Middle East crisis live: Qatar accuses Netanyahu of obstructing Gaza mediation effort after leaked recording | Israel-Gaza war

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Qatar ‘appalled’ by alleged Netanyahu remarks

Qatar has accused Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of obstructing mediation efforts in the Gaza war and prioritising his career after a leaked recording allegedly captured him calling the Gulf state “problematic”.

Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Majed Al Ansari, wrote on X:

We are appalled by the alleged remarks attributed to the Israeli prime minister in various media reports about Qatar’s mediation role. These remarks if validated, are irresponsible and destructive to the efforts to save innocent lives, but are not surprising ….

If the reported remarks are found to be true, the Israeli PM would only be obstructing and undermining the mediation process, for reasons that appear to serve his political career instead of prioritizing saving innocent lives, including Israeli hostages.

In a leaked recording from a meeting with hostage families that aired on Israel’s Channel 12 news on Tuesday, Netanyahu called Qatar “problematic”, Associated Press reported. Netanyahu allegedly said:

You haven’t seen me thank Qatar, have you noticed? I haven’t thanked Qatar. Why? Because Qatar, to me, is no different in essence from the UN, from the Red Cross and in a way it’s even more problematic. However, I’m willing to use any mediator now who can help me bring them [the hostages] home.

Asked to comment on Qatar’s statement and whether the leaked recording was authentic, an Israeli government spokesperson said Israel “cannot go into details regarding the efforts and steps taken to release the hostages”.

The families of Israeli hostages call on the government to make a deal to free the prisoners in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Qatar, where several Hamas political leaders are based, has served as the main mediator between the movement that governs Gaza and Israeli officials in the conflict.

In November, Qatar helped secure a seven-day pause in fighting, during which 110 Israeli and foreign hostages were released from Gaza in return for 240 Palestinians released from Israeli captivity.

In the recording, Netanyahu went on to say that Qatar has leverage over Hamas because it funds the movement. He told the hostage families that he recently “got very angry with the Americans” for renewing a deal to extend US military presence at a base in Qatar.

Key events

A 72-year-old Israeli woman held captive by Hamas militants for nearly 50 days has told an Israeli TV channel that she was held at length in a dark, humid tunnel where she met the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar. The Associated Press reports:

Adina Moshe was taken captive from kibbutz Nir Oz on 7 October. She was freed in late November as part of a deal that saw roughly 100 hostages, mostly women and children, released in exchange for a temporary ceasefire and the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

“Hello. How are you? Everything OK?” Moshe said Sinwar told them in the Hebrew he had learned during a long incarceration in Israel. In her interview with Israeli Channel 12 she said the hostages bowed their heads and did not respond. Another visit followed three weeks later, she said.

Moshe said militants raided the home she shared with her husband, David, who was shot in the leg. They snatched her out from the window of her house’s safe room and another militant went back in to shoot her husband dead, she said. Before being killed, he blew her a farewell kiss, she said.

She was then taken into Gaza on a motorcycle flanked by two armed militants. She said one of them painfully ripped an earring from her ear and that before he could swipe the other one she offered it up. He took all her jewelry and a passerby stole her glasses, she said.

Moshe and a group of other hostages were marched into Hamas’s extensive tunnel network, walking for five hours down five underground flights through dark and airless shafts until they reached a subterranean room where they were told they’d be released in the coming days.

“We believed them. We believed that would be the first thing Israel would do,” she said.

It ended up taking nearly 50 until she was freed.

“I told all the guys, ‘We’ll be here for at least two months and not because of Hamas,’” she said, indicating she harbored anger toward Israel for not securing her release earlier.

Moshe spent her days with other hostages — men, women and children — as armed guards stood by. They ate small portions of canned goods and rice that dwindled with time, she said. The room was lit only by a small LED light.

Adina Moshe was pictured being driven into the Gaza Strip by Hamas militants on 7 October. Photograph: AP

The British foreign minister, David Cameron, has met the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank.

Cameron said he had discussed his Gaza plan to “move from a pause – to get aid in and hostages out – towards a sustainable ceasefire, leading to a long-term political solution, including a Palestinian state”.

