Middle East crisis: Israel has agreed to listen to US concerns before any Rafah invasion, says White House – as it happened

• Diplomatic efforts increased on Sunday to reach a long sought-after truce and hostage-release deal in Gaza. The World Economic Forum (WEF) summit opened in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, which US secretary of state Antony Blinken and high-ranking officials from other countries trying to broker a ceasefire are also due to attend. While there is no Israeli participation, the other key players will discuss Israel’s war in Gaza, WEF president Borge Brende has said.

• Speaking at the WEF summit, Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, said only the US could stop Israel attacking Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, where more than 1 million people are sheltering. Abbas added that he expected an assault on the city in the next days. “We call on the United States of America to ask Israel to not carry on the Rafah attack. America is the only country able to prevent Israel from committing this crime,” he was quoted as saying. “What will happen in the coming few days is what Israel will do with attacking Rafah because all the Palestinians from Gaza are gathered there,” Abbas said. He added that only a “small strike” on Rafah would force the Palestinian population to flee the Gaza Strip. “The biggest catastrophe in the Palestinian people’s history would then happen,” Abbas warned.

• White House national security spokesperson John Kirby later said that Israel had agreed to listen to US concerns and thoughts before it launches an invasion of Rafah. “They’ve assured us that they won’t go into Rafah until we’ve had a chance to really share our perspectives and our concerns with them,” Kirby told ABC. “What we’re hoping is that after six weeks of a temporary ceasefire, we can maybe get something more enduring in place,” Kirby said. “The Israelis have started to meet the commitments that (US) President (Joe) Biden asked them to meet,” he said. Biden has previously said that Israel should not go into Rafah without credible plans to protect civilians.

• At least 34,454 Palestinian people have been killed and 77,575 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement. An estimated 66 people have been killed and 138 others injured over the past 24 hours, the ministry said.

• A Hamas delegation will arrive in Egypt on Monday to deliver the group’s response to Israel’s new hostage and truce counterproposal, a senior official of the Palestinian militant group told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Hamas has previously insisted on a permanent ceasefire – a condition that Israel has rejected. However, the Axios news website, citing two Israeli officials, reported that Israel’s latest proposal includes a willingness to discuss the “restoration of sustainable calm” in Gaza after hostages are released.

• During a visit to the headquarters of the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, said that Paris had been making proposals to “avoid war in Lebanon”. “I will head to Beirut to meet political authorities to … make proposals,” he said. “Our responsibility is to mitigate escalation, and that is also our role in UNIFIL. We have 700 soldiers here.” Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group have exchanged near-daily fire since Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed.

We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.

Here are the quotes from White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, about Israel having apparently agreed to listen to US concerns before it launches its planned invasion of Rafah (see earlier post at 14.43).

Washington has said it could not support a Rafah operation without an appropriate and credible humanitarian plan.

“They’ve assured us that they won’t go into Rafah until we’ve had a chance to really share our perspectives and our concerns with them,” Kirby told ABC.

“What we’re hoping is that after six weeks of a temporary ceasefire, we can maybe get something more enduring in place,” said Kirby, who also noted that the number of aid trucks into the north of Gaza was starting to increase.

“The Israelis have started to meet the commitments that (US) President (Joe) Biden asked them to meet,” he said.

A Democratic senator has questioned whether the Joe Biden administration has been properly assessing whether Israel was complying with international law, following a Reuters report that stated some senior US officials did not find the country’s assurances credible.

“This reporting casts serious doubt on the integrity of the process in the Biden administration for reviewing whether the Netanyahu government is complying with international law in Gaza,” Senator Chris Van Hollen said in a statement.

The Reuters report found that some senior state department officials have advised secretary of state Antony Blinken that they do not find “credible or reliable” Israel’s assurances that it is using US-supplied weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law.

Blinken must tell Congress by 8 May whether he finds Israel’s assurances credible. According to an internal state department memo, several bureaus within the agency did not find Israel’s statements credible, citing military actions that raised questions about potential violations of international humanitarian law, according to Reuters.

Van Hollen said the Reuters report had found that the recommendations of those bureaus “were swept aside for political convenience”.

