Middle East crisis live: Guterres to meet UNRWA donors over funding crisis; IDF reportedly kills three Palestinians in West Bank hospital | Israel-Gaza war

Jason Burke

Hamas militants have returned to northern Gaza, where they are mobilising against Israeli forces and rebuilding a system of governance, aid officials, Gaza residents, analysts and Israeli officials say.

Elsewhere in Gaza, Hamas administrators and police maintain firm control of the south, where much of the population is concentrated, though civil order is breaking down in central regions.

The apparent resurgence of Hamas in areas seized and cleared by Israeli troops during the nearly four-month offensive underlines the difficulties Benjamin Netanyahu faces in meeting his pledge to “crush” the militant group.

Eyal Hulata, who until January 2023 was the head of Israel’s national security council, said: “We are hearing more, unfortunately, of the recovery of [an] insurgency in both central and northern Gaza … We’re hearing more and more that Hamas are doing policing in northern Gaza and governing trade, and that is a very bad outcome.”

Read the rest of Jason Burke’s reporting from Jerusalem here:

Helen Livingstone

International aid agencies have said they are “deeply concerned and outraged” at the “reckless” decision by major donors to cut funding to a UN Palestinian aid agency after Israel accused some of its workers of taking part in Hamas’s 7 October attack.

“We are shocked by the reckless decision to cut a lifeline for an entire population by some of the very countries that had called for aid in Gaza to be stepped up and for humanitarians to be protected while doing their job,” the coalition of 21 agencies, including Oxfam, Save the Children and ActionAid, said in a statement on Monday.

More than 10 western countries including the US, UK and Germany said they would suspend funding to UNRWA, which provides aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, after the agency said it had launched an investigation into 12 staff members who allegedly took part in abductions and killings on 7 October.

The agency has sacked nine of those accused. Two others are missing and one is dead. The UN in New York has also launched a high-level investigation into the alleged acts, which its secretary general, António Guterres, described as “abhorrent”.

In their Monday statement, the aid agencies noted that 2 million civilians, more than half of them children, rely on UNRWA aid in Gaza. “The population faces starvation, looming famine and an outbreak of disease under Israel’s continued indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate deprivation of aid in Gaza,” they said.

Read the rest of Helen’s piece here:

There are reports Israeli forces have stormed Ibn Sina hospital in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday and reportedly killed three Palestinians.

Voice of Palestine radio has reported the raid, according to the Reuters news agency.

A short time later the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) posted on their Telegram channel saying they had “neutralised” a “Hamas terrorist cell” inside the hospital. The IDF also says that there was a plan to “carry out a terror attack in the immediate period”.

The army statement identified the main target of the overnight raid on Ibn Sina hospital in the city of Jenin as a member of the Islamist militant movement, and the other two as members of Islamic Jihad and a local group of gunmen.

The IDF statement alleges one of the men was planning “a raid attack inspired by the October 7th massacre”.

There was no immediate Palestinian confirmation of their identities, Reuters reports.

The military also declined to say whether the three had been killed according to Reuters, but Voice of Palestine radio reported three Palestinian had been killed at the hospital.

The West Bank has seen a surge of violence since the 7 October attack triggered the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas.

United Nations secretary general António Guterres is to meet with key UNRWA donor nations in New York on Tuesday, according to his spokesperson.

The meeting takes place after 12 staff with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees were accused by Israel of involvement in the 7 October attacks, Agence France-Presse reports.

Several countries, including the United States, France, Britain, Germany and Japan, have announced the suspension of further funding to the agency.

“The secretary-general is personally horrified by the accusations against employees of UNRWA,” Guterres’s spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Monday.

“But his message to donors – especially those who have suspended their contributions – is to at least guarantee the continuity of UNRWA’s operations, as we have tens of thousands of dedicated staff working throughout the region.”

Guterres has already met with Washington’s representative to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Monday, and “he will be hosting a meeting here in New York with the major donors for UNRWA [Tuesday] afternoon here,” Dujarric said.

“The secretary-general has also been engaging with the UNRWA leadership and donors to UNRWA, as well as regional leaders, such as King Abdullah of Jordan, whom he spoke to a short while ago, and President (Abdel Fattah) al-Sisi of Egypt.”

UNRWA said it has acted promptly over allegations but that cuts in funding will affect ordinary Palestinians.

It’s 7:25am in Gaza and Tel Aviv and 5:25am in Washington. Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis with me, Reged Ahmad.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres will meet with key donors to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, on Tuesday, after 12 of its staff were accused by Israel of involvement in the 7 October attacks.

His spokesperson says the meeting is to take place in New York.

