Israel considering a 'restoration of sustainable calm' in Gaza in latest truce proposal: Day 205 of the Gaza war

That's it for today's live coverage of the Gaza war and its repercussions on the region, especially in southern Lebanon. Thanks for joining, we'll be back tomorrow morning. Goodnight!

(Credit: Mohammad Yassine/L'Orient Today)

French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné said in a speech at the Résidence des Pins that the situation in southern Lebanon had deteriorated considerably, our local journalist Salah Hijazi reports.

"A few weeks ago, we were talking about a risk, but today the escalation is very real," said the senior French official. "Preserving Lebanon is France's responsibility."

"We refuse to accept the worst-case scenario (...) Nobody has any interest in escalation, including Hezbollah," he insisted, adding that his message was also addressed to Israel.

👉 Read the full report here.

The World Central Kitchen, which had a team of seven workers killed in Israeli strikes on April 1, has announced it will resume operations in Gaza, according to a statement published on the aid organization's website. WCK suspended operations in the Strip following the team's killing, which was widely publicized and condemned.

"The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire," the statement reads. "We are restarting our operation with the same energy, dignity, and focus on feeding as many people as possible. To date we have distributed more than 43 million meals and we are eager to deliver millions more."

The organization has 276 trucks equipped with almost eight million meals ready to enter through Rafah crossing, and says it will also send trucks from Jordan, while exploring potential usage of the maritime corridor through Ashdod Port. WCK is also building third "high production kitchen" in Mawasi, adding to the 68 "community kitchens" throughout the Strip, and two other high production kitchen in Rafah and Dei al-Balah.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told ABC news today that Washington has been assured that Israel wont invade Rafah until its most important ally has had a chance to share its "perspectives and concerns."

Kirby emphasized that the US is still pushing for a hostage exchange deal, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to the region to encourage an agreement on a six-week cease-fire.

"What we're hoping is that after six weeks of a temporary cease-fire we can maybe get something more enduring in place. We want to see an end to this conflict as soon as possible," Kirby told ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

👉 Read more here.

Israel's Channel 12 News reported today that arrest warrants by the ICC for senior Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are expected as early as this week, as rumors swirl within the Israeli government and media circuit.

The Jewish News Syndicate, while reporting that diplomatic efforts to thwart the ICC's hypothetical move had "failed," also quoted influential Israeli journalist Amit Segal as saying that his sources at The Hague would consider such a move by the chief prosecutor impossible without having "at least had a ‘green light’ from the Americans."

The Jerusalem Post echoed this framing, reporting that in light of the growing concern of international intervention, Netanyahu posted on X on Friday that, "Under my leadership, Israel will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense.”

👉 Read the full report here.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib after his meeting with French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne, said:

•⁠ ⁠We welcome the French initiative, and French enthusiasm regarding the sovereignty and stability of Lebanon, especially in the South, and we exchanged ideas on how to achieve these goals.

•⁠ ⁠We assure the comprehensive and complete implementation of Resolution 1701 to achieve the desired stability.

•⁠ ⁠We welcomed France’s decision and thanked my French counterpart for his country’s vote in the Security Council to recognize Palestine as a member of the United Nations.

•⁠ France is able to play a leadership role in the Mediterranean, and we are counting on its assistance in the Brussels conference for displaced Syrians to change the European Union’s approach to the displacement issue.

Israeli army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has approved plans for further operations in southern Gaza, the army announced.

According to Israeli media, Halevi approved plans for the continuation of the war in a meeting today with Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman and the other division and brigade commanders of the Southern Command.

The approval comes as Hamas negotiators in Cairo consider an Israeli proposal to postpone or forgo an operation in Rafah, which Prime Minister Netanyahu approved weeks ago, in exchange for a cease-fire and the release of some hostages.

It also comes as the International Criminal Court reportedly considers issuing arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Halevi, a decision that could be affected by Israel's actions in southern Gaza.

Israel's Finance Minister and minister in the Defense Ministry Bezalel Smotrich told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if he cancels the operation in Rafah, in southern Gaza, the government he heads would have no right to exist, Haaretz reports.

Smotrich accused Netanyahu of allowing Hamas, for over two decades, to grow stronger and warned him that agreeing to a new Egyptian cease-fire and hostage deal proposal would be "a humiliating surrender, a death sentence for the hostages who are not included in the deal and a danger to the State of Israel."

