Russia and China have vetoed a US draft resolution at the United Nations calling for an “immediate and lasting” ceasefire in Gaza.

The resolution called for a cessation of hostilities for approximately six weeks to protect civilians and allow humanitarian assistance.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said this was highly politicized and represented an effective green light for Israel to mount a military operation in Rafah.

Eleven countries voted in favor of the US-backed resolution, which declared “the need for an immediate and lasting ceasefire.”

The vote came amid deteriorating conditions in Gaza, where local officials say more than 30,000 people have been killed since Israel began its war against Hamas following the October 7 attack in Israel.

During three previous UN votes demanding an end to fighting, the US exercised its veto through its permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Friday, amid ongoing talks, to try to negotiate a temporary ceasefire.

He met Arab diplomats in Cairo, where he said an Israeli attack on Rafah, where more than a million people have gathered in Gaza, would be a “mistake.” He also calls for an increase in humanitarian aid.

He is meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet amid tensions with the Biden administration. Netanyahu called a Senate lunch meeting of Republican senators this week, but Senate Democrats did not invite him following Minority Leader Charles Schumer’s speech calling for new elections in Israel and saying that Netanyahu was “the was lost’.

“Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah,” Schumer said in a speech that President Biden called “good.”

The talks are aimed at bringing about a lull in the fighting and the return of an estimated 200 hostages seized by Hamas in the October 7 attack, with negotiations focusing on Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Amid reports of widespread hunger and even famine amid continued attacks and struggles to organize aid distribution, European leaders released a statement calling for “an immediate humanitarian pause leading to a lasting ceasefire -firing, the unconditional release of all hostages and the provision of humanitarian aid.’

The latest wording in the resolution reflects growing concern within the government and abroad about the situation in Gaza.

An earlier version circulating last month called for a ceasefire “as soon as practicable,” and President Biden and top security aides have defended Israel’s right to defend itself by hitting back against Hamas.

With the US-backed resolution rejected, France is stepping in to try to revive efforts.

“Following the veto by Russia and China a few minutes ago, we will resume work on the basis of the French draft resolution in the Security Council and work with our American, European and Arab partners to reach an agreement,” French President Emmanuel Macron said . Friday.

There is also a domestic political component, amid concerns that Israel’s war in Gaza could last the entire summer of a US election year if Netanyahu goes ahead with plans for an operation in Rafah.

A new CNN poll released Friday showed Biden trailing predecessor Donald Trump by eight points in battleground Michigan, home to the country’s largest Muslim population.

Netanyahu said after a meeting with Blinken on Friday that Israel would continue its operation in Rafah even without US support.

“I underlined our commitment to evacuating civilians from conflict areas and meeting humanitarian needs. However, I underlined the need to enter the Gaza Strip and neutralize the remaining militias to defeat Hamas,” Netanyahu said.

“While I expressed hope for American support, I made it clear that we would move forward independently if necessary,” he added.

Israeli protesters are blocking trucks with humanitarian aid from reaching civilians in Gaza, even as children starve to death.

Breaking through police lines, they have been seen running in front of food convoys, sitting at border gates singing Jewish songs, with some holding rowdy techno dance parties.

At night they camp in tents nearby, or catch shuttle buses back to town, while some set up cotton candy machines for the many children brought to the border.

Israeli protesters, some the relatives of the 134 hostages still held by Hamas, are threatening to withhold aid until they are free and want to starve out Hamas fighters.

Some claim aid trucks are full of weapons, not food, and will be taken by terrorists anyway.

Gaza is so wrecked by five months of Israeli bombing and ground assaults that those not among the 30,000 killed are starving to death.

President Joe Biden authorized air drops of supplies, but as they barely make a dent he pledged in the State of the Union to build a temporary port to bring aid in.

A survey by the Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute found 68 per cent of Jewish Israelis opposed sending aid the Gaza under any circumstances.

Even 39 per cent of left-wing Jews were against sending supplies, along with 80 per cent of right-wing Jews.

Video from social media and international news crews show how Israelis, from teenagers to grandmothers with small children, have formed well-organized groups intent on blockading the region.

