urgent request, the judges said. “It has not been demonstrated that the state is not complying with the ban or does not intend to continue to comply with the ban,” the judges said. “Therefore, there is no penalty for a violation.”

In its verdict in February, appeals judges found that there was a “clear risk” the planes would be involved in breaking international humanitarian law.

AFP reports that the Dutch government then acknowledged it could not prevent parts shipped to the US eventually ending up in Israeli F-35s. But its lawyers said it did not believe the Netherlands had to restrict exports of F-35 parts to countries other than Israel.

The Dutch government added it would implement the February verdict but announced it would appeal to the supreme court.

Hamas is suggesting during ceasefire negotiations that an independent government of non-partisan figures run postwar Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a member of the Hamas political bureau said on Friday, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“We proposed that a non-partisan national competency government manage Gaza and the West Bank after the war,” Hossam Badran said in a statement about the ongoing negotiations between Israel and Hamas with mediation from Qatar, Egypt, and the United States.

“The administration of Gaza after the war is a Palestinian internal matter without any external interference, and we will not discuss the day after the war in Gaza with any external parties,” Badran added.

A Hamas official told AFP the proposal for a non-partisan government was made “with the mediators”. The government will “manage the affairs of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in the initial phase after the war, paving the way for general elections” said the official, who did not want his name disclosed.

Badran’s remarks came after Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, demanded that Israel retain control of the Philadelphi corridor, Gaza territory along the border with Egypt. This condition conflicts with Hamas’s position that Israel must withdraw from all Gaza territory after a ceasefire.

According to AFP, Netanyahu said on Thursday that control of the Philadelphi corridor is part of efforts to prevent “weapons to be smuggled to Hamas from Egypt.”

The negotiations are occurring in Doha and Cairo with the aim of bringing about a ceasefire in Gaza as well as the return of hostages still held there by Hamas.

Staff at Al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza say there has been a rise in injured patients from Gaza City in recent days since the Israeli military ramped up its attacks on the area, according to the development charity ActionAid.

The hospital is run by ActionAid’s partner in Gaza, Al-Awda, and is one of just 13 in Gaza that is now partially functional, says the charity.

ActionAid report that doctors at Al-Awda hospital are “working to treat the new arrivals despite experiencing a critical lack of vital medical supplies, equipment and fuel, which has forced them to postpone scheduled surgeries and rely on small generators to keep the facility running”.

The charity says that staff at the hospital “fear” the number of casualties could increase as attacks on Gaza City intensify.

Dr Mohammed Salha, acting director of Al-Awda hospital, told ActionAid in a voicenote update:

Since this morning, Al-Awda hospital has received 12 injured people and one person who has been killed. They were brought from Gaza City following the Israeli army’s incursion. We received 10 injured people who had been evacuated from Al-Mamadani [now known as Al-Ahli] hospital to the hospitals operating in the Northern Gaza Strip.’

There are not sufficient quantities of fuel to operate the generators. We need medicines and medical supplies to perform surgeries. Many surgical operations have been postponed. Scheduled operations have been postponed because we are unable to operate the large generator.

Salha added:

The World Health Organization sent a small quantity of fuel a month ago which was sufficient [to keep the hospital running for one week only].

Now it has been more than a month that we haven’t received fuel to operate the hospital … There is only a small amount [left], which is sufficient to operate the hospital on small generators for a day.”

In a statement, ActionAid said it was “horrified by reports of four attacks on or around schools in recent days, where thousands of displaced people were sheltering”.

Riham Jafari, advocacy and communications coordinator at ActionAid Palestine said:

Hospitals in Gaza are facing overwhelming demand, as they scramble to treat people wounded in Israeli attacks – many of whom have catastrophic and life-changing injuries – as well as ever-growing numbers of patients who are dangerously sick after months of living in inhumane, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions without enough to eat.

At the same time, they are facing desperate shortages of vital medicines, equipment and fuel, as well as food and water. More aid must be allowed into Gaza immediately so that hospital staff can continue their vital, life-saving work, and there must be a permanent ceasefire, now.”