Relatives and supporters of people taken hostage in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack light flares and wave Israeli flags during a demonstration calling for their release, in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on April 27, 2024. (Credit: Jack Guez/AFP)

Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rai criticized Lebanese officials today, saying they should have been "more dedicated to securing the public good and to restoring to the state its effective and legitimate constitutional institutions, starting with the election of a president."

Officials should have also been "ensuring with all their strength to spare South Lebanon and our people from war, which is causing deaths, injuries, displacement and destruction, for the sake of a cause that has nothing to do with Lebanon, its peace and stability," Rai said during Sunday prayers.

👉 Read the full report here.

Israel warned Hamas that it will follow through with its plans to invade Rafah unless Hamas accepts its latest hostage exchange proposal for the release of some of the remaining 133 hostages, the Jerusalem Post reports.

“If there is a deal, we will suspend the operation,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Channel 12 as the army continued its preparations for the attack on Rafah and Egypt renewed its push to secure a hostage deal weeks of deadlock in the mediation process.

“The release of the hostages is a deep priority for us,” Katz said. “If there is an option to make a deal, we will do it," although he clarified that this would not impact Israel's stated goal in the war — to destroy Hamas, which, despite more than six months of relentless warfare, continues to operate throughout the Strip.

France's foreign minister said that he would make proposals to Lebanese officials today aimed at easing tensions between Hezbollah and Israel and preventing a full-blown war from breaking out, Reuters reports.

"If I look at the situation today if there was not a war in Gaza, we could be talking about a war in southern Lebanon given the number of strikes and the impact on the area," Stephane Sejourne said after visiting the United Nations peace keeping force in Naqoura, southern Lebanon.

"I will pass messages and make proposals to the authorities here to stabilize this zone and avoid a war."

Israel's war on Gaza has killed at least 34,454 Palestinians and wounded 77,575 others since Oct. 7, the Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement. Thousands more are missing and thought to be buried under the rubble.

Some 66 have been killed and 138 others wounded over the past 24 hours alone, the ministry said.

Britain's Ministry of Defense is considering sending troops into Gaza to escort trucks of aid delivered to the enclave via a large floating pier currently under construction by the US military, a UK defense source told The Guardian.

The pier is being build in the eastern Mediterranean and is due to be completed next month, when it will be pushed toward the coast of Gaza. US President Joe Biden promised American troops would not set foot in the Strip.

The idea to have the UK step in and take responsibility for the most challenging part of the delivery — through active combat zones and zones deemed "safe" that are still struck by Israeli bombs — emerged "organically" during discussions between the UK and the US around the pier, the source told The Guardian.

The ministry has declined to comment on the "consideration," which the source says is unlikely to come to fruition considering the challenges.

Updates from southern Lebanon:

• Hezbollah announced in a statement that the "Islamic Resistance" targeted at 11:45 a.m. the Israeli site of "Baghdadi" with artillery shells and caused direct hits.

• Israeli artillery shelling targeted the Lebanese border towns of Mais al-Jabal and Houla, according to local residents cited by our correspondent in the South.

• Israeli warplanes carried out an air strike on the town of Aita al-Shaab, targeting a house in the Shames neighborhood, residents of the town told our correspondent.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas attends the World Economic Forum Special Meeting in Riyadh on April 28, 2024. (Credit: Fayez Nureldine/AFP)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he expects the Israeli invasion of Rafah within days and that only the US could stop the attack, which he says could force much of the Palestinian population to flee the enclave, Reuters reports. The US, along with many Western countries, has been appealing to Israel to withhold from carrying out the attack, which would threaten the lives of almost 2 million people.

The Israeli army announced last week a four-stage evacuation plan for Rafah that would commence the moment the government gives the go-ahead. Sattelite imagery analyzed by AP revealed encampments set up near Khan Younis, a city north of Rafah. Neighboring Egypt has reiterated the position its held since Oct. 7 that it would not accept the displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

"We call on the United States of America to ask Israel to not carry on the Rafah attack. America is the only country able to prevent Israel from committing this crime," Abbas told a special meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

⚡ A Hamas delegation will visit Cairo tomorrow for Gaza cease-fire talks, a Hamas official who asked not to be named told Reuters, adding that the delegation will discuss a proposed cease-fire offered by mediators as well as Israel's response.

