Gaza live: Concerns about all-out regional war rise following Golan Heights deadly attack

Our live coverage from Gaza will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are some of the day's key developments:

• More than 39,090 people have been killed and 90,147 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, the enclave's health ministry says

• Nine Palestinians, including four children, have been killed in the Israeli incursion on Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza

• The Gaza government's media office has said that over 16,000 children have been killed in Israel's war on the encalve, while 10,000 others remain missing

• Several Palestinian factions, including Hamas and rival Fatah, have signed the Beijing Declaration in China on Tuesday, essentially agreeing to end their divisions and strengthen Palestinian unity, according to Chinese state media

• The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday there was a high risk of the polio virus spreading across Gaza and beyond its borders due to the dire health and sanitation situation in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave

• Quoting two Israeli officials, Axios says that the US, Israel and the UAE held a secret meeting in Abu Dhabi last Thursday to discuss day-after plans for Gaza

• Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch told the heads of local authorities that students from northern kibbutzim will not be able to return to their schools in September and will remain in schools in other areas of Israel

• The Israeli government allocated millions of dollars in 2023 to securing illegal West Bank settler outposts, the anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now has revealed

• Amnesty International said the US is “on notice of the Israeli government's unlawful use of US-origin weapons, including in war crimes, and will be complicit in further violations committed with these weapons”

• Palestinian-American Representative Rashida Tlaib called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming speech to Congress "a celebration of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians"

Do you remember how the longest war in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict started? With Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, boasting: "The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades."

In Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Israel has had two of the most permissive US presidents in the relationship between the two states. Late Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush were stalwarts in comparison. 

In peacetime, Trump allowed Israel to annex the occupied Golan Heights, moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, and launched the Abraham Accords, an attempt to get the richest Arab states to recognise Israel without a Palestinian veto.

In war, Biden flooded Israel with arms, voted repeatedly against an immediate ceasefire, and when he attempted to apply the brakes on an offensive in Rafah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignored him.

The "bear hug" strategy failed again.

Read more: Israelis should abandon Netanyahu's sinking ship. He's lost

An Israeli security official reported to Haaretz that masked Israeli settlers set fire to vehicles and lit bonfires in the occupied West Bank village of Huwwara.

The settler riot was allegedly triggered by stones thrown at occupation settlers provocatively driving through the village, leading to clashes between the settlers and residents.

The official noted that several dozen masked Israeli men from a nearby settlement entered the village and began rioting. The Israeli army intervened to remove the settlers but not before they had set one vehicle on fire and vandalised another. 

The UK’s University of Cambridge has announced it will review its approach to “responsible investment” in response to a months-long pro-Palestinian student encampment at the university.

The university administration said in a statement on Tuesday: “The Students' Union approved motion, various college-level approved motions, and the students protesting with the Cambridge Encampment for Palestine have expressed a concern to us that our current investment may not be in line with our institutional values, especially in relation to the arms/defence industry.”

It promised to consider “ways of defining and monitoring defence exposures within investment portfolios” as part of the review.

This comes after Middle East Eye revealed in May that the council of Cambridge's wealthiest constituent college, Trinity, voted to divest from all arms companies, but that it later decided not to announce the decision.

Read more: Cambridge University to review investments in response to pro-Gaza protests

Representative Cori Bush, a vocal progressive critic of Israel, announced she will boycott Netanyahu's address.

"For lawmakers who genuinely care about democracy and freedom, standing up for human rights is not just a talking point. It's not conditional. It's an active choice we make every day. Days like tomorrow are crucial moments where we must show that we support the dignity and humanity of all people without exception," she stated.

"In solidarity with the Palestinian people and all oppressed people across the world, I will be boycotting Prime Minister Netanyahu's joint address to Congress," she added.

Meanwhile, Aipac's United Democracy Project Super PAC has spent nearly $6m against Bush, aiming to support a centrist Democrat more traditionally pro-Israel.

"It is a dark day in US history when an authoritarian with warrant requests from the International Criminal Court is allowed to address a joint session of Congress," said US Senator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a post on X, referring to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Netanyahu will deliver an address to a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday. He will also meet with President Joe Biden on Thursday afternoon, according to the prime minister's office and the White House, followed by a meeting with former president Donald Trump. 

