Israeli strikes on Gaza reported after Sunday ceasefire deal with Hamas announced – live | Israel-Gaza war

Patrick Wintour

It is only if the perspective is broadened away from Gaza that Netanyahu and the Israeli military can claim, by deciding to broaden the war with intensified attacks on Hezbollah and Iranian targets, that they changed its course and character. The chain of events that led to the annihilation of the Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon – and then to the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and so to Iran’s loss of its crown jewel – may be sketchy, but it is clearly discernible.

Indeed, the weakening of Iran is probably the biggest regional impact of the war in Gaza. Biden had a point this week in claiming that, all told, Iran “is weaker than it has been for decades”. He elaborated: “Iran’s air defences are in shambles. Their main proxy, Hezbollah, is badly wounded, and as we tested Iran’s willingness to revive the nuclear deal, we kept the pressure with sanctions. Now Iran’s economy is in desperate straits.” A 35-year tack to build a defence strategy around a proxy army had been eviscerated in a matter of months.

The change has had an accelerator effect on Tehran’s foreign-policy elite. Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian reformist president, and his strategic adviser, Javad Zarif, are placing numerous olive branches at Trump’s feet.

The fissiparous nature of Iranian internal politics makes it hard for Iran to deliver a consistent message to the west, however, and at the moment there are not many diplomats in France, UK or Germany yet convinced by Iran’s offer to negotiate a new nuclear deal. Iran has a reputation for buying time by offering fruitless talks. Moreover, Trump’s top team is deeply hostile to Iran.

In Lebanon, two years of paralysis have ended and a new, elected leadership will listen to Iran-backed Hezbollah, but not be beholden to it.

But the new prime minister, Nawaf Salam, is the former president of the international court of justice and fresh from delivering the landmark legal verdict that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal and must end within a year. He will be a standing reminder that Israel has unfinished business in front of the international courts.

Patrick Wintour

Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor

Security for Israel, secretary of state Antony Blinken argued, had to include a credible political horizon for the Palestinians, or else Hamas “or something equally abhorrent” will “grow back”. He said the country “must abandon the myth they can carry out de facto annexation, without cost and consequence to Israel’s democracy, to its standing, to its security”. Yet, he complained, “Israel’s government has systematically undermined the capacity and legitimacy of the only viable alternative to Hamas: the Palestinian Authority”.

If Israel wanted the prize of greater security, he said, that lay through forging greater integration across the region, specifically through normalisation with Saudi Arabia. He said that was ready to go, but only if Palestinians were allowed to live in a state of their own, and not as “a non-people”.

Trump’s return to the White House may have helped pressure Benjamin Netanyahu into a ceasefire, but not to a particular peace. The incoming US president is unlikely to pick up Blinken’s plan for a reformed and UN-monitored Palestinian Authority (PA) to oversee governance of a unified Gaza and West Bank. Israel for its part will risk a bigger vacuum by acting on its commitment not to co-operate with Unrwa, the UN agency for the Palestinians, and other NGOs.

Nor is there any certainty that Palestine will have the quality of leadership required to take sole administrative charge of Gaza. The PA, led by the ageing Mahmoud Abbas, is increasingly reviled on the West Bank and has failed to bury its differences with Hamas in talks in Moscow, Beijing and Cairo.

Israel’s cabinet is expected to meet Thursday to approve a ceasefire and hostage-release deal with Hamas, Israeli media reported, a day after mediators announced an agreement they hope will lead to a permanent end to the Gaza war.

The truce would take effect on Sunday and involve the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, after which the terms of a broader peace deal would be finalised, the prime minister of mediator Qatar said Wednesday.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with both US President Joe Biden and the incoming Donald Trump on Wednesday, his office said, thanking them for their help securing the agreement but also cautioning that “final details” were still being hammered out.

Netanyahu also said early on Thursday that Hamas has backtracked on an earlier understanding of the ceasefire agreement, possibly indicating that obstacles remain to implementing the deal.

President Isaac Herzog, who holds a largely ceremonial role, said the deal was the “right move”.

Israeli media reported that the cabinet was set to vote on the ceasefire agreement on Thursday morning, even though two of Netanyahu’s ministers have publicly opposed it, AFP reports.

Far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said the agreement was a “bad and dangerous deal for the security of the State of Israel” while national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir said he opposed the “disastrous deal”.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Thursday that at least seven people had been killed in fresh Israeli strikes in the Palestinian territory, hours before Israel’s cabinet was set to vote on a ceasefire deal that would take effect on Sunday.

“Our crew retrieved 5 dead and more than 10 injured from under the rubble of a house … that was bombed by the Israeli army in the Al-Rimal area west of Gaza City,” the agency said in a statement, according to AFP.

It added it had retrieved the bodies of two more people killed in a strike at “the Al-Sha’biya intersection in the center of Gaza City”.

The Israeli military has yet to comment on the attacks reported after the ceasefire deal was announced.

Patrick Wintour

There may be no winners in war, but history suggests combatants are often eager to convince the world otherwise.

The ending of the 15-month conflict in Gaza may prove an exception. The sacrifice has been so great, the misery so complete, and the ultimate future for Gaza so uncertain that few can claim with certainty that this was all worthwhile, or likely to benefit Israel’s security in the long term. The damage to Israel’s reputation may last decades.