Waving Israeli flags and holding placards, they hike through bushes around police checkpoints and either sit on the road or stand in circles.

A few even climb on to the front of trucks as they approach, forcing them to brake suddenly, and refuse to move despite demands from police.

The dance parties included protesters with purple flags with ‘Nova’ written on them in reference to the music festival where Hamas killed dozens and took hostages.

Some footage shows police and border guards tackling them and dragging them out of the way, but in other cases they stand idly by as trucks queue for miles.

‘You’re confused, go deal with the war, we came to help you,’ one woman yells in Hebrew as police and soldiers try to clear the road.

One protester told CNN they would keep up the blockade until Hamas released the hostages, and was happy to use starving civilians as bargaining chips.

‘You know what? If they are starving to death, give us back, give our hostages back. Not a single loaf of bread should go there ’til our hostages are coming back,’ she said.

‘You know, even if there is a humanitarian crisis — and there’s not — even if there is, it’s my right and duty to prioritize [Israelis] over any Gazan babies.’

Fellow protester Debbie Sharon said she didn’t believe civilians would even get the food and supplies inside the trucks as Hamas would take it all.

‘I’m telling you here and now, if we knew it’s getting to the children of Gaza, we will do it. This does not arrive at their doorstep,’ she said.

‘This arrives into the tunnels of Hamas that are fighting us and holding our hostages.’

A third protester claimed the trucks could have weapons smuggled inside as there was no way to check them.

‘Bags of rice that are meant to go to their children are filled with bullets,’ she said, as she crossed through a field to reach the border gates. 

There is no evidence of military supplies being smuggled in aid trucks, or that food is taken by Hamas for its terrorists before it reaches civilians.

At the gates, a woman whose sick uncle Lior Rudaeff is one of the hostages, refuses to move from where she is sitting on the road.

‘He’s got a heart condition, he hasn’t had any medication. Why aren’t the hostages getting humanitarian aid?’ she told NPR.

Another woman, who blacked the gates while holding her newborn baby, had a similar message.

‘Release the hostages and they will get all the aid, everything, on the condition that the hostages will be released,’ she said.

‘I have real sympathy for the civilians in Gaza, but the ones who are hurting them are Hamas. Any truck that goes by will not reach civilians.’

At the Kerem Shalom border crossing, teenagers as young as 17 are among the leaders of a well-organized effort including shuttle buses and tent cities.

‘We sleep tonight in Kerem Shalom and block aid and fuel to Hamas! Do you want to sleep here with us? Shuttles are running throughout the night and day,’ Yosef de Bresser, 22, wrote on a WhatsApp group.

‘War is war,’ he told the Washington Post with a shrug, noting that the US killed thousands of civilians bombing Japan in World War II.

‘Who gives his enemy aid?’ 

Another young man, Ben Shabat, claimed – without evidence – that Gazans could use food supplies to make weapons.

‘When you mix flour with potassium nitrate you get an explosive for a warhead. Every pound of sugar and flour that goes into Gaza from Israel, we will get it back by the way of a rocket that will kill our children,’ he said.

He was also motivated by helping the IDF starve out Hamas: ‘When a soldier is hungry, he’s not fighting so well.’

Tahel Attar, 17, said civilians should only get the bare necessities, if anything at all, and luxury foods were among the supplies.

‘We heard they are giving them stuff that they don’t really, really need. Like strawberries. I don’t think people there are crying for strawberries,’ she said.

Tahel said even though authorities sometimes took protesters away to let trucks in, they only did it because they were ordered to.

‘The army is with us, the police is with us. They don’t want us to be here, but they get it. They let us. We are talking with them, we are having fun with them, we are offering them everything they need,’ she said.

Some of the protesters even took photos with smiling soldiers and border guards.

The World Food Program warned last month that Gaza could be plunged into famine as early as May. 

The UN food agency defines a famine as when 30 per cent of children are malnourished, one-fifth of households face acute food shortages and two of every 10,000 people are dying from hunger or malnutrition. 

But a report by Refugees International on Thursday warned Gazan civilians were already starving in ‘apocalyptic’ conditions akin to a serious famine.

