Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Rafah invasion to be ‘avoided at all costs’

The live page is now closed. You can continue to follow our coverage of the war in Gaza here.

To learn more about Israel’s starvation strategy and how it’s impacting children in Gaza, read this story.

And you can find more news, features and videos on the conflict here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of today’s main events:

• An Israeli air attack on a home in Deir el-Balah killed 12 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
• An Israeli delegation led by Mossad’s spy chief is expected in Doha to discuss Hamas’s proposal for a three-stage plan to end the war.
• Nineteen aid trucks have arrived in Jabalia as part of the first convoys to arrive in northern Gaza without being blocked or fired on by Israeli forces in months.
• Thousands of Israeli protesters are demanding Netanyahu resign over his handling of the war.
• Airdrops and maritime deliveries are “a drop in a bucket” in terms of the humanitarian aid needed, says UNICEF chief Catherine Russell.

Hezbollah claimed a total of eight attacks on Israeli positions on Sunday with rockets, missiles and artillery strikes.

The group said they struck a “gathering of Israeli soldiers” in the area of Wazzani in southern Lebanon and targeted “spying equipment” around al-Assi.

The latest attack was a strike on Israeli army vehicles using artillery shells in the area of al-Malikiyah that we reported on earlier.

US President Joe Biden says in a shamrock ceremony at the White House that he agrees with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on a need for a truce deal in Gaza.

“The Taoiseach [Irish leader] and I agree about the urgent need to increase humanitarian aid in Gaza and get a ceasefire deal that brings hostages home and moves toward a two-state solution, which is the only path for lasting peace and security,” Biden said.

Varadkar said people ask him why the Irish have such empathy for the Palestinian people.

“We see our history in their eyes, a story of displacement, of dispossession, a national identity questioned and denied, forced emigration, discrimination, and now hunger,” he said.

The Irish leader, who has previously criticised US arms transfers to Israel, said he “was not shocked” that Washington has decided to continue arming Israel.

This footage verified by Al Jazeera shows the latest raid by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank.

The raid, conducted with multiple armoured vehicles, took place in the town of al-Khader south of Bethlehem.

Translation: Israeli occupation forces storm the town of al-Khader, south of the city of Bethlehem in the West Bank.

The latest report by the Critical Threats Project think tank provides an overview of what two major brigades of the Israeli military ground forces are doing across Gaza now.

The Nahal Brigade, active in northern and central Gaza, claimed to have killed 18 Palestinian fighters using air strikes as well as tank and sniper fire on Sunday.

Having operated in the area for weeks, the brigade has been active while the military builds the so-called “Netzarim corridor”, which is effectively cutting Gaza in half and preventing the movement of displaced Palestinians.

Palestinians from multiple armed factions are still engaging in gunfights with Israeli soldiers, launching mortar, rocket and small arms attacks.

In Khan Younis in the south, the Givati Brigade is still, after weeks, conducting raids in the Hamad neighbourhood of residential buildings. Ground fighting is ongoing there as well.

Earlier, we reported that two UN human rights experts called on Chevron and other oil companies to stop supplying to the Israeli military, as reported by Oil Change International.

In response to a query from Al Jazeera, Chevron has provided the following: “We are deeply concerned about the recent events and the devastating impact on communities. Our thoughts are with those affected”

“Chevron is focused on the safe and reliable supply of natural gas for the benefit of the Israeli domestic market and our regional customers. Any questions related to the security situation should be addressed to the appropriate authorities of Israel.”

Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani has met with his Emirati counterpart, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, in Doha to discuss the war.

As with most recent international meetings on Gaza, the two neighbouring states discussed “the need to accelerate the pace of entry of humanitarian aid into the Strip without obstacles”.

“The meeting also discussed the expansion of the cycle of violence in the region and its impact on regional and global stability,” said a statement from the Qatari Foreign Ministry.

These images from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) show how Palestinian ambulance crew members, along with others affected by Israel’s war, especially children, gather for a mental support group.

The PRCS says tens of thousands of Palestinians are benefitting from these services amid the ongoing horrors of the war.

The Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, after meeting in Israel with German Chancellor Scholz, has said that Israelis are united in a call to quickly return captives still held in Gaza.

