A breakdown in peace negotiations may have been caused by leaked and falsified documents involving a close aide to the prime minister, an Israeli court has said.
The leaking of the documents – to Britain’s Jewish Chronicle and Germany’s tabloid Bild – came at a crucial time for hostage negotiations.
The documents claimed Hamas were going to smuggle Israeli hostages to Egypt, jeopardising any peace arrangement.
Over 100 hostages out of 251 taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023 are still captive and their whereabout remains unclear.
Commentators say the leaks were made to protect Netanyahu who faces a strong possibility criminal charges for allegedly accepting bribes.
Benny Gantz, who until recently was in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, said that if sensitive security information was used for a “political survival campaign”, it would not only be a criminal offence but also “a crime against the nation”.
The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, argued that if the prime minister was aware of the leaks, “he is complicit in one of the most serious security offenses” and that if he wasn’t aware, he shouldn’t be in office.
Families of the hostages stated that it is “a moral low that has no depth. This is a fatal injury to the remnants of trust between the government and its citizens”.
Updated at 10.21 EST
Key events
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The Lebanese health ministry has said that the death toll in Lebanon has crossed 3,000 in the Israel-Hezbollah war, which has been so far going on for 13 months.
Further to our post of 16.02 reporting Israeli strikes in Damascus, AFP has the following:
At least two Hezbollah members were killed on Monday near the Sayyeda Zeinab area south of Damascus, home to an important Shia sanctuary and guarded by pro-Iranian groups, a war monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the strikes hit a house “used by members of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard”, in a farm in the Sayyeda Zeinab area.
Israel’s military has intensified its strikes on targets in Syria since it launched its war on Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon more than a month ago.
Two Hezbollah members were killed and several others were wounded, according to the monitor.
Syrian state media also reported the strikes but said they only caused material damage.
Mehdi Mahfouz, 34, who lives nearby, said he “heard three successive explosions, one of which was very strong. Then I saw a large black cloud of smoke rising.”
The blasts were heard in the neighbouring Jaramana suburb of Damascus, according to an AFP photographer, as ambulances headed to the area.
The director of the last partially functioning hospital in north Gaza says he does not understand the purpose behind the bombing.
“At this moment, occupation forces are continuing to violently bombard and destroy Kamal Adwan hospital, targeting all parts of the hospital,” the Gaza health ministry told Reuters
Hospital director Hossam Abu Safieh said in a statement that the situation was “catastrophic” and that “the army did not contact the hospital before directly targeting it.”
“Several of our staff have been injured, and we are unable to leave the hospital,” he said of the facility in the northern city of Beit Lahia.
“We do not understand the purpose behind this bombing that is targeting the hospital.”
Updated at 12.16 EST
Al Jazeera reports that Israel has attacked the Syrian capital of Damascus.
This news comes hours after Israeli special forces captured a man in Syria accused of helping an Iranian network to gather intelligence on targets in Israel, the military said.
“The operation prevented a future attack and led to the exposure of the operational methods of Iranian terror networks located near the Golan Heights. Al-Assi was transferred for further investigation,” the military said in a statement on X
More to follow …
Updated at 11.18 EST
Gaza’s health ministry says it may be making its “last distress call” as the IDF bears down on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza.
The ministry says that Israeli soldiers “continue to bomb and destroy” the hospital, affecting all its facilities.
“There are many injuries among the medical staff and patients. The medical staff cannot move between the hospital departments and cannot save their injured colleagues,” the ministry says.
William Christou
Fadi was praying on Wednesday afternoon when the ground began to shake. At first he thought it was an earthquake, but then he saw a plume of smoke rising from his house. He rushed home and began to dig. One by one, he pulled family members from the rubble, all eight of them killed in an Israeli airstrike.
“I pulled my brother out of the rubble in pieces. I found his four-year-old daughter’s hand in the branches of an olive tree 20 metres away,” he said. The owner of a gaming cafe in Bednayel, a town on the outskirts of the historic eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, he asked only to be identified by his first name for fear of being targeted by the Israeli drones that circled overhead.
The day before, Fadi’s brother Ali had asked him if his family could stay at his house since they lived next to a petrol station and he feared it would blow up in the event of an Israeli bombing; a local family had burned to death in an earlier Israeli bombing and Ali did not want his wife and two children to suffer the same fate…
ShareLeaks from Netanyahu’s office may have compromised a peace deal, an Israeli court finds
A breakdown in peace negotiations may have been caused by leaked and falsified documents involving a close aide to the prime minister, an Israeli court has said.
The leaking of the documents – to Britain’s Jewish Chronicle and Germany’s tabloid Bild – came at a crucial time for hostage negotiations.
The documents claimed Hamas were going to smuggle Israeli hostages to Egypt, jeopardising any peace arrangement.
Over 100 hostages out of 251 taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023 are still captive and their whereabout remains unclear.