In their final interviews and speeches as they prepared to leave office, it was noticeable the key foreign policy figures in the Biden administration often looked beyond Gaza, as western diplomats have turned to what could be the momentous consequences of the war for the wider Middle East.

Even Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s outgoing national security adviser, was left uncertain. “What is the outcome of all of this? I think it is too early to predict. Even when good things happen, there are bad things around the corner. That’s true across foreign policy. It’s especially true in the Middle East,” he said.

Similarly, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, argued that often in the Middle East, change is not what it appears. He saw at best “a historic window of opportunity”. In every country sucked into the Israel-Gaza war – Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Iraq – and in Israel itself, the balance of forces has been changed by the war, but not irreversibly transformed.

That is true of Gaza itself, where even if a full ceasefire holds, the future remains deliberately clouded. Blinken implicitly criticised this in his Atlantic Council speech this week, when he said he recognised the need for Israel’s war, but could not support what may be its plan for peace.

Read on below:

Israel intensified strikes on Gaza hours after a ceasefire and hostage release deal was announced, residents and authorities in the Palestinian enclave have said, with dozens of people killed.

Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, in northern Gaza, said it had been a “terrifying night”. In a post on X he wrote,

The pace of bombing has increased dramatically in recent hours, and with it the number of martyrs and wounded has increased to an unprecedented level.

He filmed himself at a makeshift morgue with bodies in the background, including those of several small children. “An hour ago, I was documenting the joy of the people of Gaza at the news of the ceasefire, but the Israeli occupation, as usual, continues to commit massacres,” he said.

Another Al Jazeera reporter Hossam Shabat, also reporting from northern Gaza, reported “intensive raids”, adding, “It’s as if we are living the first days of the Israeli aggression”.

Medics cited by Reuters said 32 people were killed late on Wednesday. Strikes continued into Thursday destroying houses in Rafah in southern Gaza, Nuseirat in central Gaza and in northern Gaza, residents said.

Israel’s military made no immediate comment and there were no reports of Hamas attacks on Israel after the ceasefire announcement.

In the occupied West Bank, where Israel has also intensified its attacks since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack, six Palestinians were killed and another two critically injured on Wednesday evening by an Israeli airstrike on the Jenin refugee camp, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Israel continued strikes on Gaza hours after a ceasefire and hostage release deal was announced, residents and authorities in the Palestinian territory said, as mediators sought to quell fighting ahead of the truce’s start on Sunday.

Israel’s military made no immediate comment and there were no reports of Hamas attacks on Israel after the ceasefire announcement.

The complex ceasefire accord between Israel and militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, emerged on Wednesday after months of mediation by Qatar, Egypt and the US, and 15 months of bloodshed that devastated the coastal territory and inflamed the Middle East.

The deal outlines a six-week initial ceasefire with the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands have been killed. Hostages taken by Hamas would be freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Donald Trump and Joe Biden for “advancing” the ceasefire agreement, but did not explicitly say whether he has accepted it, saying he would issue a formal response only “after the final details of the agreement, which are currently being worked on, are completed.”

The accord was expected to win approval despite opposition from some hardliners in Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.

While people celebrated the pact in Gaza and Israel, Israel’s military escalated attacks after the announcement, the Palestinian civil emergency service and residents said.

Heavy Israeli bombardment, especially in Gaza City, killed 32 people late on Wednesday, medics said. The strikes continued early on Thursday and destroyed houses in Rafah in southern Gaza, Nuseirat in central Gaza and in northern Gaza, residents said.

In other developments:

• Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, thanked US president-elect Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for their “assistance” in advancing the ceasefire and hostages release deal. In a series of posts on X, Netanyahu’s office said he spoke this evening with Trump and thanked him “for helping Israel bring an end to the suffering of dozens of hostages and their families.” Netanyahu then spoke with Biden and thanked him for his assistance in advancing the hostages deal.

• Israel’s security cabinet will meet at 11am local time (9am GMT) on Thursday to approve the deal, local media reported. The Israeli government will vote on the deal on Thursday, with a majority of ministers expected to approve the deal, a government official told Reuters.

• Both Biden and Trump were quick to claim credit. Biden opened his final address to the nation by referencing the deal. “This plan was developed and negotiated by my team and will be largely implemented by the incoming administration,” he said. Trump said the “epic” agreement could have only happened as a result of his “historic” election victory.

• The UN rights chief, Volker Türk, welcomed news of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, saying it held he promise of “huge relief after so much unbearable pain and misery”.

• The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, has issued a statement calling the news of a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal “long overdue” and urging a “huge surge” in humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory. “After months of devastating bloodshed and countless lives lost, this is the long-overdue news that the Israeli and Palestinian people have desperately been waiting for,” he said.

• The Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal, which is set to be begin on Sunday and will last 42 days, will see the exchange of hostages detained by Hamas and Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons.

• Other aspects of the deal include the return of Palestinians, who have been forcibly displaced by Israeli forces, to their homes across the Gaza Strip. The deal will also see the facilitation of travel of people wounded by Israeli attacks and sick people in order to receive treatment, as well as the positioning of Israeli forces across the Gaza border.

• Biden confirmed that Americans will be part of the hostage release. “This deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much needed-humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity,” Biden said.

• Egypt is “preparing to bring in the largest possible amount of aid to the Gaza Strip,” according to state media reports. Coordination was under way to “open the Palestinian Rafah crossing to allow the entry of international aid” into Gaza, Egyptian state media reported.