The Israeli government’s security cabinet has approved a plan to extend compulsory military service for men to 36 months from the current 32 months, Reuters reports citing Israel’s Ynet news outlet on Friday.

The 36-month rule will stay in force for the next eight years, Ynet reported, after a meeting of the security cabinet that took place late on Thursday. The measure is likely to be submitted to a vote in a meeting of the full cabinet on Sunday, it said.

Israel’s military commanders have said they need to boost manpower so they can sustain the war with the Hamas militant group in Gaza and a confrontation with the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia.

Reuters reports that in a separate initiative, Israel is planning to send draft notices to thousands of ultra-Orthodox seminary students who were previously exempt from military service.

A senior Hamas official has blamed Israel for a failure to build on momentum created when the group dropped a key demand in the US-drafted ceasefire offer a week ago to clear the way for a deal, reports Reuters.

“Israel hasn’t made a clear stance over Hamas proposal. After discussion with the mediators in Doha, Qatar, Israel told them the delegation would go back for consultation with the Israeli government,” the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. “There is an attempt at stalling and wasting time,” the official said.

There was no immediate comment from Israel said Reuters.

Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Thursday he remained committed to the Gaza ceasefire framework being negotiated and accused Hamas of making demands that contradicted it. Netanyahu did not say what those demands were, reports Reuters.

According to the news agency, two Egyptian sources said on Thursday that talks had made progress but security arrangements and ceasefire guarantees were still being worked on.

Israeli strikes killed another 32 people in the Gaza Strip, the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory said on Friday, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Fighting raged from the north to the south of the coastal territory as talks have continued towards reaching a truce and hostage-release deal (see 7.38am BST).

In a brief statement, Gaza’s health ministry said “32 martyrs, a majority of them children and women, were taken to hospitals overnight, because of continued massacres” by Israeli forces.

Hamas media reported “more than 70 airstrikes” in several parts of the territory. This included locations in Gaza City in the north, Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre, along with Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, Hamas said.

Israel’s military on Friday said troops are continuing operations in Rafah, near the Egyptian border. “Over the past day, the troops eliminated numerous terrorists in close-quarters combat and aerial strikes, and dismantled terrorist infrastructure in the area,” an Israeli military statement said.

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In central Gaza, troops said they killed an unspecified number of militants “who posed a threat” while soldiers “located a weapons production workshop” and “a large amount of funds used for terrorist activity,” according to the statement.

In far-northern Gaza’s Beit Hanoun, Israeli aircraft struck targets in an area from which projectiles were fired into southern Israel on Thursday, the military added.

Also on Thursday, about 60 bodies were found under the rubble of Gaza City’s eastern Shujaiya neighbourhood, Gaza’s civil defence agency said. The discovery came after Israeli troops ended a two-week operation which Gaza’s civil defence and residents said had left the area in ruins.

Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said 85% of buildings are now uninhabitable and Shujaiya has been left a “disaster zone”.

On Wednesday Israel’s army called on all of Gaza City’s residents to, for their safety, leave the area which they called “a dangerous combat zone”. According to AFP, the United Nations said up to 350,000 people had been staying in the city.

12 Jul 202405.08 EDT

More than 6,000 Palestinians reported missing to Red Cross since 7 October yet to be found

Lorenzo Tondo

About 6,400 Palestinians been reported as missing to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) since the outbreak of the war in Gaza on 7 October are yet to have been found, the group has said.

Many are believed to be trapped under debris, buried without identification, or held in Israeli detention while others have been separated from their loved ones, who have been unable to contact them.

Approximately 1,100 new cases of missing people have been registered and remain unsolved since April, the ICRC said.

“Each week we can receive anywhere between 500 and 2,500 calls to our hotlines, and the majority of these are requests for missing family members,” said Sarah Davies, an ICRC spokesperson.