Commentators say the leaks were made to protect Netanyahu who faces a strong possibility criminal charges for allegedly accepting bribes.
Benny Gantz, who until recently was in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, said that if sensitive security information was used for a “political survival campaign”, it would not only be a criminal offence but also “a crime against the nation”.
The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, argued that if the prime minister was aware of the leaks, “he is complicit in one of the most serious security offenses” and that if he wasn’t aware, he shouldn’t be in office.
Families of the hostages stated that it is “a moral low that has no depth. This is a fatal injury to the remnants of trust between the government and its citizens”.
Updated at 10.21 EST
Summary of the day so far …
It is approaching 5pm in Beirut, Tel Aviv and Gaza City. Here are the latest headlines …
Israel claims to have killed two senior Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon in two separate strikes, as it continues its attacks on what it calls terrorist infrastructure. Lebanese authorities have put the death toll from Israeli airstrikes in the country at over 2,800
Israel’s military has said Hezbollah has fired more than 60 rockets into Israeli-controlled territory during the course of Monday. There were no reports of any casualties
Ten people have been reported killed by Israeli airstrikes inside Gaza. The Hamas-led health authority there has said that 33 people were killed in the previous 24 hours. It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict
Injured Palestinians are brought to Aqsa Martyrs’ hospital after an Israeli airstrike in Nuseirat camp on 4 November. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Palestinian authorities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have said that a massacre was narrowly avoided after an arson attack attributed to Israeli settlers on a building and about 20 cars in Al-Bireh, near to Ramallah. Witness said ten people poured liquid on the cars to torch them. Israeli security forces say they are investigating the incident
The scene of an arson attack in Al-Bireh attributed to Israeli settlers. Photograph: Alaa Badarneh/EPA
Israel’s foreign ministry has said in a statement it has formally notified the UN that the country will ban the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, from operating inside Israel within 90 days
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that 94,431 children under the age of 10 got a polio vaccine over the weekend, which represents 79% of the target in northern Gaza. At least 90% vaccination of a population is needed to stop the spread of the virus
A Lebanese MP has accused Israel of attempting to turn areas in the south of the country into “burnt out areas where there is no way to live even after the end of the war and attacks.”
The National News Agency quotes MP Ali Khreis speaking after an inspection of areas in the south. He is quoted as saying:
These southern villages and towns are struggling against the Zionist machine. Lebanon expressed and stated … that we want to implement UN Resolution 1701, and we want the Lebanese army to protect the borders and maintain security and stability, and that the presence of Unifil is an international guarantee for implementing the international resolution.
Israel’s military has claimed that it is carrying out “limited, localized, targeted raids based on precise intelligence in thicketed terrain along the border fence in southern Lebanon, where the Hezbollah terrorist organisation has established itself,” but Lebanese authorities have put the death toll from Israeli airstrikes inside the country at over 2,800 dead.
An Ambulance is parked near the rubbles of a restaurant that was damaged in the aftermath of Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s historic Baalbek city. Photograph: Maher Abou Taleb/Reuters
Before and after satellite photographs have shown the extent of destruction wrought by Israeli attacks on a village in the south of Lebanon. Israel has been accused of breaking international humanitarian law by opening fire on Unifil peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon.
Satellite pictures provided by Planet Labs PBC and dated 26 September 2024 (top) and 24 October 2024 show the southern Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab after heavy Israeli bombardment. Photograph: Planet Labs PBC/AFP/Getty ImagesShare
Juliette Touma, global communications officer for Unrwa, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, has spoken to Al Jazeera from Amman in Jordan.
Israel this morning said it had formally notified the UN that it would be banning the agency from operating inside Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Touma told the news agency:
Who is going to replace Unrwa? When this brutal war finally comes to an end, who will provide education to 400,000 children who go to Unrwa schools, who? What is the plan? We don’t have any answer to that.
We are the only UN agency in the world that runs 700 schools. In the absence of a political solution for Palestinian refugees, there is no alternative to Unrwa.
It’s easy to talk. The question is what are you going to do about the ban and how are you going to fill the void? You meaning the state of Israel.
On Monday last week Israel’s parliament voted to ban the agency from the country within 90 days. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has also banned Al Jazeera from operating inside Israel, as well as raided its offices in Ramallah.
Lebanon’s media reports that Israeli forces continue to target areas in the south of the country with artillery fire and airstrikes.
Israel’s military has said that as of 3pm local time (1pm GMT), “approximately 60 projectiles that were fired by Hezbollah” had crossed into Israel or Israeli-controlled territory.
In an operational update via Telegram, the IDF claimed to have located and destroyed underground infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and said “troops located terrorist infrastructure, military sites, weapons stockpiles, a missile storage facility, and compounds designated for infiltrating into Israeli territory.”
The claims have not been independently verified.