More on that shortly but first, here’s a summary of the main developments so far:

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the US will respond “decisively” to aggression and hold those responsible for the drone attack on a US military base in Jordan that killed three US troops and wounded dozens more to account. The three US service personnel who were killed in the drone strike have been named by the Pentagon as Sgt William Jerome Rivers, 46, Specialist Kennedy Sanders, 24, and Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23. The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, vowed that the US will take “all necessary actions” to defend its troops, while the Pentagon said it did not believe that Iran is seeking a war with the US, and that Washington doesn’t want a war either.

• The enemy drone that was used in the attack on a US base in Jordan may have been confused with an American drone returning to the US installation, according to a report. In describing the drone attack, the two US officials, who were not authorised to comment and insisted on anonymity, said preliminary accounts suggest the enemy drone that struck the installation known as Tower 22 may have been mistaken for an American drone that was in the air at the same time. An Iranian-made drone was used in the deadly attack on Sunday, according to one US official.

• The framework for a deal that could lead to a ceasefire and the release of hostages held in Gaza is being put to the Hamas leadership, Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said on Monday. Speaking after talks in Paris between officials from the US, Qatar, Egypt and Israel, he said: “We are in a better place than we were a few weeks ago.” The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, also voiced hope. The US believes talks are “moving in a good direction” but there is no imminent deal, the White House said.

• Qatar’s prime minister sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al Thani says he hopes US retaliation for a drone attack that killed three US troops in Jordan won’t undercut progress toward a new Israel-Hamas hostage release deal. “I hope that nothing would undermine the efforts that we are doing or jeopardise the process,” he said. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al Thani was speaking in front of a Washington thinktank audience.

• Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine reiterated that Israel must halt its offensive and withdraw from Gaza before any prisoner exchange takes place. Israel remains opposed to a permanent ceasefire and wants to retain a right to recommence hostilities against Hamas – something the Hamas leadership wants ruled out. A senior Hamas official, Taher al-Nunu, said the Palestinian militant group wanted a “complete and comprehensive ceasefire” in Gaza.

• The UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has warned it would not be able to continue operations in Gaza and across the region beyond the end of February if funding did not resume. Israel has claimed several UNRWA staff took part in the 7 October attacks or in the aftermath, including a school counsellor who allegedly kidnapped an Israeli woman. A string of western countries including the US and the UK have suspended funding to the agency, which provides aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East. The charity ActionAid described the withdrawal of funding for UNRWA as a “death sentence” for the population of Gaza.

• At least 26,637 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza and a further 65,387 injured, according to the latest figures by Gaza’s health ministry on Monday. Two hundred and fifteen Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours, the ministry reported.

• The surgical ward at al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza has completely halted operations due to oxygen supplies running out, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Monday. Heavy fighting has continued around hospitals in Khan Younis over the past few days, the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said in its latest update on the conflict, noting that only 14 of 36 hospitals in Gaza are now partially functional. Khan Younis’ Nasser hospital, until recently the largest still accepting patients in southern Gaza, is now only “minimally functioning”, OCHA said.

• Israel has struck an Iran-linked site south of the Syrian capital, Damascus, killing several people on Monday. Iranian and Syrian official media said the attacks came from the Golan Heights and were attributed to Israel. They have not been regarded as a direct response to the attack on the Tower 22 base on Jordan’s border with Iraq and Syria. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes hit a farm housing members of Lebanon’s Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group and other Iran-backed factions. It said seven people were killed, including four Syrians, one of whom was the bodyguard of a member of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards.

• Israeli troops will “very soon go into action” near the country’s northern border with Lebanon, the country’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said. The Israeli minister, addressing troops near the Gaza border on Monday, also warned that the war against Hamas “will take months”, and claimed that quarter of Hamas fighters have been killed and at least another quarter have been wounded. The IDF said it had carried out airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. “The targets included Hezbollah’s infrastructure and an observation post located in the southern Lebanese areas of Markaba, Taybeh, and Maroun al-Ras,” the army said in a statement.

• Five Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in four different incidents in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in the past 24 hours, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday. Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that 378 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October.

• Israeli politicians and ministers have attended a conference calling for Israeli resettlement of the Gaza Strip and “voluntary migration” of the Palestinian population elsewhere. The prominent role of government figures in the far-right conference on Sunday appears to violate the international court of justice ruling last week that Israel must “take all measures within its power” to avoid acts of genocide in its war in Gaza, including the “prevention and punishment of genocidal rhetoric”. The White House described the comments as “irresponsible, reckless and incendiary”.

• The US and the UK announced sanctions against individuals who they said targeted Iranian dissidents and activists for assassination at the direction of the Iranian regime. The UK Foreign Office announced sanctions against seven individuals and one organisation who it said were involved in threats to kill journalists on British soil, and others it said were part of international criminal gangs linked to Iran.

• US government employees are planning a “day of fasting for Gaza” this week to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in the territory and to denounce Joe Biden’s policy toward Israel.