The level of requests fluctuates, sometimes depending on the situation in areas of Gaza – if there are hostilities close to large numbers of people, or evacuation instructions issued, our hotline operators receive more calls with tracing requests in the hours and days that follow.

Unfortunately, in such chaotic situations, people can be separated easily. People are panicked, sometimes it is dark and difficult to see, if there are explosions nearby people flee and lose one another.”

Davies said that when people were injured and taken to hospital in an ambulance, their family members don’t always know which one they are at. “People can lose their phones, connections can be disrupted, sim cards are changed. There are untold reasons people get separated in a war zone.”

The persistent violence has severely disrupted communications, with hospitals coming under attack, complicating efforts for medical personnel to document casualties and identify the deceased. The unrelenting warfare, coupled with movement restrictions and communication breakdowns, has created significant challenges in monitoring and locating missing individuals. Moreover, access for forensic and human rights experts has been restricted, preventing the identification of victims.

You can read the full piece by Lorenzo Tondo and Sufian Taha here:

Earlier, we reported Biden’s comments on progress being made on a possible ceasefire deal. And while much of the negotiation is taking place between Israel and Hamas, other nations are involved – and not just as intermediaries.

Reuters reports that Israeli and Egyptian ceasefire negotiators are in talks about an electronic surveillance system along the border between Gaza and Egypt that could allow Israel to pull back its troops from the area if a ceasefire is agreed.

It says that, according to two Egyptian sources and a third source familiar with the matter, the question of whether Israeli forces stay on the border is one of the issues blocking a potential ceasefire deal because both Palestinian militant group Hamas and Egypt, a mediator in the talks, are opposed to Israel keeping its forces there.

Israel is worried that if its troops leave the border zone, referred to by Israel as the Philadelphi corridor, Hamas’ armed wing could smuggle in weapons and supplies from Egypt into Gaza via tunnels that would allow it to re-arm and again threaten Israel.

A surveillance system, if the parties to the negotiations agree on the details, could therefore smooth the path to agreeing a ceasefire - though numerous other stumbling blocks remain.

The source familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the discussions are about “basically sensors that would be built on the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi (corridor).”

The idea is obviously to detect tunnels, to detect any other ways that they’d be trying to smuggle weapons or people into Gaza. Obviously this would be a significant element in a hostage agreement.

Asked if this would be significant for a ceasefire deal because it would mean Israeli soldiers would not have to be on the Philadelphi corridor, the source said: “Correct.”

Here are some of the latest images coming through from photographers on the ground in Israel and Gaza:

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US president Joe Biden said on Thursday that he is “disappointed” with the problem-plagued effort to deliver aid to Gaza via a temporary pier, which US officials say will soon permanently end, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The $230m military pier has repeatedly been detached from the shore because of weather conditions since its initial installation in mid-May. The project also faced issues with the distribution of assistance due to conditions onshore.

“I’ve been disappointed that some of the things that I’ve put forward have not succeeded as well, like the port we attached from Cyprus – I was hopeful that would be more successful,” Biden said of the pier project during a news conference in Washington DC.

AFP reports that earlier in the day, US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told journalists he anticipates “that in relatively short order, we will wind down pier operations.”

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The Pentagon spokesperson Maj Gen Pat Ryder said in a statement that “the pier will soon cease operations, with more details on that process and timing available in the coming days.”

The pier was detached from the coast late last month due to anticipated high seas, and Ryder said an effort to reattach it on Wednesday was unsuccessful.

“The pier and support vessels and equipment are returning to Ashdod [in Israel] where they will remain until further notice. A reanchoring date has not been set,” he said.

“To date, more than 8,100 metric tons (nearly 20 million pounds) of humanitarian aid have been delivered from the pier to the marshaling area where it can be collected by humanitarian organizations for onward delivery and distribution,” Ryder said.

But distribution has been a problem, with the UN World Food Programme suspending deliveries of assistance that arrived via the pier last month to assess the security situation after Israel conducted a military operation nearby.