‘Our research makes clear that conditions inside of Gaza are apocalyptic,’ said the report read.

‘After five months of war, Palestinians are struggling to find adequate food, water, shelter, and basic medicine. Famine-level hunger is already widespread and worsening.’

The report claimed Israel ‘consistently and groundlessly impeded aid operations within Gaza, blocked legitimate relief operations and resisted implementing measures that would genuinely enhance the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza’.

‘[Israel has] erected unnecessary hurdles, complicated logistical processes, and an unpredictable vetting system, rendering the inspection regime overwhelmingly burdensome with layers of bureaucracy and inspection and limited working hours.’

Hunger is most acute in northern Gaza, which has been isolated by Israeli forces and has suffered long cutoffs of food supplies. 

At least 20 people have died from malnutrition and dehydration at the north’s Kamal Adwan and Shifa hospitals, according to the Health Ministry. 

Most of the dead are children — including ones as old as 15 — as well as a 72-year-old man.

Particularly vulnerable children are also beginning to succumb in the south, where access to aid is more regular.

At the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, 16 premature babies have died of malnutrition-related causes over the past five weeks, one of the senior doctors said. 

Malnutrition is generally slow to bring death, striking children and the elderly first. Other factors can play a role. 

Underfed mothers have difficulty breastfeeding children. Diarrheal diseases, rampant in Gaza due to lack of clean water and sanitation, leave many unable to retain any of the calories they ingest, said Anuradha Narayan, a UNICEF child nutrition expert. 

Malnutrition weakens immune systems, sometimes leading to death from other diseases.

Israel largely shut off entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies after launching its assault on Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed some 1,200 people and took around 250 hostage. 

It has allowed only a trickle of aid trucks through two crossings in the south.

Meat, milk, vegetables and fruit are nearly impossible to find, according to several residents. 

The few items in shops are random and sold at hugely inflated prices — mainly nuts, snacks and spices. People have taken barrels of chocolate from bakeries and are selling tiny smears of it.

Most people eat a weed that crops up in empty lots, known as ‘khubaiza.’ Fatima Shaheen, a 70-year-old who lives with her two sons and their children in northern Gaza, said boiled khubaiza is her main meal, and her family has also ground up food meant for rabbits to use as flour.

‘We are dying for a piece of bread,’ Shaheen said.

Qamar Ahmed said his 18-month-old daughter, Mira, eats mostly boiled weeds. ‘There is no food that suits her age,’ said Ahmed, a researcher with Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and an economic journalist. 

His 70-year-old father gives his own food to Ahmed’s young son, Oleyan. ‘We try to make him eat and he refuses,’ Ahmed said of his father.

Recent airdrops of aid by the US and other countries provide far lower amounts of aid than truck deliveries, which have become rare and sometimes dangerous. 

UNRWA says Israeli authorities haven’t allowed it to deliver supplies to the north since January 23. 

The World Food Organization, which had paused deliveries because of safety concerns, said the military forced its first convoy to the north in two weeks to turn back Tuesday. 

Yazan al-Kafarna, 10, died Monday after almost a week of unsuccessful treatment in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah. 

Photos of the boy showed him extremely emaciated, with twig-like limbs and deep-sunk eyes in a face shriveled to his skull.

Al-Kafarna was born with cerebral palsy, a neurological condition that affects motor skills and can make swallowing and eating difficult. 

His parents said they struggled to find food he could eat, including soft fruits and eggs, since fleeing their home in the north.

He died due to extreme muscle wastage caused primarily by lack of food, according to Dr. Jabr al-Shair, head of the children’s emergency department at Abu Youssef Najjar Hospital.

On a recent day, around 80 malnourished children crowded the hospital’s wards. Aya al-Fayoume, a 19-year-old mother displaced to Rafah, had brought her 3-month-old daughter, Nisreen, who has lost vast amounts of weight over the winter months, sick with persistent diarrhea and vomiting. 

On her diet of mainly canned goods, al-Fayoume said she doesn’t produce enough breast milk for Nisreen.

‘Everything I need is expensive or unavailable,’ she said.

A UN expert said on Thursday that Israel was destroying Gaza’s food system as part of a broader ‘starvation campaign’ in its war against Hamas militants and berated a UN human rights body for not doing more.

‘The images of starvation in Gaza are unbearable and you are doing nothing,’ Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, said in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council.

Fakhri told the council that Israel was “destroying the food system in Gaza”.

“Israel has mounted a starvation campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” he added, saying that included targeting small-scale fishermen.

Yeela Cytrin, a legal adviser at the Israeli mission to the U.N., called the allegations against it a “blatant lie”.

“Israel utterly rejects allegations that it is using starvation as a tool of war,” she told the council and then walked out in protest.

Israel denies restricting relief into Gaza and has started working with private contractors to deliver aid.

President Biden at the State of the Union announced he was directing the military to build a port on the Gaza coast to bring relief to the population there. 

‘The United States is a leading international efforts to get more humanitarian assistance to Gaza,’ he said.

That does not mean US military personnel will be on the ground in the war torn region. 

White House officials offered no time line for when the pier will be built or where exactly it will be located but said its construction will allow more shipments of food, medicine and other essential items to be delivered to the 2.2 million Palestinians.

They said the White House would coordinate with the Israelis regarding security on the ground and with the UN and humanitarian groups on getting aid delivered. 

The temporary pier will allow for hundreds of additional truckloads of assistance each day, the officials said. It will be an additional route for humanitarian aid, which is currently limited to two land crossings into the southern part of Gaza.

Other countries will be involved in its construction but it’s unclear if Israel will be. 

The project could take more than 30 to 60 days to construct and would involve hundreds or thousands of US troops on ships just off shore. It will also require armed escorts and other protective measures.

The US port system being envisioned for Gaza involves two separate components, the first being construction of a floating, offshore barge that would be able to accept aid deliveries.

The US military would then move aid from there to a floating, 1,800 foot-long (550 meter) causeway anchored to the shore.

Once operational, the port system would allow delivery about 2 million meals to Gazans daily.

By comparison, the US military has delivered a total of about 124,000 meals during four airdrops in the past week. The latest airdrop on Friday delivered about 11,500 meals, the US military said.

Israeli forces stormed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday, just hours after they killed a patient and wounded six others inside the complex. 

The Israeli army said it was a limited operation seeking the remains of hostages taken by Hamas, but has not yet revealed exactly whose remains they are seeking. The IDF has also not revealed how many soldiers are currently working to find the remains. 

The raid at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis came a day after the army sought to evacuate thousands of displaced people who had taken shelter there. The southern city has been the main target of Israel’s offensive against Hamas in recent weeks.

While the military said it had ‘credible intelligence’ that Hamas had held hostages at the hospital, the largest in the south of the Gaza Strip, and that the remains of hostages might still be inside, it did not release the evidence it was citing. 

It has since said that it has apprehended a number of suspects during the raid.  

Al Jazeera reported that the IDF gave those in Nasser until 7am local time to leave the hospital, and that as of this morning ‘heavy tank and machine gun fire’ could be heard nearby. 

The outlet reported that the hospital’s maternity ward, orthopaedics unit and emergency room were targeted by IDF soldiers, and that medical staff were rounded up and had ‘their hands tied behind their backs.’ 

Nasser Hospital, in the southern city of Khan Younis, has been the latest focus of operations that have gutted Gaza’s health sector as it struggles to treat scores of patients wounded in daily bombardments. 

Video of the aftermath of last night’s strike, taken by a doctor who works at the hospital, showed medics scrambling to wheel patients on stretchers through a corridor filled with smoke or dust. 

A medic can be seen using the torch on a mobile phone to illuminate a darkened room where a wounded man screamed out in pain as gunfire echoed outside.

At one point in a video gunshots rang out and a doctor shouted ‘Is there anyone still inside? There is gunfire, there is gunfire – heads down’.

Another man in a video said the Israeli army had surrounded the hospital and nobody could get out.

The World Health Organisation has previously said half the medical staff of Nasser Hospital had already fled.

Dr. Khaled Alserr, one of the remaining surgeons at Nasser Hospital, told the AP that the seven patients who were hit early on Thursday morning were already being treated for past wounds. On Wednesday, a doctor was lightly wounded when a drone opened fire on the upper stories of the hospital, he said.