French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné (middle), meeting with Lebanese Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri (left), in Ain al-Tinneh, on April 28, 2024. (Credit: Mohammad Yassine/L'Orient Today)

Police in the US have arrested more than 200 pro-Palestine protesters yesterday on university campuses across the States.

According to a New York Times report, more than 700 protesters have been arrested on US campuses in the last 10 days, as the student movements against Israel's war in Gaza and American support for it are taking the country by storm. Encampments have sprung up at Harvard, Yale, NYU, Columbia, Vanderbilt, University of Pennsylvania, and MIT among many others.

Chief among the protesters' demands are that their universities divest from companies that support the Israeli occupation and that the US halt its military support for Israel. Demonstrations also call for amnesty for students and faculty members who have been disciplined or fired for publicly criticizing Israel.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, chaired a meeting in Riyadh yesterday with representatives from six Arab countries to discuss Israel’s war on Gaza, the Saudi Press Agency reported, cited by The Guardian.

Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, Palestinian Authority official Hussein Al-sheikh, senior diplomatic adviser to the UAE’s president, Anwar Gargash, and Qatar’s minister of state at the foreign ministry, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, were among those said to be in attendance.

Saudia Arabia is hosting the World Economic Forum, where discussions around the war in Gaza and its effects in the region will be high on the agenda. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to be attending the forum starting tomorrow.

Israel has indicated, in its latest hostage deal proposal, that it is willing to consider a "restoration of sustainable calm" in Gaza after an initial release of hostages, two Israeli officials told Axios.

While the wording is pointedly vague, its presence in the proposal is significant in that it would be the first time since Oct. 7 that Israeli leaders have demonstrated an openness to discussing the end of its war on Gaza — without having achieved its stated goal of eliminating Hamas.

The new proposal was forwarded to Hamas following an Egyptian delegation's visit to Israel, an attempt to spur negotiations on following weeks of deadlock.

Hezbollah MP Hassan Ezzeddine, speaking during a political meeting organized today by the "Lebanese Brigades to Resist the Israeli Occupation" in Shabriha, southern Lebanon, said “the Iranian response and targeting of military bases inside Israel proved to the entire world that Iran is ready to enter into any future war and confrontation if [Israel] commits foolishness or aggression."

He also said that the front in southern Lebanon has "left marks" on Israel, "at the military, intelligence, technological... levels," and caused Israeli residents to "retreat," remaining "unable to return to the settlements adjacent to the border with Lebanon."

Approximately 60,000 Israelis evacuated from the border area with Lebanon following Hezbollah's opening of a front in support of its ally, Hamas.

Updates from the South continued...

• Hezbollah issued a statement announcing its targeting, last night, of the Israeli Meron settlement and the surrounding settlements with dozens of Katyusha rockets, in response to Israeli's attacks on southern villages and civilian homes, "especially the towns of Al-Quzah, Markaba and Serbin."

• After 1:30 a.m., southern Lebanon witnessed a series of Israeli military raids, one of which targeted a house in Tayr Harfa, Sour district. Three raids also targeted homes in the town of Maroun al-Ras, in Bint Jbeil district. Ambulances were dispatched to Maroun al-Ras and no injuries were reported.

• At dawn, Israeli warplanes carried out a raid on the town of Hanin, Bint Jbeil district, according to a security source who shared no further details.

Here is what happened in southern Lebanon overnight and into this morning:

• Eleven people were injured, including two Syrians and one woman in a critical condition, following an Israeli air raid on Srebbine, south Lebanon, in which a house located in the center of the village was targeted.

• Israeli shelling targeted the town of Blida, Marjayoun district, after 10 p.m., according to security sources who spoke to our correspondent in the South. After 11 p.m., a large salvo of rockets were fired from Lebanon toward Israeli positions. The sounds of Israeli interceptor missiles exploding were heard in the airspace of southern Lebanon's eastern areas. Heavy Israeli machine gunfire came from the Israeli position in Jal al-Alam sometime after midnight, targeting the Labouneh and Shebaa farms, in the western areas of Sour district.

Good morning,

Welcome to today's live coverage of the war on Gaza, and the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah along Lebanon's southern border. Saudi Arabic is hosting the World Economic Forum, where the situation in Gaza is high on the agenda, as Hamas studies Israel's latest counter proposal in truce negotiations, and Israel prepares to invade Rafah.

👉 You can catch up on yesterday's news here.