I met President Abbas to discuss the situation in the West Bank and Gaza.

I set out our plan to move from a pause – to get aid in and hostages out – towards a sustainable ceasefire, leading to a long term political solution, including a Palestinian state. pic.twitter.com/2KGkxMzZlU

— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) January 25, 2024

Death toll in attack on UNRWA shelter rises to 12, UN says

The death toll in an attack on UN Relief and Works Agency shelter in Gaza housing thousands of displaced people has risen to 12, according to a statement by Thomas White, deputy humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory.

White said a number of missions to reach the dead and injured were denied, without directly saying the attempts had been blocked by Israel. He said UN teams were only able to reach the site in the evening.

Another 75 people were wounded including 15 who were in a critical condition. Israel has denied responsibility for the attack, in which two tank shells hit an UNRWA training centre.

White said Israeli attacks on Khan Younis – to where Israel had previously told civilians to flee – had forced al-Khair hospital to shut down with “women who had just undergone C-section surgeries … evacuated in the middle of the night”.

Two other hospitals, al-Amal and Nasser – the largest remaining hospital in Gaza and one of only two in the southern half of the territory that can still treat critically ill patients – have now been encircled by heavy fighting “leaving terrified staff, patients and displaced people trapped inside”, White said.

He continued:

The situation in Khan Younis underscores a consistent failure to uphold the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law: distinction, proportionality and precautions in carrying out attacks. This is unacceptable and abhorrent and must stop.

The fatal shooting of an American-Palestinian teenager driving a pickup truck in the West Bank was unprovoked, the sole passenger has said, describing apparent Israeli fire hitting the back of the vehicle before it overturned several times on a dirt road.

At least 10 bullets struck the truck, which was seen by the Associated Press after Israeli investigators examined it. Most hit the back windshield and truck bed, supporting 16-year-old Mohammed Salameh’s account of the incident that killed his friend, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, 17, a Louisiana native.

In an initial statement, Israeli police said Friday’s shooting targeted people “purportedly engaged in rock-throwing activities along Highway 60,” a main West Bank thoroughfare. Police didn’t identify who fired the shots but described the incident “ostensibly involving an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier and a civilian.”

In an interview with the Associated Press Salameh denied suggestions he and Abdel Jabbar had been throwing stones and said there had been no attempt to arrest him. The AP reported:

Salameh – interviewed Tuesday along with Abdel Jabbar’s father, Hafeth, in the family’s ancestral village of Al-Mazra’a Ash-Sharquiya – said he and his friend were driving on a dirt road several hundred meters from Highway 60. He said shots suddenly hit the back of the truck, striking Abdel Jabbar.

Salameh said the pickup overturned several times, and he managed to get out and run back to the village for help.

Hafeth Abdel Jabbar said that when he arrived, he found his son’s lifeless body in the pickup, amid shattered glass and blood stains. He rejected claims that his son had thrown stones as “a big lie”. Even if the teenagers had thrown rocks, he said, they posed no imminent threat – to police, military, or civilians – as they drove through the brush.

The White House has demanded a transparent investigation into the death, which came after repeated US warnings that Israel must rein in rising violence against Palestinians in the territory. The teenager’s family said US embassy officials visited the village, photographed the car and interviewed relatives.

Hafeth Abdel Jabbar said that when he and other relatives arrived, Israeli soldiers trained their guns on them and made two of them take their shirts off to show they weren’t a threat.

He said he ignored the soldiers and ran to the car, which had landed upright. He described his son’s body as splayed on the passenger side of the car, where blood pooled onto the floor and spread to the backseat.

He said he and others began extricating his son’s body, loading him into an ambulance.

Tawfic Abdel Jabbar was pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital. Video his father provided shows the car about 500 meters from the highway.

“It’s a scene that I hope never happens again,” Hafeth said Tuesday. “You have six or seven Israeli soldiers pointing the gun at you. Telling you not to go see your son. Your 17-year-old son is inside the car, dead from them, shot from the back.”

From top left: the father of Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, Hafeth, his mother, Mona, his brother Amir and his sisters Rabea and Yaffa. Photograph: Nasser Nasser/AP

There have been violent clashes in the West Bank overnight as Israeli forces raided the city of Jenin, local media have reported.

