Middle East crisis live: Hamas response to ceasefire plan ‘negative’ but discussions continue | Israel-Gaza war

The EU has offered Lebanon a financial package of €1bn (£855m / $1.07bn), European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in Beirut on Thursday.

The funds would be available from this year until 2027, von der Leyen told a joint news conference with Lebanon’s prime minister Najib Mikati and Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides.

Reuters reports she also said the EU would support Lebanon’s armed forces with equipment and training for border management.

In a post to social media about the development, she said “Lebanon and its people can count on the EU’s sustained support” and that the €1bn package will “contribute to the country’s socioeconomic resilience and its overall security and stability.”

The European Commission said in a statement:

This continued EU support will strengthen basic services such as education, social protection and health for the people in Lebanon. It will accompany urgent economic, financial and banking reforms. Furthermore, support will be provided to the Lebanese armed forces and other security forces with equipment and training for border management and to fight against smuggling.

Yesterday, in an unscheduled stop in Egypt, France’s foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné stressed that a French proposal for preventing escalation between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah should be high on the agenda in case a Gaza truce comes into effect.

Israel and anti-Israeli forces have repeatedly exchanged fire over the UN-drawn blue line that separates Israel and Lebanon. Israeli troops have been injured on at least one occasion while skirmishing inside Lebanon, and Hezbollah has targeted Israel military facilities inside northern Israel with rockets. Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the boundary have been displaced by the fighting. The clashes, however, mostly paused last time there was a ceasefire in Gaza, despite Hezbollah not being a direct party to any agreement.

Archie Bland

For our First Edition newsletter today, my colleague Archie Bland spoke to Bassam Khawaja, a human rights lawyer and lecturer at Columbia Law School in the US, about why he supports the protests, what they are seeking to achieve, and how they have escalated to a crisis point:

Protests began at universities across the US soon after the Hamas attack of 7 October, and spread as Israel’s invasion of Gaza intensified. Columbia, a potent symbol of the power of student activism thanks to its students’ key role in Vietnam and anti-apartheid protests, was at the centre of the movement from the start.

As early as November, Columbia suspended chapters of two groups, Jewish Voice for Peace and Students For Justice in Palestine, over an unauthorised walkout. Instead of quashing the protest, that action prompted the formation of a coalition of dozens of student organisations, under the CU Apartheid Divest (CUAD) umbrella. Now made up of 100 student-run groups, CUAD has called on the university to sell holdings in companies with significant financial ties to Israel.

It was CUAD that organised a protest encampment earlier this month – and it was the arrest of more than 100 protesters as their tents were cleared two weeks ago that ratcheted tensions up further. Columbia president Minouche Shafik requested the NYPD’s presence, calling the encampment “a clear and present danger”, and in doing so crossed the Rubicon.

“It was essentially students studying in tents,” Bassam Khawaja said. “It’s laughable to say that it was a danger.” Sending in the NYPD two weeks ago was, he said, “certainly an escalation – but it didn’t come out of nowhere. All the way through this, Columbia has chosen to escalate.”

You can read more here: Thursday briefing – How Gaza protests have gripped American universities

More than 1,600 people have been arrested at 30 schools during the protests. You can follow our live blog specifically about that here.

A senior Hamas official overnight has told the AFP news agency that at the moment the group’s response to the proposed truce deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar was “negative”, but that discussions were still under way.

The group’s aim remains an “end to this war”, Suhail al-Hindi told AFP. The group is understood to be seeking a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the ground in Gaza, with the proposal that there would then be a lengthy rebuilding programme for the territory during which it undertook not to rebuild any military facilities.

That is at odds with the stated aims of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has signalled that Israel intends to mount a ground operation in Rafah regardless of the outcome of a deal. Israel argues that Hamas fighters have fled to the south of the Strip. “We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there with or without a deal,” Netanyahu said this week.

The outline of the hostage release programme that has been proposed is believed to be a 40 day pause in fighting while initially women are released in batches of three every three days. Hamas and other groups are believed to have seized and abducted about 250 people on 7 October from inside southern Israel, with 133 of them thought still held captive, not all of whom are believed to be alive.

