Israel-Gaza war live: IDF says it has control of Gaza side of Rafah border crossing; ceasefire talks to resume in Cairo

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Israel says Kerem Shalom crossing closed

In an early morning press briefing, the Israeli military says the Kerem Shalom crossing is closed on Tuesday for security reasons and will reopen once the security situation allows, reports Reuters.

It’s as the military confirms it has taken operational control of the Palestinian side of Gaza’s southern Rafah Crossing, which borders Egypt, and that special forces were scanning the area.

The IDF said forces had been operating since last night in a specific area of eastern Rafah, from which it said most people and some international organisations had evacuated.

Israeli military forces have taken control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, a key strategic objective and the sole gateway between Egypt and Gaza for humanitarian aid, Israeli military officials have confirmed.

“At the moment we have operational control of the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing and we have special forces scanning the crossing … That is what is happening in the upcoming hours. The operation is not over … I can’t give a timeline,” a military official said on Tuesday morning.

The spokesperson of the Gaza border authority on Tuesday confirmed the presence of Israeli tanks at the Rafah crossing. Aid officials in the territory said that the flow of aid through the crossing has been halted.

The Israeli operation comes as ahead of a new round of indirect negotiations on a ceasefire in Cairo following an announcement by Hamas leaders on Monday night that they would accept a recent proposal for a deal. Israeli officials say they will send a delegation for further talks although the deal did not meet its core demands and vowed to push ahead with an often threatened assault on Rafah.

Read the rest of our latest report here by Jason Burke in Jerusalem and Julian Borger in Washington

Israeli forces say they have taken control of Rafah crossing on Gaza side

An Israeli military official has confirmed that Israel has established operational control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, which borders Egypt in southern Gaza.

Reuters reports that a Gaza border crossing authority spokesperson has told the news agency that the Rafah crossing was closed due to the presence of Israeli tanks.

Three humanitarian sources also told Reuters that the flow of aid through the crossing is now halted.

A military official says:

At the moment we have operational control of the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing and we have special forces scanning the crossing … That is what is happening in the upcoming hours. The operation is not over … I can’t give a timeline

Al Jazeera news is reporting that it’s received a copy of the latest ceasefire proposal approved by Hamas.

Some of the detail includes that Hamas is to release “33 Israeli captives (alive or dead), including women (civilians and soldiers), children (under the age of 19 who are not soldiers), those over the age of 50, and the sick” in the first phase, in exchange for a number of prisoners.

It also says that Hamas will release “all living Israeli female soldiers” in return for prisoners.

The text says in the second stage “Israeli forces shall withdraw completely from the Gaza Strip”.

It’s been reported that this latest proposed truce is a three-stage plan.

In the other developments over the last few hours, Hezbollah says it has carried out a drone attack on an Israeli military position near the northern Israeli town of Metula on Monday according to Reuters.

The Israeli military later confirmed two soldiers were killed in the attack.

Hezbollah also says it has sent dozens of rockets towards military targets across the border with Israel.

Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in daily cross-border strikes over the past six months, in parallel with Israel’s war in Gaza.

Hezbollah has so far restricted its attacks to a strip of northern Israel, seeking to draw Israeli forces away from Gaza, explains Reuters.

It’s 8:05am in Gaza and Tel Aviv, welcome back to our live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis, where we’ll be keeping you up to late on the latest developments.

Qatar is set to send a delegation to Cairo Tuesday morning to resume indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel on a possible ceasefire deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the proposal from Hamas “is far from Israel’s essential demands”, but the government would send negotiators for talks “to exhaust the potential for arriving at an agreement”.

It’s as Israel carried out strikes on Rafah, with an Agence France-Presse correspondent in the city reporting heavy bombardment throughout the night. The Kuwaiti hospital there said in an updated toll on Tuesday that 11 people had been killed and dozens of others injured in the strikes.

After talks earlier in the day failed to produce an agreement, Hamas said Monday evening that it had informed mediators Egypt and Qatar of its “approval of their proposal regarding a ceasefire” in the seven-month-old war, prompting cheering crowds to take to the streets of Rafah.

Close Israeli ally the United States said it was “reviewing” the Hamas response, reports Agence France-Presse.

Summary so far

It’s currently 5:15am in Gaza and Tel Aviv and we are pausing this blog for now. You can still see all of our coverage on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.

But first, here’s a summary of what we know so far compiled by our Guardian staff:

Israel carried out airstrikes in eastern Rafah after issuing orders for the evacuation of 100,000 Palestinians from part of the city earlier on Monday, triggering an exodus of thousands of people. The Israeli military said late on Monday it was conducting targeted strikes against Hamas in Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinian civilians are sheltering.

There were reports of Israeli tanks being seen on the eastern outskirts of Rafah and a Palestinian security official and an Egyptian official said they had reached as close as 200 metres from Rafah’s crossing with neighbouring Egypt. The Axios news site cited unnamed sources as saying Israeli forces planned to take over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, the sole gateway between Egypt and Gaza for humanitarian supplies and people. The Guardian could not independently verify that report.

Palestinian hospital officials said one strike on a house in Rafah late Monday killed five Palestinians, including a woman and a girl. Twenty-two people including two babies and other children were killed in earlier strikes on Monday.

The strikes came as Hamas said it had agreed to a Gaza ceasefire proposal from mediators. Hamas said in a brief statement that its chief, Ismail Haniyeh, had informed Qatari and Egyptian mediators that the group accepted their proposal for a ceasefire, prompting initial celebrations from Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

However, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that the truce proposal fell short of Israel’s demands and that his war cabinet had approved continuing an operation in Rafah. Netanyahu’s office said Israel would still send a delegation to meet with negotiators to try to reach an agreement. Qatar’s foreign ministry said its delegation would head to Cairo on Tuesday.

