Borrell asks EU members about possible sanctions on some Israeli ministers

Jennifer Rankin

The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has launched a process that could lead to sanctions on Israeli ministers he said were responsible for “unacceptable hate messages” against Palestinians.

Arriving at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Borrell said he had begun consultations with the EU’s 27 member states on whether they consider it “appropriate including in our list of sanctions some Israeli ministers [who] have been launching unacceptable hate messages against the Palestinians” and made proposals that “go clearly against international law” and incite war crimes.

The EU should have no taboos, Borrell added, to ensure humanitarian law was respected, while stressing it was for member states to decide.

Borrell did not name the ministers, but it is understood he will make the case for sanctioning Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two far-right ministers, who are widely assessed as critical to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future.

Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, has repeatedly called cutting off aid and fuel supply to Gaza. Smotrich, in charge of finance, has said it might be “justified and moral” to starve 2 million people in Gaza in order to free the remaining Israeli hostages, who were seized in the 7 October attacks by Hamas.

If the ministers were added to the sanctions list, they would be subject to EU travel ban and asset freezes, but the largest impact could be symbolic.

Netanyahu suggests there could be partial suspension of Gaza operations to allow polio vaccinations

Julian Borger

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested there could be partial suspension of military operations in Gaza to allow young children to be vaccinated against polio.

In a statement, Netanyahu’s office denied an Israeli television report that there would be a general truce during the vaccination campaign which begins on the weekend, but said it had approved the “designation of specific places” in Gaza.

“This has been presented to the security cabinet and has received the support of the relevant professionals,” the statement said.

The terse statement may well have been deliberately vague. Far-right elements of the coalition are adamantly opposed to any form of truce or relief for Gaza’s Palestinian population, but aid agencies have made it clear that the polio outbreak, the first in Gaza for 25 years, would almost certainly spread to Israel if not contained immediately.

The Israeli media report said that a pause in operations was demanded by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, when he visited Israel last week.

The first of two rounds of vaccinations is due to begin on Saturday in an urgent effort to control the spread of the virus after it was found in a 10-month-old baby suffering from paralysis in one leg earlier this month.

More than 25,000 vials of vaccine, enough for over a million doses, have arrived in Gaza along with the equipment needed to keep them cool while they are being transported. But health experts have warned that it would be virtually impossible to carry out the vaccination drive successfully under bombardment.

To stop the spread of the disease, aid agencies must reach 90% of the estimated 640,000 children under the age of 10 in Gaza. That is already challenging as Palestinians have been subjected to an increasing number of evacuation orders by the Israeli military, crowding them into ever tighter, more remote spaces.

One possibility suggested by Netanyahu’s statement is that Israeli bombardment would be stopped in different areas of Gaza sequentially, to allow the aid workers with the vaccines to move from one to the other.

The uncertainty over humanitarian pauses and evacuation orders makes planning extremely difficult, Juliette Touma, spokesperson for the UN relief agency, Unrwa said.

“Plans are the bread and butter of any successful humanitarian operation. You have got to know how many people you are going to reach: where are they located? How are you going to reach them?” Touma said. “Planning is such an important element of the success of any operation, but in Gaza planning is almost nonexistent”.

Israeli troops have claimed to have killed five Palestinian militants at a mosque in the West Bank after “exchanges of fire during counterterrorism operations in Tulkarm,” the IDF said on Thursday.

Thursday’s violence comes after Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinians in the West Bank in overnight raids and airstrikes on Wednesday. The army said those operations were intended to contain attacks on Israelis using Iranian-supplied arms.

The IDF said that one of those killed was involved in a shooting attack on an Israeli civilian in June. The military described the four others who reportedly hid inside a mosque as “terrorists”.

On Wednesday, the chief spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said the escalation of Israeli military operations on the West Bank, at the same time as the war in Gaza, would “lead to dire and dangerous results”.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.

Israeli troops have killed five Palestinians who were hiding inside a mosque in the occupied West Bank, after launching a huge operation across the region on Wednesday, the military reported early on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinians in the West Bank in overnight raids and airstrikes that they said were intended to contain attacks on Israelis using Iranian-supplied arms.

Thursday’s raid occurred in Tulkarm – one of the areas targeted by the IDF over the previous 24 hours.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the West Bank operations, some of the most extensive in recent years, were likely to go on for some days, in what it described as a preventive campaign to forestall attacks on Israelis.

More on that in a moment – first here’s a summary of the day’s other main news.

• Palestinian health authorities said 10 people were killed in the Jenin and Tubas areas of the West Bank, and gun battles were reported to be continuing on Wednesday morning. The chief spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said the escalation of Israeli military operations on the West Bank, at the same time as the war in Gaza, would “lead to dire and dangerous results”.

• The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia to return to Ramallah after the launch of the large scale Israeli military operation in the West Bank. Abbas began an official visit to Saudi Arabia on Monday where he held talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh.

• UN secretary general, António Guterres said Israel’s launch of a large-scale military operations in the West Bank was “deeply concerning.” Guterres said he strongly condemned the “loss of lives, including of children, and I call for an immediate cessation of these operations.”

• The US has announced new sanctions against extremist settlers in the West Bank who are funded by the Israeli government, as Washington steps up its attempt to rein in worsening settler violence. The sanctions target one organisation and one individual with long involvement in the intimidation of Palestinians with the aim of seizing their land. The targeted group was Hashomer Yosh, which provides security for illegal settler outposts, including some which have already been sanctioned by the US.

• The new measures drew a sharp response from the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose office said it viewed them “with utmost severity” and that the issue was under “pointed discussion” with Washington.

• At least 34 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday as Israeli forces sent tanks deeper into Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip and launched strikes, according to medics. Residents of Khan Younis said Israeli tanks made a surprise advance into the centre of the city, and the military ordered evacuations in the east, forcing many families to run for safety, while others were trapped at home.

• An official investigation into the ill-fated aid pier off the coast of Gaza has found that Joe Biden declared the US intention to build the pier as a means of delivering food despite advice to the contrary from aid experts in his administration. The new report by the inspector general of the US Agency for International Development (USAid), which was responsible for delivering food to Gaza by the pier, paints a scathing picture of a failed project, in which political and security imperatives outweighed humanitarian considerations.

• Israeli, American, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators met in Doha on Wednesday for “technical/working level” talks on a ceasefire in Gaza. The deputy CIA director, David Cohen, said the fate of a ceasefire deal is “largely a question that is going to be answered” by the leader of the Palestinian militant group, but he did not refer to Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, by name.

• Yemen’s Houthi group has agreed to allow tugboats and rescue ships to access a damaged crude oil tanker in the Red Sea, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said, after the Iranian-aligned militants attacked the Greek-flagged vessel last week. The Sounion tanker is carrying 150,000 tonnes, or 1m barrels, of crude oil and poses an environmental hazard, shipping officials said. Any spill has the potential to be among the largest from a ship in recorded history.