AFP reports it has spoken to a witness to the arson attack in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Al-Bireh, near Ramallah.
Ihab al-Zabin, a resident of the building damaged in the attack, which also saw about 20 cars torched, told the news agency he saw around ten people he identified as settlers “pouring liquids on vehicles in front of the building and then setting them on fire.”
He said “I yelled from my apartment, and at that moment they ran away. When I went down with my neighbours to put out the fire, settlers shot towards us.”
The damage from the arson attack can be seen. Photograph: Alaa Badarneh/EPA
AFP reports that Laila Ghannam, governor of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, told journalists at the scene “there could have been a massacre in this building”, which residents say housed more than 60 people. She said the attacks were increasing because the settlers were treated by Israeli authorities with “impunity”.
About 490,000 settlers live in settlements considered illegal under international law in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967. About three million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank territory.
Israeli media reports that graffiti left nearby during the attack said “war on Judea and Samaria”. Settlers often refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria, after two ancient Israelite kingdoms. These terms are also used administratively by the Israeli government.
Graffiti left on a wall of a Palestinian house in Hebrew reading “war on Judea and Samaria” at the Al-Bireh site where Israeli settlers. Photograph: Alaa Badarneh/EPA
Rami Omar, head of the local civil defence office, said the incident happened at 3.30am, and an Israeli security official told AFP notification of the incident came at 4am. Israeli police and the Shin Bet have said they are investigating.
Al-Zabin said he saw the arsonists run away towards the nearby Israeli settlement of Beit El.
Reuters reports that three people have been killed by an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat camp in Gaza. Citing local medics for the information, it takes the total number of people reported killed today in Gaza to ten.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Gaza.
Health workers and civil defense teams gather to condemn Israeli actions against medical teams and civil defence workers in front of Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir Al-Balah. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesPalestinian children sort through garbage amid a shortage of cooking gas and fuel at the Khan Younis refugee camp. Photograph: Haitham Imad/EPAAn injured Palestinian child is brought to Aqsa Martyrs’ hospital after an Israeli airstrike. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesShareSeven killed by Israeli airstrike in Beit Lahia – reports
Both Reuters and Palestinian news agency Wafa are reporting that medical sources in Gaza have told the agencies that seven people have been killed on Monday by an Israeli airstrike in Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza. Numerous people were reported injured with some reported missing.
Julian Borger
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that 94,431 children under the age of 10 got a polio vaccine over the weekend, which represents 79% of the target in northern Gaza.
At least 90% vaccination of a population is needed to stop the spread of the virus. About 15,000 children are thought to be a zone besieged by Israeli ground forces in Beit Hanoun, Beit Latiya and Jabalia in the northern governorate, and they cannot be reached because of military operations.
The humanitarian pause the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) agreed to did not include that zone. The IDF denies involvement in a blast at a clinic in Sheikh Radwan on Saturday, where six people were reported injured, four of them children, while vaccinations were going on.
The IDF put out a tweet referring to a bomb attack near the Sheikh Radwan clinic by “terrorist organisations” while a humanitarian convoy was passing, saying that six children at the clinic had been injured in the explosion. But the incident it refers to is supposed to have happened on Sunday, not Saturday.
The WHO says there was a blast near its convoy on Sunday to evacuate patients and health workers from besieged hospitals in the north, but it said the convoy was not affected.
The Guardian is asking the IDF for further clarification.
Updated at 08.02 EST
Germany urges Israel to allow more aid into north Gaza to help the “unbearable” situation in the region.
A spokesperson for the German foreign ministry said: “We call on the Israeli government urgently to meet its responsibilities under international law.
“Israel has the right to self-defence against Hamas within the framework of humanitarian international law.”
The spokesperson’s comments were in response to the ultimatum the United States imposed on Israel to improve humanitarian assistance. If Israel fails, Washington has said it will restrict military aid.
Updated at 07.26 EST
Kamala Harris pledged that as president she would ‘do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza’ in her final rally in Michigan on Sunday, as she tried to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim populations.
She said she would also work to bring home hostages, ensure Israeli security, end the suffering of the Palestinian people and ensure their ‘dignity, freedom and self-determination’
Harris says she will work to end ‘devastating’ war in Gaza if elected president – video
Reporting for Haaretz, Bar Peleg writes that another arrest has been made on Monday in Israel after a joint investigation by the police, internal security services and the army into a suspected “breach of national security.”
Peleg writes:
An Israeli Court ruled on Sunday evening that the leak of military intelligence from the IDF to the prime minister’s office, and subsequently to foreign media outlets, could have harmed the security services’ ability to secure the release of the hostages held in Gaza by Hamas.
The court allowed the publication of the name of Eli Feldstein, the spokesperson in Netanyahu’s circle who is suspected in the case. It was also revealed that the three other detainees being questioned are members of the security establishment.
Peleg says that the Shin Bet have made a further arrest today.