Israel-Palestine live: Netanyahu rejects Hamas ceasefire proposal, vows ‘total victory’

A Palestinian patient, 77, has died due to oxygen shortage at Khan Younis' al-Amal Hospital, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Wednesday. 

"The hospital has been suffering from a severe oxygen shortage for days, affecting the intensive care unit and hospitalised patients," PRCS said on social media platform X. 

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees Unrwa warned of an "alarming spread of disease" in the Gaza Strip due to lack of sanitation and clean water.

In a post on social media platform X, the UN agency said it's carrying out a vaccination campaign against measles, mumps and rubella for children.

Israeli fighter jets have intensified air strikes in Rafah in recent hours, killing at least 12 Palestinians and wounding many more. 

Hamas is proposing an "end to military operations" in Gaza as part of a three-staged ceasefire plan that would also see the exchange of Israeli and Palestinian prisoners, according to a reported draft document by the group.  

The proposal, which was seen and reported by Reuters and the Lebanese Al Akhbar daily, also includes an agreement to secure the reconstruction of Gaza, end the siege and ensure the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces. 

The document was sent to Egyptian and Qatari mediators on Tuesday night in response to a ceasefire proposal drafted in Paris by Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar late last month.

An Israeli sniper killed a Palestinian woman outside the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis on Wednesday, according to the Arab48 news outlet. 

Palestinian journalists at the scene said the woman stepped out of the hospital to get water when she was gunned down. 

Translation: Occupation army snipers opened fire on a woman who was going to get water from Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis.

Separately, Israeli snipers in the Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza City were also reported targeting civilians, with one person reportedly killed and others wounded.

Israeli jets pummelled Rafah with a series of air strikes on Wednesday morning, as attacks on the small border town increased in recent days, according to local media reports. 

Rafah, which now shelters over 1.3 Palestinians displaced from elsewhere in Gaza, was previously designated a "safe" area by the Israeli army. 

However, the Israeli military is reportedly preparing plans to invade the city, which would put the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians at risk according to aid workers. 

There were no immediate reports of casualties from the Wednesday air strikes while the scale of Tuesday night's raids is still being assessed. 

Good morning Middle East Eye readers, 

It's 07:50 in Palestine and Israel. Here are the latest developments from Israel's war on Gaza, which enters its 124th day today: 

• Israeli fighter jets intensified overnight air strikes in Rafah, a small border town with Egypt sheltering over 1.3 million internally displaced civilians. 

• North of Rafah, Israeli forces tightened their siege of Khan Younis's main hospital, the Nasser Medical Complex, as fighting raged on elsewhere in the city. 

• A suspected Israeli air strike in Syria's Homs late on Tuesday killed a man, a woman and a child, according to a human rights monitor. 

• Saudi Arabia rebuffed White House spokesperson John Kirby for saying that a normalisation deal with Israel was separate from a Gaza ceasefire agreement.

• Riyadh insisted "there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognised on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops and all Israeli occupation forces withdraw from the Gaza Strip". 

Good evening readers of Middle East Eye,

Israeli forces have killed at least 107 Palestinians over the past 24 hours in 12 "massacres", according to the Palestinian health ministry. 

This brings the Palestinian death toll in four months to more than 27,585 with almost 67,000 wounded and 7,000 missing, who are believed to be dead and buried under rubble. 

Around 8,000 displaced people have been evacuated from Al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, which has been under siege by Israeli forces, according to the Red Cross.

In other developments:

• American police have arrested a suspect in the stabbing of a Palestinian-American in Texas, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has said. 
• The regional Government of Wallonia in southern Belgium has suspended two arms export licences to Israel, local media reported. 
• On Tuesday, Qatar's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, reported that Qatar had received a "positive response" from Hamas regarding a proposed framework agreement.
• Israel's chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday that 31 of the remaining hostages were pronounced dead.
• Hundreds of Israeli demonstrators blocked dozens of aid trucks from entering the Gaza Strip at the Karem Abu Salem (Karem Shalom) crossing on Tuesday, 
• Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, has said that it expects donors to review suspensions of funding following the publication of an upcoming preliminary report addressing Israeli allegations about its employees. 