“The determination regarding compliance with international law is one of fact and law. The facts and law should not be ignored to achieve a pre-determined policy outcome. Our credibility is on the line,” he said.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “couldn’t have done things worse” in the war in Gaza, according to a former speaker of the US House of Representatives.

Speaking on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Nancy Pelosi said she is “not a big fan” of Netanyahu and that he “has never been an agent for peace”.

In the interview, the former speaker said the war is challenging “the conscience of the world”, that the impact of famine on children in Gaza is “almost unforgivable” and criticised the death toll.

Pelosi told the BBC that the actions of Hamas on 7 October were “barbaric”.

She continued:

Israel has the right to defend itself – the manner in which they are doing it is really challenging because Netanyahu has never been an agent for peace.

I’m not a big fan of his, but he couldn’t have done things worse than tens of thousands, whatever the figure may be of people dying, children malnourished, and the uncertainty that is there, and that’s what people are speaking out about.

Israel has agreed to listen to US concerns and thoughts before it launches an invasion of the city of Rafah in Gaza, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby has said.

Kirby, speaking to ABC, also said Israel has started to meet the commitments it made to the US president, Joe Biden, on allowing aid into the north of Gaza.

Israel has signalled it plans to push ahead with a ground operation in southern Rafah, the only part of Gaza where it has not sent in troops. More than half of the Palestinian territory’s population of 2.3 million has sought shelter in Rafah after fleeing Israeli bombardment from elsewhere.

The long-threatened plan to attack the city has drawn intense opposition from Israel’s allies, including the US, which said it would cause thousands of civilian casualties and further disrupt aid deliveries.

Biden has previously warned that Israel should not go into Rafah without credible plans to protect civilians.

Here are some of the latest images coming out from the newswires:

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Student protests on US university campuses over Israel’s war on Gaza showed little sign of letting up over the weekend, with protesters vowing to continue until their demands for US educational bodies to disentangle from companies profiting from the conflict are met.

In what is perhaps the most significant student movement since the anti-Vietnam campus protests of the late 1960s, the conflict between pro-Palestinian students and university administrators has revealed an entire subset of conflicts.

After several years of semi-seasonal student marches through the city to voice positions on topics from racial justice to global heating to gun control, protests over the Israel-Gaza war are the latest headache for authorities. New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, blamed the NYU protests on “professional agitators”; the university fenced off the square where students customarily gather.

Several days earlier, and more than 100 blocks uptown, Columbia University officials had warned student members of the Gaza Solidarity encampment on the quadrangle of the Ivy League college that while they had a right to protest, they were not allowed “to disrupt campus life or harass and intimidate fellow students”.

But then, contentiously, the SRG was called in. Officers arrested – and later released – more than 100 students, inflaming a larger political debate surrounding the university president, Minouche Shafik, in the job less than a year. Students demanded Shafik resign because she’d called the police on to campus – actions that supercharged the spirits of student protest nationally – while accusations of antisemitism have mounted, both against protesters and against Shafik for, her critics say, not sufficiently protecting Jewish students.

You can read the full story by my colleague, Edward Helmore, here:

Israeli media has reported that Benjamin Netanyahu is fearful that the international criminal court (ICC) could imminently issue an arrest warrant against him, as well as top Israeli officials and fighters in the Israeli military.

“While decisions made by the court in The Hague will not affect Israel’s actions, they will set a dangerous precedent that threatens soldiers and public figures,” the Israeli prime minister said in a statement.

One of Israel’s leading television news outlets, Channel 12, reported earlier this month that Israel was increasingly worried by the possibility that the ICC would issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and other top officials for alleged violations of international law in Gaza.

The report said that the prime minister’s Office held an “emergency discussion” on the issue.

Israel is not a member of the court, based in The Hague, and does not recognise its jurisdiction, but the Palestinian territories were admitted as a member state in 2015.

ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan said in October the court had jurisdiction over any potential war crimes carried out by Hamas fighters in Israel and by Israelis in the Gaza Strip.

A Hamas delegation will visit Cairo, the Egyptian capital, on Monday for talks aimed at securing a ceasefire, a Hamas official has told Reuters.