‘The situation is escalating every hour and every minute,’ he said.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday that it had opened a secure corridor for displaced people to leave the hospital but would allow doctors and patients to remain there. 

Videos and images circulating online showed scores of people walking out of the facility on foot carrying their belongings on their shoulders. One image showed a family with many elderly members sat on a cart that was being pulled along by a horse as they travelled from Khan Younis to Rafah. 

Last month, the military had ordered the evacuation of Nasser Hospital and surrounding areas. But as with other health facilities, medics said patients were unable to safely leave or be relocated, and thousands of people displaced by fighting elsewhere remained there. 

Palestinians say nowhere is safe in the besieged territory, as Israel continues to carry out strikes in all parts of it.

‘People have been forced into an impossible situation,’ said Lisa Macheiner of the aid group Doctors Without Borders, which has staff in the hospital.

‘Stay at Nasser Hospital against the Israeli military’s orders and become a potential target, or exit the compound into an apocalyptic landscape where bombings and evacuation orders are a part of daily life.’

Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals and other civilian structures to shield its fighters.

Gaza’s Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said Israel had launched a ‘massive incursion’ with heavy shooting that wounded many of the displaced people who had sheltered there. 

He said the military had ordered medics to move all patients into an older building that was not properly equipped for their treatment.

‘Many cannot evacuate, such as those with lower limb amputations, severe burns, or the elderly,’ he said in an interview with the Al Jazeera network.

Separately, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 13 people in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, made up of 10 civilians – mostly women and children – and just three fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, an ally of Gaza’s Hamas militants. 

The strikes came just hours after a rocket attack from Lebanon killed an Israeli soldier in what was the deadliest of daily exchanges of fire along the border since the October 7  start of the war in Gaza. 

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire along the border nearly every day since the start of the war in Gaza. Hezbollah has not claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s rocket attack. 

Negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza appear to have stalled, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until Hamas is destroyed and scores of hostages taken during the October 7 attack that sparked the war are returned.

The war began when Hamas militants burst through Israel’s formidable defences on Black Saturday and rampaged through several communities, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. 

More than 100 of the captives were freed during a cease-fire last year in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners, but around 130 captives remain in Gaza, a fourth of whom are believed to be dead. 

Netanyahu has come under intense pressure from families of the hostages and the wider public to make a deal to secure their freedom, but his far-right coalition partners could bring down his government if he is seen as being too soft on Hamas.

Israel responded to the attack by launching one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history.

Over 28,000 Palestinians have been killed, 80% of the population have fled their homes and a quarter are starving amid a worsening humanitarian catastrophe. 

Large areas in northern Gaza, the first target of the offensive, have been completely destroyed. 

Hamas has continued to attack Israeli forces in all parts of Gaza, and says it will not release all the remaining captives until Israel ends its offensive and withdraws. Hamas is also demanding the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including top militants.

Netanyahu has rejected those demands, calling them ‘delusional,’ and says Israel will soon expand its offensive into Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, on the Egyptian border. 

Over half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge in Rafah after fleeing fighting elsewhere in the coastal enclave.

At least 28,576 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Over 68,000 people have been wounded in the war.

More to follow.  

Egyptian officials have said that any move that sends Gazans into Egyptian territory could jeopardize the situation decades-old peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, an anchor of stability in the Middle East. But on Monday, Egypt offered assurances of that the treaty would stand.

Many Palestinians say Israel wants to drive them out, and they fear that if they ever leave, Israel would not let them back in — just as Arabs who fled or were expelled from Israel at Israel's founding are not allowed to return.

Mr Netanyahu, who vowed to crush Hamas, has described Rafah as his last stronghold in Gaza. Israeli officials say securing the city is crucial to prevent another attack like the one on October 7, when militants led by Hamas in Israel killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 others.

On Monday, after Israeli commandos released two of the hostages in Rafah, Mr. Netanyahu said that “only continued military pressure, until total victory, will bring about the release of all our hostages.”