Ghazi Hamad, a high-ranking official from Hamas, told Reuters on Tuesday that Hamas aims to secure the release of as many Palestinians as possible from Israeli prisons.

"Netanyahu is trying to make everyone believe that he has or will achieve victory to preserve his coalition government," Hamad told Reuters, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He added that it took Hamas some time to issue a response because "many of [the agreement's] issues were unclear and ambiguous".

Hamad's remarks followed Hamas's announcement that it had submitted its reply to a ceasefire proposal created by Egypt and Qatar, which seeks to establish a full ceasefire in Gaza.

Over a fifth of the remaining hostages in Gaza are reportedly dead, according to a New York Times assessment of an internal report and Israel's chief military spokesperson.

There are discrepancies between numbers, though, with the New York Times saying that at least 32 of the 136 hostages are confirmed dead. Israel's chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday that 31 of them were pronounced dead.

"We have informed 31 families that their captured loved ones are no longer among the living and that we have pronounced them dead," Hagari told a regular media briefing.

According to the New York Times, the families of the 32 hostages whose deaths are confirmed have been informed.

On Tuesday, Qatar's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, reported that Qatar had received a "positive response" from Hamas regarding a proposed framework agreement.

Hamas also announced that it had delivered its feedback on a ceasefire proposal for Gaza, which was formulated by Egypt and Qatar.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the best path forward right now to get an "extended period of calm" is to an agreement of hostages.

"There is a lot of work to be done [to achieve that agreement]," Blinken said.

The Israeli military has concluded that over one fifth of Israeli captives still held in Gaza are dead, according to a report in the New York Times on Tuesday. 

At least 32 of 136 captives in the beseiged enclave have died since the war began on 7 October, the report stated, citing a confidential internal assessment by Israeli intelligence officers. 

The families of the 32 confirmed dead Israeli captives have been informed, according to several military sources who spoke to the New York Times. Officers are also reviewing unconfirmed intelligence reports that 20 others may also have been killed. 

Around half of 240 captives taken on 7 October were released as part of a prisoner exchange deal in November.

Several families of remaining captives have protested against Israel's war on Gaza, claiming that it has put the lives of their loved ones in danger. 

In December, Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Israeli captives in Gaza who at the time were shirtless and held white flags, an initial probe by the military found.

The regional government of Wallonia in southern Belgium temporarily suspended two arms export licences to Israel on Monday.

Officials said that the decision was due to "the unacceptable deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip".

They also cited the International Court of Justice's recent decision ordering Israel to avoid genocide in Gaza, according to local media reports.

The decision comes days after a group of NGOs penned an open letter calling on Walloon Minister-President Elio Di Rupo to immediately halt arms exports to Israel.

Read more: Regional Belgian government suspends arms export licences to Israel

Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, has said that it expects donors to review suspensions of funding following the publication of an upcoming preliminary report adressing Israeli allegations about its employees. 

Last month, Israel alleged that 12 of Unrwa's 30,000 employees took part in attacks on southern Israeli communities on 7 October.

The preliminary report will be available "in several weeks," according to Unrwa's Lebanon representative Dorothee Klaus. 

"We assume donors would look into their decisions of having suspended funding to Unrwa," Klaus said. 

The US, UK, Germany and Canada were among sixteen countries which paused financing the agency following Israel's allegations. 

Unrwa was established in 1949 - a year after the Nakba (or catastrophe) in which 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes during the creation of Israel - to provide healthcare, education and humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. 

In Gaza, it runs 183 schools, 22 health facilities and seven women's centres, among several other facilities. Over 150 of Unrwa's staff have been killed by Israeli attacks since war broke out.