Important events
US President Joe Biden said it was “becoming increasingly difficult to achieve a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas” but expressed his determination to bring about an end to hostilities.
The leaders of the United States, Egypt and Qatar had hoped that ceasefire talks would begin on Thursday in Doha or Cairo. The aim of the talks is to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas, to halt the conflict in the Gaza Strip and to return Israeli hostages to their families and Palestinian civilians to their homes.
However, according to reports from Sky News and the New York Times, Hamas official Ahmad Abdul Hadi has said the group will not take part in the talks.
“We’ll see what Iran does, and we’ll see what happens if there’s an attack. But I’m not giving up,” Biden told reporters after arriving in New Orleans.
Members of the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, AP reported.
But the council, which voted in favor of a US ceasefire proposal in June, took no further action at Tuesday’s emergency meeting on the Israeli air strike on a school converted into an emergency shelter in the Gaza Strip at the weekend.
The US military said on Tuesday that it had destroyed two Houthi ships in the Red Sea.
Further information will follow as soon as we receive it.
Three-month-old baby Reem Abu Hayyah is the only member of her family to survive an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip late Monday.
A few kilometers further north, Mohamed Abuel-Qomasan lost his wife and their twin babies – just four days old – in another attack.
More than 10 months after the war with Hamas began, Israel’s relentless bombing of the isolated area has wiped out numerous extended families, AP reported.
The Israeli attack on Monday destroyed a house near the southern city of Khan Younis and killed 10 people.
Among the dead are the parents of Reem Abu Hayyah and five siblings aged between five and twelve, as well as the parents of three other children.
All four children were injured in the attack.
“There is no one left except this baby,” said her aunt Soad Abu Hayyah.
“We’ve been trying to give her powdered milk since this morning, but she won’t take it because she’s used to her mother’s milk.”
The attack, which killed Abuel-Qomasan’s wife and his newborns – a boy named Asser and a girl named Ayssel – also killed the twins’ maternal grandmother.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s ongoing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
The US has agreed to sell $20 billion worth of fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel, as the Pentagon says it is “committed to Israel’s security”.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken approved the sale of F-15 jets and equipment worth nearly $19 billion, as well as $774 million worth of tank shells, more than $60 million worth of explosive grenades and $583 million worth of army vehicles, the Pentagon said in a statement.
Production of Boeing’s F-15 fighter jets is expected to take several years, with deliveries beginning in 2029. According to the Pentagon, deliveries of other equipment are expected to begin in 2026.
The United States, Israel’s biggest ally and arms supplier, has supplied Israel with more than 10,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs and thousands of Hellfire missiles since the Gaza war began in October, US officials told Reuters in June.
The agreement came as Western diplomats rush to prevent a major conflict in the Middle East after Iran and its allies blamed Israel for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month.
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Iran has rejected Western calls not to retaliate against Israel for the assassination of Hamas politician Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran late last month.“Such demands are devoid of any political logic, are completely contrary to the principles and rules of international law and represent an excessive demand,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani. A report by the official IRNA news agency on Tuesday said President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a phone conversation late Monday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer that the West’s silence on “unprecedented inhuman crimes” in Gaza and Israeli attacks in other parts of the Middle East was “irresponsible” and encouraged Israel to jeopardize regional and global security.
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Only a ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip resulting from talks planned for this week could prevent Iran from directly retaliating against Israel over the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Israeli soil, three senior Iranian government officials told Reuters. A ceasefire in the Gaza Strip would give Iran the opportunity for a smaller “symbolic” response, one of the sources said.
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When asked whether he believed Iran would refrain from retaliating if there was a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Joe Biden said on Tuesday: “That is my expectation.” US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Washington’s goal in the Middle East was to “lower the temperature,” deter and repel future attacks and avoid regional conflict. “That starts with signing an agreement for an immediate ceasefire with hostage release in Gaza. We have to get that across the finish line,” she said at a UN Security Council meeting.
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Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s ultranationalist national security minister, flouted long-standing rules by leading hundreds of Israelis to sing Jewish hymns and perform religious rituals on the elevated grounds in Jerusalem’s Old City. known among Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif. Under a long-standing but fragile agreement, Jews are allowed to visit the site but are not allowed to pray there. The complex is Islam’s third holiest site and the holiest for Jews, who call it the Temple Mount. Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Ben-Gvir’s visit “deviated from the status quo” and that Israel’s policy on the Temple Mount remained unchanged.