“Israel’s opposition will support any moves that advance a hostage deal,” he wrote in Hebrew on X, with a picture of him shaking the hand of the German leader.

“The international community must put pressure on Hamas and promote a deal quickly,” Lapid said.

Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh met with a Chinese delegation led by a senior Foreign Ministry diplomat in Qatar’s Doha on Sunday afternoon.

The group said in a statement that Haniyeh told the delegation, which also included Chinese envoy to Doha, Cao Xiaolin, that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip need urgent aid and are being subjected to starvation and “massacres” by the Israeli military.

He emphasised demands that Israeli must “quickly stop its aggression and massacres, withdraw the occupying army, return the displaced, provide shelter and reconstruction requirements, and achieve the political goals and aspirations of establishing an independent Palestinian state with full sovereignty with [East] Jerusalem as its capital, and the right of return and self-determination”.

The Chinese diplomat was quoted as saying that Beijing wants to stop the war, and also sees Hamas as “part of the Palestinian national fabric” and therefore wants to maintain a political relationship.

The executive director at UNICEF, Catherine Russell, also said in her interview that we reported on earlier that the one thing the organisation knows for sure is that “not enough aid is getting in”.

She said the aid that is coming in through airdrops and a maritime route is “a drop in a bucket in both cases”.

“We have so little access right now and it’s very challenging. We are also facing very great bureaucratic challenges moving trucks in by land, which is by far the most efficient and effective way to get aid in”, she added.

“If things are dual use, sometimes they get rejected. So, we can’t get plastic pipes in, we can’t get some medical kits in if they have little scissors. It’s almost Kafkaesque sometimes trying to figure out how to get things into this bureaucratic mess.”

After a meeting with Netanyahu, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog.

The president told him the “prime objective of this war is to bring our hostages back home” in what he called a “supreme humanitarian challenge”.

Scholz also said getting captives out of Gaza was “the first and most important question”.

“Hostages have to be released. Too many have suffered for a very long time and we have to do everything we can to help them.”

The Lebanese armed group says it carried out two more attacks on Israeli forces.

In the first, Hezbollah says it attacked the al-Samaq site in the hills near the Lebanese village of Kfar Shuba, which Israel occupies.

In the second attack, Israeli army vehicles were hit with artillery shells “as they entered the al-Malikiyah site”. ‏

One in three babies under the age of two in northern Gaza is suffering from acute malnutrition, according to UNICEF.

Catherine Russell, the executive director of the UN’s children’s agency, described in an interview with US broadcaster NBC what that means.

“Essentially, the body starts to consume itself as it has nothing else, and it’s a painful, painful death for children. I have been in wards where babies are suffering from malnutrition, the whole ward is absolutely quiet because the babies don’t even have the energy to cry”, she said.

“If we can get therapeutic feeding to them, they can survive but often, they are stunted for life and stunted means your cognitive ability is impacted as well, so it is a lifelong challenge for these children – if they survive.”

Antony Blinken spoke on the phone today with his Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry says on X.

“The two ministers discussed efforts to reach a ceasefire and deliver sufficient and sustainable humanitarian aid to [Gaza],” a statement from the ministry reads.

Jordan has been a key partner of the US in its recent efforts to airdrop aid into the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military has confirmed the death of Captain Daniel Perez, a 22-year-old soldier who was taken by Palestinian fighters on October 7.

The army said he was a platoon commander in an armoured brigade and was from the settlement of Yad Binyamin.

His body remains in Gaza but the official announcement allows a burial to be held for Perez in accordance with Jewish law.

The fallout from Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer’s speech and call for early elections in Israel continues to expand, with Democratic Senator Ben Cardin asserting that it is “up to the Israelis to determine their own leaders”.

The Jewish senator from Maryland tells US broadcaster NBC that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was facing issues with his leadership before October 7 but that “there’s unity now because of the war”.

“Once there is security in Gaza and there is security for the Palestinians and the Israelis, the Israelis need to focus on who they want their leader to be.”

The UN’s organisation for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has again highlighted the plight of those in Gaza facing famine.

“Safe, unimpeded and sustained access throughout the Gaza Strip is a matter of life and death,” it said in a post on X.