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on the grounds of war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

The UAE, US and Israel met in Abu Dhabi on Thursday to discuss post-war plans for Gaza, a day after a senior Emirati diplomat signalled that the UAE was prepared to send peacekeeping forces to the besieged enclave.

The meeting was hosted by Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan and attended by the White House’s top Middle East official, Brett McGurk, State Department counsellor Tom Sullivan, and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, according to Axios.

The meeting came on the heels of an opinion article published in The Financial Times that backed the deployment of a temporary international force in Gaza to provide “law and order”.

Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE’s former ambassador to the United Nations, now an assistant minister for political affairs in the UAE, said an international force could be sent to Gaza at the invitation of the Palestinian Authority as part of efforts to achieve a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Read more: UAE, Israel and US held secret meeting to discuss post-war Gaza plans

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has welcomed an accord brokered by China aimed at reconciling Hamas and other Palestinian factions.

“I think all steps towards unity are to be welcomed and encouraged,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said. He added that Guterres “very much welcomes the signing of the Beijing Declaration by the Palestinian factions".

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Saif Ziad Ali Ameer, who was shot by Israeli forces during a raid on Meithalun in the occupied West Bank on 11 July, has died.

Wafa said that he had been shot in the chest.

This announcement comes just hours after an Israeli raid killed five people in Tulkarem, including a mother and her daughter.

The US is set to weigh in on the International Criminal Court’s intention to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu along with Hamas and Israeli officials over the war in Gaza, according to court documents.

The court documents come after Middle East Eye revealed earlier this month that the Biden administration was mulling submitting an amicus curiae to the ICC, voicing its staunch opposition to the decision of the court’s chief prosecutor to seek arrest warrants for the Israeli officials. 

On Monday, the ICC released court filings that showed the US government has joined more than 60 states, organisations and individuals asking to file a brief on the case.

The Biden administration joins an eclectic group that includes the Kingdom of Norway, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, US Senator Lindsey Graham, and a French lawyer who claimed he was submitting a brief on behalf of Hamas.

Read more: US joins more than 60 other states, entities set to weigh in on ICC Gaza case

Palestinian-American Representative Rashida Tlaib called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming speech to Congress "a celebration of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians".

Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, said that "Netanyahu is a war criminal committing genocide against the Palestinian people. It is utterly disgraceful that leaders from both parties have invited him to address Congress. He should be arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court."

She further remarked, "Make no mistake: this event is a celebration of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It is a sad day for our democracy when my colleagues will smile for a photo op with a man who is actively committing genocide. It is hypocritical to claim concern about the massive death toll of innocent civilians, then turn around and welcome the person responsible for these war crimes to our Capitol. Their silence is betrayal, and history will remember them accordingly. Our government must stop supporting and funding this genocide now."

The rights group said the US is “on notice of the Israeli government's unlawful use of US-origin weapons, including in war crimes, and will be complicit in further violations committed with these weapons”.

Paul O’Brien, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, said, “The US government has been presented with ample evidence from experts around the world that US-origin arms have been used in war crimes and unlawful killings by the Israeli government. Continued weapons transfers will make the US complicit in violations of international law committed with these arms.”

Israeli settlers set fire to olive groves in Burin, a village south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Footage posted online, verified by Al Jazeera, showed smoke billowing across a wide area covered with trees. 

Republican US presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Netanyahu is in Washington and due to address US Congress on Wednesday and will meet with President Joe Biden on Thursday, Reuters has reported.

As 14 Palestinian leaders lined up for a photograph in Beijing on Tuesday, they each made sure to shake hands afterwards with one man: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. 

Tuesday’s Palestinian unity talks, where an agreement for a post-war Gaza framework was signed, were an opportunity for China to provide a rival platform to Israel and its western allies on the future of Palestine and the Middle East. 

“China’s major goal is to gain consent and acknowledgment among regional countries regarding its rising status as a responsible country with a superior moral role compared to the US,” Razan Shawamreh, a Palestinian expert on China's foreign policy in the region, told Middle East Eye. 

Hamas and Fatah, the two main rival Palestinian factions, have attempted reconciliation several times to put an end to 17 years of dispute, including talks which began in China in April. 

Read more: China challenges West on Gaza by offering Palestinians a new platform