Hamas official Hindi, speaking to AFP by phone from an undisclosed location, said there is “great interest from Hamas and all Palestinian resistance factions to end this insane war on the Palestinian people, which has consumed everything”.

“But it will not be at any cost,” he added, stressing that the group “cannot under any circumstances raise the white flag or surrender to the conditions of the Israeli enemy”.

On Wednesday Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Shoukry called on all sides to “show the necessary flexibility” to achieve a deal “that stops the bloodshed of Palestinians”. The Hamas-led health ministry has put the death toll in Gaza at over 34,000.

Visiting the region in the last few days, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said Hamas were the only obstacle to securing a pause in fighting, and that they need to “decide quickly” to accept what he described as a “generous” offer from Israel.

Welcome to our latest live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis. I am Martin Belam and I will be with you for the next while.

Israel’s military chief of staff has said the country is “preparing for an offensive in the north” as he met troops on the Lebanon border. He also said the offensive operation in Gaza “will continue with strength”, without elaborating further on the remarks.

Fears have been growing that Israel could launch a ground offensive on the Lebanon-based militia group Hezbollah that could trigger a wider regional conflict.

Since Hamas’ 7 October attack on Israel in the south, the Iran-allied group has been firing rockets and mortars at the exposed northern Israeli villages and farms next the UN-controlled Blue Line that separates the two countries. Israel has retaliated with its own attacks.

The back-and-forth fire has killed 16 Israeli soldiers and 11 civilians, as well as 71 Lebanese civilians and about 500 fighters from the powerful Iran-allied group and other factions while tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the boundary have fled their homes.

More on that in a moment but first, here’s a summary of the latest developments:

• Israel’s leaders were under renewed pressure to allow more aid into Gaza on Wednesday after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told Benjamin Netanyahu to “accelerate and sustain improvements” seen during recent days in the amount of humanitarian assistance reaching the territory.

• US secretary of state Antony Blinken has met leaders in Israel and also the families of some of those held hostage in Gaza. He told the families to “keep the faith”, and said after meeting president Isaac Herzog “Even in these very difficult times we are determined to get a ceasefire that brings the hostages home – and to get it now. And the only reason that that wouldn’t be achieved is because of Hamas.”

• Hamas has asked Egyptian and Qatari mediators to provide clarity on the terms of the latest ceasefire proposal being discussed as part of negotiations with Israel, an Egyptian official told Associated Press on Wednesday. The official said Hamas wants clear terms for the unconditional return of displaced people to the north of Gaza and to ensure that the second stage of the deal will include discussing the gradual and complete withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the entire Gaza Strip.

• Jordan said some Israeli settlers attacked two of its aid convoys that were on the way to Gaza on Wednesday. It said the attack resulted in the dumping of some of their cargo, which included food, flour, and other necessities, in the streets. Honenu, an Israeli legal aid agency, reported that four men who had “blocked aid trucks going to Gaza” as they were passing near the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim were arrested by Israeli police.

• The Hamas-led health ministry has issued updated casualty figures, claiming that at least 34,568 Palestinians have been killed and 77,765 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.

• The University of California in Los Angeles was reeling on Wednesday following a late-night violent attack by counter-demonstrators on a pro-Palestinian protest encampment, as the state’s governor condemned a slow response from law enforcement to some of the worst violence seen since students across the US intensified their protests in support of Gaza.

• Crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests at US colleges spread on Wednesday after campus hotspots intensified overnight, leading to some violence and hundreds more arrests amid widespread controversy over universities calling in police and claims about “outside agitators” driving escalation.

• Colombia’s president has announced that his government will sever diplomatic relations with Israel, in the latest escalation of a furious row between the countries over the war in Gaza. Addressing a May Day rally in Bogotá on Wednesday, Gustavo Petro again described Israel’s siege of Gaza as “genocide”. “Tomorrow [Thursday] diplomatic relations with the state of Israel will be severed … for having a government, for having a president that is genocidal,” Petro said.