UN experts demand action to avert ‘annihilation’ of Palestinians in Gaza – Middle East crisis live | Israel

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Here is a summary of the latest key developments:

• United Nations experts said on Wednesday that countries were at a moral crossroads over the conflict in Gaza, facing the choice between acting to halt the violence and witnessing “the annihilation of the Palestinian population” in the territory. “The decision is stark: remain passive and witness the slaughter of innocents or take part in crafting a just resolution,” more than 20 independent UN experts said in a statement, urging the world to avert the “moral abyss we are descending into”.

• French president Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that the humanitarian situation in Gaza had reached “critical” levels unseen in the past and that it was urgent to allow the distribution of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Macron also said that while Israel was entitled to fight a terrorist organisation, it was “unacceptable” it acted without respecting any rules.

• The UN’s human rights chief told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Wednesday that Israel’s plan for an expanded offensive in the Gaza Strip represented “a very dangerous moment” for civilians there. “What we see is only more destruction, more hatred, more dehumanisation,” said Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, during a visit to Copenhagen for a UN meeting. “It’s a very dangerous moment for civilians,” he added, criticising the Israeli plan for an expanded offensive in the Gaza Strip.

• The blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip “needs to be lifted immediately”, Türk told AFP. “Humanitarian assistance needs to come in. That’s an obligation, that’s an obligation under international law,” he added.

• The Dutch government, seen as one of Israel’s most loyal allies in the European Union, is calling for an urgent review of the EU Israel association agreement, the basis for the EU-Israeli free trade agreement, the Dutch foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp told the Guardian. Veldkamp described the Israeli ban on the supply of aid into Gaza as “catastrophic, truly dismal” and in clear breach of international humanitarian law.

• Spain will present a draft resolution at the UN general assembly aimed at “proposing urgent measures to stop the killing of innocent civilians and ensure humanitarian aid” in Gaza, prime minister Pedro Sánchez said on Wednesday. Sánchez told the Spanish parliament that “the international community cannot remain indifferent to what is happening” in the Palestinian territory.

• Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 59 people, including women and children, hospital officials said on Wednesday. The strikes included one attack on Tuesday night on a school sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians, which killed 27 people, officials from the al-Aqsa hospital said, including nine women and three children. An early morning strike on another school turned shelter in Gaza City killed 16 people, according to officials at al-Ahli hospital, while strikes on targets in other areas killed at least 16 others.

• Aid agencies have criticised Israeli plans to take over distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza and use private companies to get food to Palestinians after two months in which the military has prevented supplies from entering the territory. It comes as Gaza has been hit by a wave of looting and theft as increasingly desperate Palestinians struggle to get food while criminal gangs exploit a breakdown in law and order.

• Medical officials in Gaza report rising cases of acute malnutrition, and community kitchens that served 1m meals a day are shutting down for lack of basic essentials. Aid agencies say they have distributed all remaining stocks of food. “By the time a famine is declared, it will be too late. The crime wave is because you have 2 million or more desperate, traumatised people packed together with virtually no policing,” said one humanitarian official in Gaza.

• Israel’s hostages coordinator on Wednesday said the number of living captives held in Gaza since Hamas’s October 2023 attack remained unchanged, contradicting US president Donald Trump’s announcement that three more had died. “The terrorist organisation Hamas is currently holding 59 hostages. 24 of them are on the list of living hostages. 35 of them are on the list of hostages whose deaths have been officially confirmed,” Hostages and Missing Persons coordinator Gal Hirsch wrote on X.

• Donald Trump plans to announce while on his trip to Saudi Arabia next week that the United States will now refer to the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf” or the “Gulf of Arabia”, according to two US officials. The move has prompted a push back from Iranian leaders.

• Iran has welcomed the end of US attacks on Yemen, its foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday after president Donald Trump announced Washington would stop bombing the Iran-aligned Yemeni Houthi militia. Trump said Yemen’s Houthis had agreed to stop disrupting important shipping lanes in the Middle East.

