Live Updates: US says response from Hamas on truce deal still awaited

Wednesday, June 5, 2024

0211 GMT — A response from Palestinian resistance group Hamas on US President Joe Biden's ceasefire proposal is still being awaited, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has told reporters.

"We are waiting for a response from Hamas" through the Qatari mediators, Sullivan said.

CIA Director Bill Burns will be in Doha to consult with Qatari mediators on the Gaza ceasefire proposal, Sullivan added. Qatar has been mediating on Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

Israeli hawkish PM Benjamin Netanyahu remains ambivalent and has found "gaps" in Biden's proposal while his extremists partners are averse to any truce deal with Hamas. They have threatened to break the coalition government with Netanyahu if he accepts Biden's deal.

A spokesman for Hamas meanwhile reiterated it could not agree to any deal unless Israel makes a "clear" commitment to a permanent truce and complete withdrawal from besieged Gaza.

2000 GMT — Israel kills 19 Palestinians in Gaza

Israeli shelling and air strikes have killed at least 19 people in central and south Gaza including two policemen who were helping protect humanitarian aid deliveries in the southern city of Rafah, Palestinian medics said.

Seventeen of the killings, they said, occurred in separate Israeli air strikes on the Bureij and Maghazi camps and the city of Deir al Balah in central Gaza, and by early Wednesday Israeli tanks were shelling an area just east of the Nuseirat camp, residents said.

Some told Reuters via chat app that the renewed Israeli military violence was sowing panic, with some families living in Maghazi starting to flee under tank fire, with four shells crashing near a clinic in the camp.

2106 GMT — US House supports sanctions against ICC officials

The US House has passed legislation that would sanction the International Criminal Court [ICC] for requesting arrest warrants for hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.

The 247-155 vote amounts to Congress' first legislative rebuke of the war crimes court since its stunning decision last month to seek arrest warrants for the leaders of Israel and Hamas resistance group.

The move was widely denounced in Washington, creating a rare moment of unity on Israel even as partisan divisions over the war in besieged Gaza.

The White House opposes the legislation, calling it overreach. Both the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee acknowledged the bill in question is unlikely to become law and left the door open to further negotiation with the White House. They said it would be better for Congress to be united against the Hague-based court.

2110 GMT — Famine caused by Israel is possibly under way in northern Gaza

An independent group of experts has warned that it's possible that human made famine is under way in northern Gaza but that the war on Gaza and Israeli restrictions on humanitarian access have impeded the data collection to prove it.

"It is possible, if not likely,” the group known as the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWS NET, said about Israel-caused famine in Gaza.

Concerns about deadly hunger have been high in recent months and spiked after the head of the World Food Program last month said northern Gaza had entered "full-blown famine" after nearly seven months of war.

An area is considered to be in famine when three things occur: 20 percent of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving; at least 30 percent of the children suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting, meaning they’re too thin for their height; and two adults or four children per every 10,000 people are dying daily of hunger and its complications.

That is according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a collection of UN agencies, governments and other bodies that in March warned famine was imminent in northern Gaza.

2000 GMT — Egyptian, Qatari, and US delegations to meet on ceasefire negotiations

An Egyptian security delegation is set to meet with Qatari and US counterparts in Doha on Wednesday in attempt to revive Gaza truce negotiations, Egyptian State TV and state-affiliated Al-Qahera News TV channel said, citing sources.

For our live updates from Tuesday, June 4, 2024, click here.