Harel Chorev, a researcher at Tel Aviv University, said the rescue operation could be used to strengthen Netanyahu's argument for an expanded ground invasion.

“It shows that military pressure works, and that it can ultimately justify Israel's position on the need to invade Rafah,” Mr. Chorev said.

But Ibrahim Dalalsha, director of the Horizon Center for Political Studies and Media Outreach in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said the high Palestinian death toll from the raid could prompt Egypt, the US and Qatar to push harder for a agree.

At least 67 people were killed in Israeli attacks accompanying the rescue operation, according to Gaza's health ministry. More than 28,000 people in Gaza have been killed during Israel's military campaign, the Health Ministry says.

“They want to avoid further operations like this with human casualties and the possibility of the hostages being killed,” Mr Dalalsha said.

Since October 7, Israel has carried out an intense aerial bombardment and ground invasion, first concentrating in northern Gaza and then working its way south. The country has repeatedly ordered citizens to evacuate, expelling many of them multiple times and steadily forcing them into smaller spaces and more dire conditions. Rafah is the last remaining area where it told Gazans to take refuge – and even the country has not been immune to airstrikes.

Some Israelis want the government to agree to a deal that would release the remaining hostages in exchange for an end to the Israeli attack, fearing the offensive will endanger them. Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement on Monday that “only continued military pressure, until total victory, will bring about the release of all our hostages.”

Mr. Netanyahu says securing Rafah is crucial to Israel's goal of ending Hamas' control of Gaza. On Sunday he promised civilians there safe passage to areas in northern Gaza, although he gave no details.

President Biden, after a meeting at the White House on Monday with King Abdullah II of Jordan, reiterated U.S. concerns about an Israeli invasion of Rafah, saying it “must not proceed” without “a credible plan to ensure the security and support of more than to guarantee one country'. million people sheltering there.”

Mr. Biden called citizens there “exposed and vulnerable” and said, “They must be protected.”

He said the United States also continues to work toward an agreement between Hamas and Israel that would free the remaining hostages and pause the fighting for at least six weeks.

King Abdullah said the war must end.

“We cannot afford an Israeli attack on Rafah,” he said. “It will certainly cause a new humanitarian catastrophe.”

On Monday, Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said at a news conference in Washington that the Biden administration had expressed its concerns about the expected invasion to Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.

But Mr. Miller declined to say what action the United States might take if Israel did not heed his advice. When asked if the Biden administration was happy with the results so far of its efforts to influence the Israeli course of the war, he said: “In many cases we are absolutely not.”

More than 28,000 people have been killed in Gaza during Israel's military campaign, according to area health officials. Israel says about 1,200 people were killed in the October 7 attack.

The United Nations has repeatedly warned that an advance on Rafah could be devastating for civilians and worsen the humanitarian catastrophe already unfolding in Gaza, where people are dangerously short of food, clean water and medicine.

On Monday, Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for the United Nations secretary general, suggested the UN would have no role in Israel's evacuation plans. “We will not be a party to the forced displacement of people,” Mr. Dujarric said. “As things stand, there is currently no place in Gaza that is safe.”

Reporting was contributed by Michael Levenson, Iyad Abuheweila, Abu Bakr Bashir, Yan Zhuang, Gabby Sobelman, Mike Ives, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Farnaz Fassihi, Andrés R. Martínez And Isabel Kershner.

Israeli security forces said early Monday they had rescued two hostages held in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The hostages, Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, underwent tests at a Tel Aviv hospital and were both in good condition, according to a joint statement from the Israeli army, police and Shin domestic security service. Stake.

The statement was issued around the same time Israel said this was the case launched a 'wave' of attacks at Rafah, a busy city on the border with Egypt that is home to more than a million Palestinian refugees in anticipation of an Israeli ground invasion.

Mr Marman and Mr Har were among more than 240 people captured during the surprise attack of October 7 on southern Israel by Hamas and other militant groups, prompting Israel to later retaliate with massive airstrikes and a ground invasion of Gaza. The statement said the two men had been captured from Nir Yitzhak, near the Gaza border. Other details were not immediately available.

