Middle East crisis live: Aid groups condemn Israel as US ultimatum over Gaza expires

The Israeli army on Wednesday told residents of parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs to leave, the third such warning in 24 hours, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“You are located near facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah, against which the Israel Defense Forces (military) will act in the near future,” army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X that included a map of the areas in question.

The report listed 19 measures of compliance with the US demands. It said Israel had failed to comply with 15 and only partially complied with four.

“Israel not only failed to meet the US criteria that would indicate support to the humanitarian response, but concurrently took actions that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground,” the report said. “That situation is in an even more dire state today than a month ago.”

The US ultimatum, signed by US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, called on Israel to allow a minimum of 350 truckloads of goods to enter Gaza each day, open a fifth crossing into the territory, ensure access for aid groups to northern Gaza and halt legislation that would hinder the operations of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.

Global food security experts have warned of imminent famine in parts of northern Gaza. The amount of food aid reaching Gaza has dropped to the lowest level since December, official Israeli figures show, with only 8,805 tonnes of food aid crossing through Israeli checkpoints into the territory so far this month.

“The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is the result of systemic obstruction of aid, relentless bombardment and an alarming failure to protect civilians,” said Katy Crosby, a senior director of US policy and advocacy at Mercy Corps.

“The worst-case scenario for northern Gaza is now a devastating reality … The US government must hold Israel accountable and take decisive action to ensure unrestricted aid delivery. Without this, preventable suffering and deaths will escalate and erode the United States’ moral and legal credibility,” Crosby said.

Israel said on Monday it had met most of the US demands and that a fifth crossing into Gaza would open within days, but it would press ahead with its laws against Unrwa.

Matthew Miller, a US state department spokeperson, said last week that Israel had made some progress but needed to do more to meet the US conditions.

Israeli officials reject the charge that aid is deliberately restricted and accuse humanitarian agencies of failing to organise its distribution. UN agencies say ongoing fighting and lawlessness makes it difficult to collect and distribute aid on the Gaza side.

Jason Burke

The news website Axios reported earlier on Tuesday that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had decided not to reduce military assistance to Israel due to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, according to two US officials.

In an apparent last-minute concession, Israeli authorities announced an extension of the designated “humanitarian zone” in Gaza, adding inland areas which could partially relieve intense overcrowding and allow some displaced people to move away from the coast as winter approaches.

Aid officials in Gaza describe the situation as “apocalyptic” in much of the territory, where more than 80% of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced and more than two-thirds of buildings have been destroyed or damaged in 13 months of war.

Israeli attacks in Gaza continued this week, killing at least 14 people, including two children and a woman, according to Palestinian medical officials.

A strike late on Monday hit a cafeteria west of Khan Younis, killing at least 11 people, including two children, according to officials at Nasser hospital, where the casualties were taken.

Another strike early on Tuesday hit a house in central Gaza, killing three people including a woman, according to al-Awda hospital, which received the casualties.

Israeli forces launched a major operation in northern Gaza last month, sealing off three towns and ordering the evacuation of civilians. Military officials said they were fighting Hamas militants who had regrouped in the area.

Donald Trump picks Mike Huckabee as Israel envoy

Robert Tait

Donald Trump has chosen the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as the next US ambassador to Israel.

Huckabee has a track record of hardline, occasionally provocative, pro-Israel rhetoric and previously said Israel has a rightful claim to the West Bank, which he refers to by its Hebrew and biblical name of Judea and Samaria.

The territory is claimed by Palestinians as part of a putative future state but is dotted multiple Israeli settlements that are not recognised under international law. Huckabee has refused to call the settlements by that name, insisting that they be called “communities” or neighbourhoods. He has also denied that the West Bank, seized by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 six-day war, is under military occupation.

Posting on his Truth Social network, Trump predicted Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, would “work tirelessly to bring about peace in the Middle East”.

“He loves Israel and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him,” wrote Trump, who called Huckabee “a great public servant.”

Huckabee’s appointment is likely to signal a return to the explicitly pro-Israel posture of Trump’s first administration, when he relocated the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a move decried by Palestinians as damaging to peace prospects.

While Israel claims Jerusalem as its indivisible capital, Palestinians lay claim to the eastern part of the city as their future capital.

Speaking to CNN in 2017, Huckabee – who has paid several visits to Israeli settlements – made his position clear.

“The only people who have ever had Yerushalayim [Jerusalem’s Hebrew name] as a capital have been the Jews,” he said. “Nobody else has ever made this city a capital, ever. So it shouldn’t even be controversial.”

A coalition of international aid organisations have accused Israel of ignoring a US ultimatum that threatened sanctions if Israel did not implement a series of measures to counter the acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The 30-day ultimatum – which was due to expire yesterday or today – was delivered on 13 October, and almost none of its demands have been met, the humanitarian groups say.

It is unclear what measures Israel’s apparent failure to comply will trigger, but they may include a temporary halt to the supply of some munitions or other military assistance.

Washington has not yet said whether it deems Israel to have complied. The US state department said on Tuesday that the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had told a senior Israeli official the previous day that the steps Israel had taken must lead to actual improvement on the ground.

Asked how the US would urge Israel to improve the humanitarian situation, the state department spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Tuesday there was “no new policy or new assessment to offer but we’ll continue to have our conversations with the Israeli government”.

“We have not made an assessment that Israel is violating US law,” Patel said.

More on that in a moment. In other developments:

• Donald Trump has chosen the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as the next US ambassador to Israel. Huckabee has a track record of hardline, occasionally provocative, pro-Israel rhetoric and previously said Israel has a rightful claim to the West Bank, which he refers to by its Hebrew and biblical name of Judea and Samaria.

• Palestinian medical officials say Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 46 people in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, including 11 at a makeshift cafeteria in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone.

• In Lebanon, warplanes struck Beirut’s southern suburbs and killed 33 people elsewhere across the country on Tuesday. Large explosions shook Beirut’s southern suburbs – an area known as Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah has a significant presence – soon after the Israeli military issued evacuation warnings for 11 houses there.

• Lebanese state-run media reported an Israeli strike on an apartment south of the capital Beirut on Wednesday that injured an unspecified number of people. “Israeli warplanes launched a strike at dawn targeting a residential apartment in a building in the Dawhet Aramoun area, injuring people,” the official National News Agency said.

• International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi will visit Tehran on Wednesday for crucial talks on Iran’s nuclear programme. His visit comes only two days after the Israel defence minister warned that Iran was “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities”.

• US forces on Tuesday carried out strikes against targets linked to an Iranian-backed militia in Syria in response to a rocket attack on Washington’s troops in the country, the US military said. The strikes targeted the group’s “weapons storage and logistics headquarters facility … in response to a rocket attack on US personnel,” the US Central Command (Centcom) said in a post on social media that did not identify the militia by name.

• Australia will not change its laws on the supply of weapons or ammunition to Israel if the coalition wins the next federal election, opposition foreign spokesperson Simon Birmingham says. The Liberal senator said the coalition had “no plans” to change the rules, as it emerged during a parliamentary hearing Australia had amended or lapsed at least 16 defence-related export permits to Israel after a review.