Hamas agrees to return four deceased hostages tonight as Israel says it will halve aid deliveries to Gaza over release of bodies – live | Israel

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza says 44 people have been killed and 29 injured in the past 24 hours as a result of Israeli attacks.

The ministry said on Telegram that 38 of those killed were recovered from under the rubble, adding that rescue crews were still unable to reach others trapped in destroyed areas.

According to the ministry, the overall death toll in Gaza since 7 October 2023 has risen to 67,913, with 170,134 people reported injured.

Israel has informed the UN it will allow only 300 aid trucks – half the agreed number – to enter Gaza from Wednesday, Reuters reports, citing a diplomatic note seen by the agency and confirmed by the UN.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli military body overseeing aid flows, said the restrictions were being imposed because “Hamas violated the agreement regarding the release of the bodies of the hostages.” No fuel or gas will be permitted except for “specific humanitarian infrastructure needs”, the note added.

Associated Press reported that the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was being tested as tensions rose over the slow return of the bodies of hostages. Israel has accused Hamas of breaching the truce terms by delaying the handover of 24 deceased captives; four bodies were transferred to Israel on Monday.

Three AP sources said word of the aid cuts had been passed to US officials and international agencies. The Israeli government has not commented.

The Red Cross and UN agencies have said the expected surge of aid into Gaza has not begun, warning of growing hunger as the Rafah crossing remains closed.

“We need all crossings open,” said Unicef spokesperson Ricardo Pires. “The longer Rafah stays closed, the more the suffering prolongs for people in Gaza, especially those displaced in the south.”

Three Israeli officials told Reuters the decision to keep Rafah closed through Wednesday and restrict supplies was linked to delays by Hamas in returning the bodies of Israeli hostages. Hamas said finding the bodies was difficult amid the destruction.

“The shift has not yet happened,” said Christian Cardon, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has acted as a neutral intermediary in the handovers of hostages. “We are still witnessing only a few trucks coming in, and large crowds approaching these trucks in a way that does absolutely not conform to humanitarian standards.”

Hamas has told mediators it plans to transfer the bodies of four deceased Israeli hostages to Israel at 10pm local time (7pm GMT) on Tuesday, an official involved in the operation has told Reuters.

• The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will stay closed through Wednesday and the flow of aid into the Palestinian enclave will be reduced, three Israeli officials said on Tuesday. The decision came after Palestinian militant group Hamas did not hand over bodies of hostages it is holding as part of the new US-brokered ceasefire deal, the officials said, without elaborating on how long the move would last.

• A nephew of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has returned to the West Bank after four years of self-exile, outlining a roadmap to secure peace in Gaza with Hamas transforming into a political party and declaring his readiness to help govern. Nasser al-Qudwa, a prominent critic of the current Palestinian leadership, also urged “a serious confrontation of corruption in this country”.

• Some of the near 2,000 Palestinian prisoners released on Monday are suffering from a range of health problems they developed during years in Israeli detention, doctors and freed prisoners in the occupied West Bank told the Associated Press. The Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah received 14 men released on Monday as part of the exchange and discharged all but two.

• The European Union should maximise its influence in Gaza’s recovery process and join a US-proposed “Board of Peace” intended to temporarily oversee governance of the territory, the EU’s diplomatic arm said in a document seen by Reuters. Israel and the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas carried out a hostage-prisoner exchange on Monday and a ceasefire is in force under the first phase of president Donald Trump’s 20-point initiative for Gaza after two years of war.

• The Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal that halts two years of armed conflict in Gaza presents an opportunity for a lasting economic recovery in the region, the International Monetary Fund’s deputy chief economist said on Tuesday. Petya Koeva-Brooks said the IMF stands ready to cooperate with the international community on the recovery of Gaza and regional economies that have been deeply affected by the conflict, including Egypt and Jordan.

• The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the main Israeli group campaigning for the release of all hostages, has said that Hamas’s failure to release all of the bodies “must be met with a serious response”. On Monday, Hamas released the final 20 living hostages taken on 7 October 2023, while Israel handed over nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees as part of Donald Trump’s 20-point plan.