Israel has discussed plans to send troops to Rafah even after aid groups, the United Nations and the United States warned against it. the people sheltering there have nowhere to go. Egypt has done that so far refused to accept Palestinian refugees.

About 100 of the hostages captured in October were released last year during a weeklong ceasefire. Last week, The New York Times reports this that Israeli intelligence officers had concluded that at least 30 of the remaining 136 hostages had died since the start of the war. Before Monday's operation, Israeli forces had said they had at least made a rescue one hostage.

The hostages' families have pressured Israel to prioritize negotiations for their release. He made this public last week turned down Hamas's latest proposal for a new pause in the fighting that could allow the release of some of the hostages held by the militants.

But Israeli officials have also been noted that their government was still open to negotiations, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview on television on Sunday that his government was working on a plan to evacuate people from Rafah.

When asked during the interview with ABC News how many of the remaining hostages were still alive, Mr. Netanyahu said: “Enough to justify the kind of efforts we are making.”

“We are going to do our best to get back all those who are still alive and, frankly, the bodies of the dead,” he added.

Hamas has proposed a ceasefire plan that would silence weapons in Gaza for four and a half months, leading to an end to the war and the release of the remaining hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and the withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza.

It comes in response to a proposal sent last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators and backed by the United States and Israel.

According to a draft document seen by Reuters, the Hamas counterproposal envisions three phases, each lasting 45 days.

The proposal would see terrorists exchange the remaining Israeli hostages they captured on October 7 for Palestinian prisoners.

Reconstruction of Gaza would begin, Israeli forces would withdraw completely, and bodies and remains would be exchanged.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel overnight after meeting with the leaders of mediators Qatar and Egypt in the most serious diplomatic effort of the war yet aimed at reaching an extended ceasefire. Details of Hamas's counteroffer have not previously been reported.

According to the document, during the first 45-day phase, all Israeli female hostages, men under the age of 19, and the elderly and sick would be released, in exchange for the release of Palestinian women and children from Israeli prisons. Israel would also withdraw its troops from populated areas during the first phase.

Implementation of the second phase would begin only after the sides “concluded indirect discussions on the requirements necessary to end mutual military operations and return to complete calm.”

The second phase would include the release of the remaining male hostages and “the withdrawal of Israeli forces beyond the borders of all areas of the Gaza Strip.”

Bodies and remains would be exchanged during the third phase. The ceasefire would also increase the flow of food and other aid to Gaza's desperate civilians, who face hunger and a severe shortage of basic services.

Thirty-two of the more than 130 hostages still held by Hamas are no longer alive, according to a report.

Citing a confidential assessment conducted by Israeli intelligence officials, The New York Times reported yesterday that more hostages have been killed than previously thought.

So far, the IDF had only confirmed the deaths of 29 of the prisoners still in Gaza.

In addition to the 32 confirmed deaths, the IDF is assessing “unconfirmed intelligence” that at least 20 other hostages may also have been killed, the report said, citing four military officials speaking on condition of anonymity.

The officials said the families of the dead have all been informed of their deaths and confirmed that most of the dead were killed in the October 7 attacks and that their bodies were taken to Gaza.

IDF spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari said in response to the report that the IDF is “working in every possible way to return.” [the hostages] home, and exhaust all information about them and their circumstances'.

He added: “The IDF is accompanying the families of the hostages in these complex and difficult days, and our representatives are providing the families with all confirmed information about their loved ones.”

He said the IDF has so far informed the families of 31 hostages that their loved ones have been confirmed killed.

These include 29 hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 – all announced in recent months – and soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, who were killed and their bodies taken by Hamas in 2014.

“To the rest of the families, we have provided accurate information about their fate and circumstances,” he added.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said the IDF had said before the article's publication that 31 of the hostages, down from 32, had died.

Israel began its military offensive in Gaza after terrorists from Hamas-ruled Gaza killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in southern Israel on October 7.

Of the 253 hostages seized, 132 are believed to still be held after a week-long ceasefire in late November during which 105 people were released.

Four hostages were released before the armistice and another was rescued by the military.

Gaza's health ministry says at least 27,708 people have been killed in Israel's military campaign, while thousands more are feared buried under the rubble.