Israel-Gaza war live: Israeli negotiators in Cairo for ceasefire and hostage talks as Kamala Harris urges peace

Key events

The fighting continues in central Gaza, the Associated Press reports, with heavy weapons and machine guns firing at daybreak near east Deir al-Balah and four people killed in an early Israeli strike on a vehicle in Khan Younis.

Palestinian civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal said late Thursday that 24 people were killed the day before in multiple strikes across Gaza by the Israeli military, including in Gaza City in the north. The strikes also caused multiple injuries, but Bassal did not specify how many.

Meanwhile, Israel’s military said early Friday that it had killed “dozens” of militants during close-quarters fighting yesterday in the central and southern Gaza Strip, with the air force striking about 30 targets throughout the area. In Khan Younis, the fighting included strikes against areas from which projectiles were launched at southern Israel over the past week, the military said.

UN: 90% of Gaza residents have been displaced by Israel’s evacuation orders

The top United Nations humanitarian official for the Palestinian territory is warning that Israeli evacuation orders are endangering civilians rather than protecting them.

Since the start of the conflict in October, Israeli evacuation orders in Gaza have displaced 90% of its 2.1m residents. There were 12 evacuation orders in August alone that forced as many as 250,000 people to move yet again, said Muhannad Hadi, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory.

“They are forcing families to flee again, often under fire and with the few belongings they can carry with them, into an ever-shrinking area that is overcrowded, polluted, with limited services and – like the rest of Gaza – unsafe,” he said in a statement. “People are being deprived of access to services essential for their survival, including medical facilities, shelters, water wells and humanitarian supplies.”

He continued:

The water supply in Deir al Balah has decreased by at least 70% due to the shutdown of pumps and desalination plants located within evacuation zones. A severe chlorine shortage for water disinfection, with reserves expected to last only one more month, is fuelling disease, skin infections, hepatitis A and now polio.

Civilians are exhausted and terrified, running from one destroyed place to another, with no end in sight.

This cannot continue.

International humanitarian law requires the protection of civilians,” Hadi said. “The way forward is as clear as it is urgent: Protect civilians, release the hostages, facilitate humanitarian access, agree on a cease-fire.”

Haaretz is reporting that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet today with six hostages who were released from Hamas captivity in November.

All six of the released hostages still have family being held by Hamas: Elena Trupanov, whose 28-year-old son Sasha is still in Gaza; IIlana Grichevsky, whose partner, Matan Zangauker, 24, remains a hostage; Raz Ben Ami, wife of 55-year-old hostage Ohad Ben Ami; Aviva Siegel, wife of hostage Keith Siegel, 65; Yocheved Lifshitz, wife of hostage Oded Lifshitz, 84; and Adi Shoham, wife of hostage Tal Shoham, 39.

More from the Democratic National Convention: ahead of Kamala Harris taking the stage and accepting the Democratic nomination for president, uncommitted delegates staged a sit-in in protest of the convention’s denial of speaking slot for a Palestinian American on the main stage.

The uncommitted delegates had set a 6pm CT deadline for the convention. When it went unmet, they entered the United Center to take their seats among their state delegations.

“The scandal is that there are forces within Democratic party leadership who do not want us to talk about Palestinian human rights,” said Abbas Alawieh, a leader of the uncommitted movement and an uncommitted delegate from Michigan. “They’re out of step with the majority of the Democratic base, the majority of Democratic voters who believe that Palestinian human rights are a priority.”

Welcome and opening summary

It’s just past 10am in Gaza and Tel Aviv, welcome to our latest live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis. I’m Vivian Ho and I’ll be with you for the next while.

US vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said in her Democratic National Convention speech on Thursday that now was the time for a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Israel’s war in Gaza.

“I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself,” Harris said while adding “what has happened in Gaza is devastating” and “heartbreaking.”

Harris said:

President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination

It came as Israeli negotiators were taking part in talks on Gaza in Cairo, a government spokesperson said, according to Agence France-Presse.

Hopes for a deal are low. A main sticking point remains Hamas’s longstanding demand for a “complete” Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has opposed.

Netanyahu’s spokesperson Omer Dostri told AFP that the Mossad spy agency chief David Barnea and Ronen Bar, head of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security service, were in the Egyptian capital and “negotiating to advance a hostage (release) agreement”.

First, a summary of the latest developments:

Successive Israeli evacuation orders in Gaza, including 12 just this month, have displaced 90% of its 2.1 million residents since the Israel-Hamas war began last October, often multiple times, the top United Nations humanitarian official for the Palestinian territory says. Muhannad Hadi said the evacuation orders are endangering civilians instead of protecting them. “They are forcing families to flee again, often under fire and with the few belongings they can carry with them, into an ever-shrinking area” that is crowded and unsafe.
US officials have expressed optimism that a ceasefire deal in the war in Gaza “is in sight”, despite growing indications from Israel and Hamas that a breakthrough is not imminent and as renewed fighting rages in parts of the Palestinian territory.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday denied reports suggesting Israel is considering agreeing to the deployment of an international force along a narrow border strip between Gaza and Egypt known as the Philadelphi Corridor.
“Prime minister Netanyahu insists on the principle that Israel will control the Philadelphi Corridor to prevent the rearmament of Hamas, which would allow them to repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7,” his office said in a statement.
Rights groups on Thursday expressed renewed concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza after Israel’s latest evacuation orders in parts of the overcrowded central city of Deir al-Balah.
In the central Gaza town of Deir Al-Balah, which houses about 1 million residents and displaced Palestinians, according to the municipal council, residents said tanks advanced further from the east and blocked some roads connecting the city with the nearby Khan Younis in the south.
Palestinian health officials say Israeli strikes have killed at least 16 people in the Gaza Strip. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital received the bodies, including the remains of a woman and three children, after strikes overnight and into Thursday. An Associated Press reporter at the hospital counted the bodies.
Israel’s military court has extended the house arrest of soldiers accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee until 4 Sept but will allow the defence to hold a hearing on Sunday to request an alternative to detention, the military said on Thursday. The soldiers have been accused of sexually abusing a member of an elite Hamas unit at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev desert in southern Israel, according to Israeli press reports.
Palestinians said Thursday they are planning to introduce a UN general assembly resolution in September enshrining the recent sweeping ruling by the UN’s top court that declared Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories unlawful – and setting a time frame for it to end. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, told the UN security council that the resolution, which would not be legally binding, is essential to spur the end of Israel’s occupation. “We are sick and tired of waiting,” he said. “The time for waiting is over.”
The Israeli police and internal security service said Thursday they arrested four suspects for “terrorist” acts against Palestinians during a deadly settler attack last week on an occupied West Bank village.
Israeli attacks on Palestinian water supplies in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip accounted for a quarter of all water-related violence in 2023, as armed conflicts over dwindling resources surged globally, according to new research.
More than 40,265 Palestinians have been killed and 93,144 have been injured in Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 Oct, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
A Greek-flagged oil tanker carrying 150,000 tonnes of crude that was evacuated by its crew after being attacked in the Red Sea now poses an environmental hazard, the EU’s Red Sea naval mission “Aspides” said on Thursday.
Hezbollah has provided a glimpse of its secret tunnels housing weapons – a move experts say is a warning to Israel as the underground facilities could prove vital to the group should wider war erupt.
On the third night of the Democratic national convention, the group Muslim Women for Harris released a statement announcing that it was disbanding in response to the Harris-Walz campaign’s refusal to allow a Palestinian person to speak on the main stage. The Uncommitted movement, which won 30 delegates, also began a sit in over the same issue.