The local Palestinian militant group, the Jenin Brigades, said its men were engaged in heavy exchanges of fire with the Israeli military, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported, while Al Jazeera wrote that one Palestinian had been arrested.

The Qatari broadcaster also cited the Palestinian Wafa news agency as reporting that Israeli forces had destroyed monuments to dead Palestinians and that city streets had been torn up by Israeli bulldozers.

The Israeli military and settlers have killed 360 Palestinians, including 92 children, across the West Bank since the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, according to the UN.

A street in Jenin damaged by an Israeli raid on Jenin earlier this month. Photograph: Alaa Badarneh/EPA

In response to the statement by Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari, Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has accused Doha of “supporting and funding terrorism.”

In a post on X, Smotrich accused Qatar of being “largely responsible” for the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel and called on western countries to apply more pressure on it to bring an immediate release of the hostages.

קטר היא מדינה תומכת טרור ומממנת טרור. היא הפטרונית של חמאס והיא אחראית במידה רבה לטבח שביצע חמאס באזרחי ישראל. היחס של המערב כלפיה צבוע ומבוסס על אינטרסים כלכליים פסולים. המערב יכול וצריך להפעיל עליה מנופים חזקים בהרבה ולהביא לשחרור החטופים באופן מידי.>> https://t.co/ziQpGs6ROX

— בצלאל סמוטריץ’ (@bezalelsm) January 24, 2024

In fact it has been widely reported that Israel encouraged Qatari payments to Hamas.

The New York Times last month noted that Benjamin Netanyahu said as far back as 2012 that it was important to keep Hamas strong as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and that strong rival Palestinian groups would lessen the pressure on him to negotiate a Palestinian state.

Qatar ‘appalled’ by alleged Netanyahu remarks

Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Majed Al Ansari, wrote on X:

We are appalled by the alleged remarks attributed to the Israeli prime minister in various media reports about Qatar’s mediation role. These remarks if validated, are irresponsible and destructive to the efforts to save innocent lives, but are not surprising ….

If the reported remarks are found to be true, the Israeli PM would only be obstructing and undermining the mediation process, for reasons that appear to serve his political career instead of prioritizing saving innocent lives, including Israeli hostages.

You haven’t seen me thank Qatar, have you noticed? I haven’t thanked Qatar. Why? Because Qatar, to me, is no different in essence from the UN, from the Red Cross and in a way it’s even more problematic. However, I’m willing to use any mediator now who can help me bring them [the hostages] home.

Qatar, where several Hamas political leaders are based, has served as the main mediator between the movement that governs Gaza and Israeli officials in the conflict.

In November, Qatar helped secure a seven-day pause in fighting, during which 110 Israeli and foreign hostages were released from Gaza in return for 240 Palestinians released from Israeli captivity.

Opening summary

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Middle East crisis with me, Helen Livingstone.

Qatar has accused Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of obstructing mediation efforts in the Gaza war after a leaked recording allegedly captured him calling the Gulf state “problematic”.

“We are appalled by the alleged remarks attributed to the Israeli Prime Minister in various media reports about Qatar’s mediation role,” Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Majed Al Ansari, said on social media platform X.

“If the reported remarks are found to be true, the Israeli PM would only be obstructing and undermining the mediation process, for reasons that appear to serve his political career instead of prioritizing saving innocent lives, including Israeli hostages,” he wrote.

More on that soon. In other key developments:

