Key events
Mohammed’s skeletal arms stick out of a romper with a grinning emoji-face and the slogan “smiley boy”, which in a Gaza hospital reads as a cruel joke. He spends much of the day crying from hunger, or gnawing at his own emaciated fingers.
At seven months old, he weighs barely 4kg (9lbs) and this is the second time he has been admitted for treatment. His face is gaunt, his limbs little more than bones covered in baggy skin and his ribs protrude painfully from his chest.
“My biggest fear now is losing my grandson to malnutrition,” said his grandmother Faiza Abdul Rahman, who herself is constantly dizzy from lack of food. The previous day the only thing she ate was a single piece of pitta bread, which cost 15 shekels (£3).
“His siblings also suffer from severe hunger. On some days, they go to bed without a single bite to eat.”
For months Israel kept food shipments to Gaza far below starvation rations. Now the death toll is rising rapidly. Read our full report here:
Top US Envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to head to Italy Thursday to meet top Israeli negotiator Ron Dermer and discuss the ceasefire deal on the table, according to Israeli and US officials.
The deal under discussion is expected to include a 60-day ceasefire in which Hamas would release 10 living hostages and the remains of 18 others in phases in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Aid supplies would be ramped up and the two sides would hold negotiations on a lasting truce.
Hamas earlier Thursday submitted a response to the latest ceasefire proposal which an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, billed as “workable.”
A senior Israeli official was quoted by local media as saying the new text of Hamas’s revised response to a proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal was something Israel could work with.
However, Israel’s Channel 12 said a rapid deal was not within reach, with gaps remaining between the two sides, including over where the Israeli military should withdraw to during any truce.
A Palestinian official close to the talks told Reuters the latest Hamas position was “flexible, positive and took into consideration the growing suffering in Gaza and the need to stop the starvation”.
The war between Israel and Hamas has been raging for nearly two years since Hamas killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages from southern Israel in the deadliest single attack in Israel’s history.
Israel has since killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, decimated Hamas as a military force, reduced most of the territory to ruins and forced nearly the entire population to flee their homes multiple times.
Opening sumary
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Israel is reviewing a revised response from Hamas to a proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Thursday, as Israeli air and ground strikes continued to pound the Gaza Strip.
Hamas confirmed it had handed over a new proposal, but did not disclose its contents. A previous version, submitted late on Tuesday, was rejected by mediators as insufficient and was not even passed to Israel, sources familiar with the situation said.
There have been two major sticking points in talks: details on an Israeli military withdrawal, and on how to distribute aid during a truce.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet includes far-right parties that oppose any agreement that ends without the total destruction of Hamas.
“The second I spot weakness in the prime minister and if I come to think, heaven forbid, that this is about to end with us surrendering instead of with Hamas’s absolute surrender, I won’t remain (in the government) for even a single day,” finance minister Bezalel Smotrich told Army Radio.
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Gaza is suffering man-made mass starvation caused by the Israeli blockade of aid into the territory, the head of the World Health Organization has said, as more than 100 agencies urged Israel to let supplies in. “I don’t know what you would call it other than mass starvation, and it’s man-made, and that’s very clear,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference from Geneva. “This is because of [the] blockade.”
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Ten more Palestinians died overnight to Wednesday from starvation, the Gaza health ministry said, bringing the total number of people who have starved to death to 111. The World Health Organization said on Wednesday 21 children under the age of five were among those who died of malnutrition so far this year.
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A family of seven – freelance journalist Wala al-Jaabari, her husband and their five children – were among more than 100 people killed in 24 hours of Israeli strikes or gunfire, according to health officials on Wednesday. Iman al-Shaer, another relative who lives nearby, said the family hadn’t eaten anything before the bombs came down. “The children slept without food,” he said. The World Health Organization said on Wednesday 21 children under the age of five were among those who died of malnutrition so far this year.
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Brazil is finalising its submission to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel’s actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. South Africa filed a case in 2023 asking the ICJ to declare that Israel was in breach of its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention. In its statement, the Brazilian government accused Israel of violations of international law “such as the annexation of territories by force,” and it expressed “deep indignation” at violence suffered by the civilian population.
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Dozens of former UK ambassadors and diplomats have piled pressure on Keir Starmer to recognise a Palestinian state amid growing international revulsion at the harrowing scenes in Gaza in a letter signed by signed by more than 30 former UK ambassadors and 20 former senior British diplomats at the United Nations. “The risks of inaction have profound, historic and catastrophic implications,” it said. The state of Israel “cannot be secure from threats in the future if the question of Palestine is not taken forward to a political settlement”.
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The archbishop of York condemned the dehumanisation of people in Gaza as “depraved” and “barbaric”. It was “a stain on the conscience of the international community”, and Israel’s “war of aggression” was a “grave sin”, said Stephen Cottrell, the de facto leader of the Church of England.
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Israel’s President Isaac Herzog visited the Gaza strip on Wednesday and told soldiers that there were “intensive negotiations” about returning the hostages in Gaza, adding that he hopes that they will soon “hear good news”, a statement from the president’s spokesperson reported.