• Yemen’s Houthi rebels said on Wednesday that they would continue targeting Israeli ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden despite a ceasefire deal with the United States. “The waterways are safe for all international ships except Israeli ones,” Abdulmalik Alejri, a member of the Houthi political bureau, told AFP.

• US vice-president JD Vance on Wednesday described US talks with Iran as “so far, so good” and said there was a deal to be made that would reintegrate Iran into the global economy while preventing it from getting a nuclear weapon.

• Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa on a visit to France on Wednesday met a whistleblower, previously known only as ‘Caesar’, who smuggled out tens of thousands of pictures depicting the tortured corpses of detainees under ousted ruler Bashar al-Assad. Al-Sharaa and foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani “met with Farid al-Madhan, known as ’Caesar’, on the sidelines of their visit” to Paris, the Syrian presidency said in a statement, posting images of the meeting.

• Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa is to meet French leader Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, marking his first visit to Europe since overthrowing longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad. In Paris, al-Sharaa will discuss postwar reconstruction and economic cooperation during his meeting with Macron, a Syrian government official has said.

• The Israeli government “must immediately abandon its plans for expanded military operations … in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip”, said Amnesty International. The organisation said the plans, including annexing territory and forcibly displacing Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, would “gravely violate international law”.

• An Israeli drone strike on a car in southern Lebanon killed a Hamas official early on Wednesday, authorities said. Hamas said in a statement that Khaled Ahmad al-Ahmad, who was a member of its military wing, was killed while he was on his way to a mosque to attend dawn prayers. The Israeli military confirmed that it had targeted al-Ahmad, saying he was a commander with Hamas in south Lebanon and was behind several attacks against Israel.

• The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has set up a backchannel for talks between Israel and Syria, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Syria’s new rulers seek regional help to manage an increasingly hostile relationship with their southern neighbour. The indirect contacts, which have not been previously reported, are focused on security and intelligence matters and confidence-building between two states with no official relations, a person with direct knowledge of the matter, a Syrian security source and a regional intelligence official told Reuters.

• Greece backs an Arab plan for the reconstruction of Gaza once a ceasefire is achieved, prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday. “The first priority is for hostilities to stop and restore the flow of humanitarian aid to civilians,” Mitsotakis said after meeting Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Athens.

• UK firms have exported thousands of military items including munitions to Israel despite the government suspending key arms export licences to the country in September, new analysis of trade data shows. The research also raises questions over whether the UK continued to sell F-35 parts directly to Israel in breach of an undertaking only to sell them to the US manufacturers Lockheed Martin as a way of ensuring the fighter jet’s global supply chain was not disrupted, something the government said was essential for national security and Nato.

• More than a dozen senior Conservative MPs and peers have written to the prime minister calling for the UK to immediately recognise Palestine as a state, breaking ranks with their own party to do so. Seven MPs and six members of the House of Lords have signed the letter to Keir Starmer urging him to defy the Israeli government and give formal recognition to Palestine in advance of key UN talks next month.

• Protesters interrupted the opening minutes of Barclays’ annual general meeting (AGM) in London on Wednesday. One protester said that Barclays “provides loans worth billions to armed companies”, while people outside gathered to shout “free Palestine” and “stop arming Israel”. Barclays’ chair, Nigel Higgins, responded that the bank would be “more than willing to answer questions on the topic during the Q&A” session.

• Some global airlines have again halted their flights to and from Tel Aviv after a missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels towards Israel on Sunday landed near the country’s main international airport. KLM, Ryanair, Wizz Air, United Airlines, Air India and the Lufthansa group are among the airlines that cancelled flights after Sunday’s attack.

• Israel’s attack on the airport in Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital Sana’a destroyed terminal buildings and caused $500m in damage, its director told Houthi media on Wednesday. He said earlier in a statement on X that the airport was suspending all flights until further notice after sustaining “severe damage” in the Israeli strikes.