• Egyptian foreign minister Badr Abdelatty told the Associated Press ahead of Monday’s summit that 15 Palestinian technocrats have been selected to administer postwar Gaza. He said their names were already vetted by Israel, without disclosing them. “We need to deploy them to take care of the daily life of the people in Gaza, and the board of peace should support and supervise the flow of finance and money, which will come for the reconstruction of Gaza,” he said, referring to a board that would govern Gaza and be chaired by US president Donald Trump.

• The ICRC has acknowledged that it will take time to hand over the remains of Israeli hostages in Gaza, calling it a “massive challenge” given the difficulties of finding bodies amid the territory’s rubble. “That’s an even bigger challenge than having the people alive being released. That’s a massive challenge,” the ICRC’s spokesperson Christian Cardon was quoted by Reuters as having said.

• Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has said the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement must not come at the expense of holding accountable those responsible for the “genocide” in Gaza. “Peace cannot mean forgetting; it cannot mean impunity,” he said during an interview with Cadena Ser radio.

• Israel’s military said it opened fire on people who it says approached Israeli forces operating in the northern Gaza Strip. The military said the people in question had crossed a boundary for an initial Israeli pullback under the US-brokered ceasefire plan, in a violation of the deal.

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will stay closed through Wednesday and the flow of aid into the Palestinian enclave will be reduced, three Israeli officials said on Tuesday.

The decision came after Palestinian militant group Hamas did not hand over bodies of hostages it is holding as part of the new US-brokered ceasefire deal, the officials said, without elaborating on how long the move would last.

Hamas previously indicated that recovering the bodies of some dead hostages may take longer, as not all burial sites amid the widespread rubble of Gaza are known.

My colleagues Archie Bland and Peter Beaumont have done a useful explainer on the unresolved issues surrounding the ceasefire agreement, which is still in its early stages of its implementation. Here are some of the main issues they have identified:

So far, Israel has pulled back from Gaza’s major cities, to a “yellow line” that means it occupies about 53% of the territory. In theory, withdrawals will follow in two further stages: first, when an international stabilisation force is mobilised; second, to a lasting “security buffer zone”.

But Benjamin Netanyahu’s language in recent days had a different emphasis. “The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] remains deep inside Gaza territory and controls all of its dominating points,” he said in a statement last week. “We are encircling Hamas from all directions.”

Without real carrots and sticks for Netanyahu, the recent precedents for further withdrawal are not promising.

Disarmament is a central tenet of the Trump plan – but on Saturday a senior Hamas official told Agence France-Presse that disarmament was “out of the question”, adding: “The demand that we hand over our weapons is not up for negotiation.” Even as the hostages were released on Monday, there were images of armed fighters in parts of Gaza, an apparent attempt by Hamas to reassert its authority.

The White House plan was devised with no meaningful input from Palestinian civil society on the ground in Gaza. The transitional government will involve the former British prime minister Tony Blair but as yet no credible Palestinian figure. Netanyahu appears unwilling to accept the eventual role for the Palestinian Authority floated by the US; in any case, that body and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, are deeply unpopular in Gaza. There is no Palestinian ownership of this process. It is not a grand peace deal with a vision of a state at the end of it.

British prime minister Keir Starmer spoke about the Gaza ceasefire in the House of Commons this morning.

He said:

Let me now turn to the Middle East and words I have longed to say in this house for a very long time – the surviving hostages are freed, the bombardment of Gaza has stopped and desperately needed aid is starting to enter as a result of the peace plan led by President Trump.

Starmer said the relief is tempered by concern for those who have died, and for the innocent civilians killed. “This has been two years of living hell,” he said.

He said the ceasefire deal is historic. But “what matters now is implementation”, and this has to happen as quickly as possible.

He went on:

Let no one be any doubt that none of this would have been possible without President Trump.

But Starmer also paid tribute to international allies, and he says the UK has “worked behind the scenes for months with the US, Arab and European nations to help deliver a ceasefire, get the hostages out, get aid in and secure a better future for Israel”.