More than 25,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza since 7 October, local authorities said on Wednesday. The latest figures included 210 Palestinians killed and nearly 400 injured in the past 24 hours. About 85% of the besieged strip’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced from their homes, now dealing with cold, hunger and disease in unsanitary and chaotic makeshift displacement camps.
The Israeli army said on Wednesday that it had “encircled” Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, after two days of heavy fighting, in what Israeli officials described as the last large ground assault in the three-month-old war before a shift to “lower intensity” operations. Approximately 88,000 Palestinians live in Khan Younis, which is also hosting an estimated 425,000 people displaced by fighting elsewhere in the tiny coastal territory.
Thousands of people sheltering in hospitals in Khan Younis are now trapped by Israel’s assault on the southern city. By Wednesday morning, fierce battles had reached the gates of Khan Younis’s three main hospitals – al-Aqsa, Nasser and al-Amal – making it difficult for civilians to flee, according to Ocha, the UN humanitarian agency. About 18,000 people were believed to be sheltering in the grounds of Nasser hospital alone, Ocha said, along with 850 patients. People fleeing the vicinity of Nasser hospital have been shot at by Israeli tanks as well as attack drones, according to reports. The Palestinian Red Cross Society, which runs al-Amal hospital, said troops had blockaded its staff inside. Israel says Hamas fighters operate in and around hospitals, which hospital staff and Hamas deny.
The White House condemned Wednesday’s deadly shelling of a UN shelter in southern Gaza, reiterating its position that Israel has a “responsibility to protect civilians” as it prosecutes its war with Hamas. The Gaza director of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said earlier Wednesday that two tank shells had hit a building sheltering 800 people in the city of Khan Younis, with reports that nine people had died and 75 more were injured.

An Israeli attack on an UNRWA building housing displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis set a building on fire and killed at least nine people. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

The UNRWA commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, said the number of killed was “likely higher”, adding that the incident was “once again a blatant disregard of basic rules of war”. Meanwhile, at least eight people were critically injured after Israeli forces targeted a school in Khan Younis that was sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians, according to reports.
The World Health Organization’s regional director for the eastern Mediterranean said Israel was continuing to target health institutions in Gaza. Ahmed Al-Mandhari said 660 attacks were recorded on health institutions, about half of them in northern Gaza, adding that attacks on health institutions were a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.
Two ships sailing close to the Gulf of Aden were forced to seek the support of the US navy after explosions were heard nearby, as the Houthi group kept up their assault on commercial shipping off the coast of Yemen. The Houthis have also written to the UN demanding that all UK and US staff leave the country within a month.
The international court of justice in The Hague said it would deliver its ruling this week on whether or not to grant emergency measures against Israel. The UN court said the 17-judge panel would hand down its ruling on Friday at 1200 GMT. The court could order Israel to stop its military campaign in Gaza, although it has no way to enforce its orders.
An Israeli government spokesperson ruled out a Gaza ceasefire, despite reports that negotiations on hostage releases were progressing and repeated international calls for Israel to cease its months-long bombardment of the Gaza Strip. “Israel will not give up on the destruction of Hamas, the return of all the hostages … There will be no ceasefire,” the Israeli government spokesperson said on Wednesday.
The Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, accused Israel of holding up aid deliveries to Gaza. The Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip is open “24/7” but the procedures by Israel to allow the entry of aid are obstructing the process, Sisi said on Wednesday, adding that “this is part of how they exert pressure on the issue of releasing the hostages.”
Israeli forces arrested 35 Palestinians, including a woman and former prisoners, in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem on Wednesday, according to data released by the Palestinian prisoners’ affairs authority, bringing the total number of Palestinians arrested in the occupied West Bank since 7 October to 6,255. Meanwhile, Israeli troops on Wednesday reportedly demolished the home of a Palestinian accused of assisting in the killing of four Israelis near a settlement in the occupied West Bank in June.
UN member states must stop arms transfers to Israel and Palestinian armed groups, more than a dozen international humanitarian and human rights organisations urged in a joint statement on Wednesday. They called on countries to “stop fuelling the crisis in Gaza and avert further humanitarian catastrophe and loss of civilian life”.
US strikes against militias in Iraq prompted the most scathing criticism yet from Baghdad, with the prime minister’s office accusing Washington of contributing to a “reckless escalation” of regional violence. The Pentagon announced earlier on Wednesday that it had carried out overnight retaliatory strikes against three facilities linked to Iran-backed militias in response to its own forces coming under attack at an Iraqi airbase at the weekend.
The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, met Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem as part of his Middle East visit. Cameron, who is on his second visit to the region since returning to government, pressed for an immediate humanitarian pause in the fighting and raised “the importance of a two-state solution”, Downing Street said.

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