One Israeli official said it was unclear exactly which proposal Hamas was accepting, as some of the terms appeared to differ substantially from those shown by mediators to Israel and agreed by the Israeli government last week. “[We] don’t recognise some,” the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

Hundreds of Israelis converged on the main military headquarters in Tel Aviv calling for a deal. Smaller gatherings were reported in Jerusalem and other cities across Israel. “Hamas’s announcement must pave the way for the return of the 132 hostages held captive by Hamas for the past seven months. Now is the time for all that are involved to fulfil their commitment and turn this opportunity into a deal for the return of all the hostages,” a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.

US president Joe Biden urged Netanyahu not to launch an offensive in Rafah, the White House said. The leaders’ call occurred before Hamas announced it had accepted a ceasefire proposal. Biden told Netanyahu he still believes reaching a ceasefire with Hamas is the best way to protect the lives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, officials said.

Biden also hosted King Abdullah II of Jordan for a private lunch meeting at the White House on Monday to discuss the war and hostage talks. Jordan’s embassy in Washington said in a posting on the social media site X following the leaders’ meeting that Abdullah warned that an Israeli operation on Rafah “threatens to lead to a new massacre.”

For more, see our full write-up on what we know so far on the latest developments:

The US military has posted on X in the last couple of hours that its forces destroyed an “uncrewed aerial system (UAS)” or a drone, launched by Houthi group in Yemen over the Red Sea.

The Houthis have been launching attacks on shipping in the Red Sea saying they are attacking Israeli-linked shipping in solidarity with Palestinians, however their attacks have also targeted vessels with no links to the country.

Thousands of Israelis have rallied around the country on Monday night, calling for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the terms of a ceasefire deal that Hamas accepted earlier in the day.

Around 1,000 protesters gathered near the defence headquarters in Tel Aviv, while in Jerusalem, at least 100 protesters marched toward Netanyahu’s residence with a banner reading, “The blood is on your hands.”

In Tel Aviv, Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan Zangauker is still held in Gaza, told a gathered crowd that it was “time to accept the deal”.

Brandishing a megaphone, Zangauker stood on the roof of a car and spoke in front of a large crowd of protesters.

“We’re not going to let you continue to abandon the children,” she said.

In a post on X, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said the government was not serious about freeing the hostages.

“A government that wants to return the abductees should be convening an urgent discussion and sending [negotiating] teams to Cairo, not hysterically issuing three different briefings from different parties and crushing the hearts of the families. A national disgrace. There is no limit,” he wrote.

As the war in Gaza goes on, we’re hearing that the United Nations General Assembly could vote on Friday on a draft resolution that would recognise the Palestinians as qualified to become a full UN member.

It would also recommend that the UN Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”, reports Reuters news agency.

Reuters says that it would effectively act as a global survey of how much support the Palestinians have for their bid. An earlier attempt was vetoed in the UN Security Council last month by the United States.

An application to become a full UN member needs to be approved by the 15-member Security Council and then the General Assembly.

Meanwhile protests continue in the US over the Israel-Gaza war.

We’re hearing that pro-Palestinian protesters that had been blocked by police from accessing an encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday have broken through fencing, linked arms and encircled tents that remained there.

Associated Press reports that protesters also sat in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue, blocking the street during rush hour in the Boston area.

It comes as Columbia University has canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony following weeks of pro-Palestinian protests.

Here is some of a thread from a statement posted on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s X page a few hours ago.

On the truce Netanyahu says “While the Hamas proposal is far from meeting Israel’s core demands, Israel will dispatch a ranking delegation to Egypt in an effort to maximize the possibility of reaching an agreement on terms acceptable to Israel.”

But the Israeli prime minister also vowed to continue action in Rafah.

Israel has ordered an evacuation of some 100,000 Palestinians from eastern neighborhoods of Rafah. Approximately more than 1 million civilians from other parts of Gaza have been sheltering from the war in the area.

In the statement on X Netanyahu said “The War Cabinet unanimously decided this evening Israel will continue its operation in Rafah, in order to apply military pressure on Hamas so as to advance the release of our hostages and achieve the other objectives of the war.”

The latest information made public about a ceasefire proposal centres around a three-stage deal, that’s according to the Hamas deputy chief in Gaza, Khalil Al-Hayya, who spoke to Al Jazeera TV.

The Reuters news agency has more on the latest proposed deal. The Guardian has not been able to verify the information and what’s on the table remains unclear.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, has told Reuters that the proposal that Hamas has approved is a watered-down version of an Egyptian offer and includes elements that Israel can not accept.

Having said that – here is what we know:

Phase one:

Reuters reports this would last for 42-days as a ceasefire period. Hamas would release 33 Israeli hostages in return for Israel releasing Palestinians from Israeli jails.

Israel would partially withdraw its troops from Gaza and allow free movement of Palestinians from south to north Gaza.

Phase two:

Another 42-day period would commence that features an agreement to restore a “sustainable calm” to Gaza, language that an official briefed on the talks said Hamas and Israel had agreed in order to take discussion of a “permanent ceasefire” off the table.

There would be the complete withdrawal of most Israeli troops from Gaza.

Hamas releases Israeli reservists and some soldiers in return for Israel releasing Palestinians from jail.

Phase three:

The completion of exchanging bodies and starting the implementation of reconstruction according to the plan overseen by Qatar, Egypt and the United Nations.

Ending the complete blockade on the Gaza Strip.