The delegation will reportedly discuss a ceasefire proposal handed by Hamas to mediators Qatar and Egypt, as well as Israel’s response.

Reuter’s source did not disclose details of the latest proposals.

On Friday, senior Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya said the group had received Israel’s response to its ceasefire proposal and was studying it before handing its response to Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

Prior rounds of talks have failed to bridge the gaps in the two sides’ positions. Hamas wants an accord for a permanent end to the war and for Israel to pull its forces out of the Gaza Strip.

Israel has only offered a temporary ceasefire to free about 130 hostages remaining in captivity and to allow the delivery of more humanitarian aid. It has said it won’t end its operations until it has achieved its aim of destroying Hamas.

Israel’s foreign minister said on Saturday that a planned incursion into Rafah, where more than one million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, could be suspended should a deal emerge to release the Israeli hostages.

US news website Axios, citing two Israeli officials, reported that Israel’s latest proposal includes a willingness to discuss the “restoration of sustainable calm” in Gaza after hostages are released.

It is the first time in the nearly seven-month war that Israeli leaders have suggested they are open to discussing an end to the war, Axios said. These reports have not yet been independently verified.

France’s top diplomat on Sunday urged calm in Lebanon during his second visit since cross-border tensions with Israel flared on the back of the war in Gaza.

Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group have exchanged near-daily fire since Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October sparked the war in Gaza.

Fighting has intensified in recent weeks, with Israel striking deeper into Lebanese territory, while Hezbollah has stepped up its missile and drone attacks on military positions in northern Israel.

France has for months sought to de-escalate the cross-border tensions, presenting to Lebanon and Israel an initiative in January seeking to end hostilities.

During a visit to the headquarters of the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), French foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné reiterated that Paris has been making proposals to “avoid war in Lebanon”.

“I will head to Beirut to meet political authorities to … make proposals,” he said. “Our responsibility is to mitigate escalation, and that is also our role in UNIFIL. We have 700 soldiers here.”

A French diplomatic source told AFP that the volume of cross-border attacks had doubled since 13 April.

Séjourné is set to meet Lebanese officials on Sunday afternoon before holding a press conference.

In March, Beirut submitted its response to the French initiative, which was based on a UN resolution barring the presence of any forces other than the Lebanese military and UNIFIL in south Lebanon.

Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati, who heads a caretaker government with reduced powers, on Friday suggested that Paris was reviewing its proposal and would submit a new one to Beirut.

Séjourné’s trip – which will also see him stop in Riyadh for a summit on Gaza – coincides with a visit to Jerusalem by US envoy Amos Hochstein as Washington also pushes for de-escalation along the Israel-Lebanon border.

• Diplomatic efforts increased on Sunday to reach a long sought-after truce and hostage-release deal in Gaza. The World Economic Forum (WEF) summit opened in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, which US secretary of state Antony Blinken and high-ranking officials from other countries trying to broker a ceasefire are also due to attend. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, chaired a meeting in Riyadh earlier today with representatives from six Arab countries to discuss Israel’s war in Gaza. They reiterated their calls to see Israel’s military offensive in Gaza end and voiced their opposition to Israel’s planned assault on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, the only corner of the strip that has not seen fierce ground fighting and where more than half of the Palestinian territory’s population of 2.3 million has sought shelter.

• Speaking at the WEF summit, Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, said only the US could stop Israel attacking Rafah, adding he expected an assault on the city in the next days. “We call on the United States of America to ask Israel to not carry on the Rafah attack. America is the only country able to prevent Israel from committing this crime,” he was quoted as saying. “What will happen in the coming few days is what Israel will do with attacking Rafah because all the Palestinians from Gaza are gathered there,” Abbas said. He added that only a “small strike” on Rafah would force the Palestinian population to flee the Gaza Strip. “The biggest catastrophe in the Palestinian people’s history would then happen.”

• At least 34,454 Palestinian people have been killed and 77,575 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement. An estimated 66 people have been killed and 138 others injured over the past 24 hours, the ministry said.

Peter Beaumont, a senior international correspondent for the Guardian, has an interesting piece about the sense of growing optimism in the truce talks between Hamas and Israel, and explores what the contours of any agreement could look like.

You can read it in full here: