Middle East crisis live: Aid groups hit out at Israel as US ultimatum over Gaza expires | World news

The news website Axios reported earlier on Tuesday that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had decided not to reduce military assistance to Israel due to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, according to two US officials.

In an apparent last-minute concession, Israeli authorities announced an extension of the designated “humanitarian zone” in Gaza, adding inland areas which could partially relieve intense overcrowding and allow some displaced people to move away from the coast as winter approaches.

Aid officials in Gaza describe the situation as “apocalyptic” in much of the territory, where more than 80% of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced and more than two-thirds of buildings have been destroyed or damaged in 13 months of war.

Israeli attacks in Gaza continued this week, killing at least 14 people, including two children and a woman, according to Palestinian medical officials.

A strike late on Monday hit a cafeteria west of Khan Younis, killing at least 11 people, including two children, according to officials at Nasser hospital, where the casualties were taken.

Another strike early on Tuesday hit a house in central Gaza, killing three people including a woman, according to al-Awda hospital, which received the casualties.

Israeli forces launched a major operation in northern Gaza last month, sealing off three towns and ordering the evacuation of civilians. Military officials said they were fighting Hamas militants who had regrouped in the area.

Donald Trump picks Mike Huckabee as Israel envoy

Robert Tait

Donald Trump has chosen the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as the next US ambassador to Israel.

Huckabee has a track record of hardline, occasionally provocative, pro-Israel rhetoric and previously said Israel has a rightful claim to the West Bank, which he refers to by its Hebrew and biblical name of Judea and Samaria.

The territory is claimed by Palestinians as part of a putative future state but is dotted multiple Israeli settlements that are not recognised under international law. Huckabee has refused to call the settlements by that name, insisting that they be called “communities” or neighbourhoods. He has also denied that the West Bank, seized by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 six-day war, is under military occupation.

Posting on his Truth Social network, Trump predicted Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, would “work tirelessly to bring about peace in the Middle East”.

“He loves Israel and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him,” wrote Trump, who called Huckabee “a great public servant.”

Huckabee’s appointment is likely to signal a return to the explicitly pro-Israel posture of Trump’s first administration, when he relocated the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a move decried by Palestinians as damaging to peace prospects.

While Israel claims Jerusalem as its indivisible capital, Palestinians lay claim to the eastern part of the city as their future capital.

Speaking to CNN in 2017, Huckabee – who has paid several visits to Israeli settlements – made his position clear.

“The only people who have ever had Yerushalayim [Jerusalem’s Hebrew name] as a capital have been the Jews,” he said. “Nobody else has ever made this city a capital, ever. So it shouldn’t even be controversial.”

A coalition of international aid organisations have accused Israel of ignoring a US ultimatum that threatened sanctions if Israel did not implement a series of measures to counter the acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The 30-day ultimatum – which was due to expire yesterday or today – was delivered on 13 October, and almost none of its demands have been met, the humanitarian groups say.

It is unclear what measures Israel’s apparent failure to comply will trigger, but they may include a temporary halt to the supply of some munitions or other military assistance.

Washington has not yet said whether it deems Israel to have complied. The US state department said on Tuesday that the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had told a senior Israeli official the previous day that the steps Israel had taken must lead to actual improvement on the ground.

Asked how the US would urge Israel to improve the humanitarian situation, the state department spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Tuesday there was “no new policy or new assessment to offer but we’ll continue to have our conversations with the Israeli government”.

“We have not made an assessment that Israel is violating US law,” Patel said.

More on that in a moment. In other developments:

• Donald Trump has chosen the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as the next US ambassador to Israel. Huckabee has a track record of hardline, occasionally provocative, pro-Israel rhetoric and previously said Israel has a rightful claim to the West Bank, which he refers to by its Hebrew and biblical name of Judea and Samaria.

• Palestinian medical officials say Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 46 people in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, including 11 at a makeshift cafeteria in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone.

• In Lebanon, warplanes struck Beirut’s southern suburbs and killed 33 people elsewhere across the country on Tuesday. Large explosions shook Beirut’s southern suburbs – an area known as Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah has a significant presence – soon after the Israeli military issued evacuation warnings for 11 houses there.

• Lebanese state-run media reported an Israeli strike on an apartment south of the capital Beirut on Wednesday that injured an unspecified number of people. “Israeli warplanes launched a strike at dawn targeting a residential apartment in a building in the Dawhet Aramoun area, injuring people,” the official National News Agency said.

• International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi will visit Tehran on Wednesday for crucial talks on Iran’s nuclear programme. His visit comes only two days after the Israel defence minister warned that Iran was “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities”.

• US forces on Tuesday carried out strikes against targets linked to an Iranian-backed militia in Syria in response to a rocket attack on Washington’s troops in the country, the US military said. The strikes targeted the group’s “weapons storage and logistics headquarters facility … in response to a rocket attack on US personnel,” the US Central Command (Centcom) said in a post on social media that did not identify the militia by name.

• Australia will not change its laws on the supply of weapons or ammunition to Israel if the coalition wins the next federal election, opposition foreign spokesperson Simon Birmingham says. The Liberal senator said the coalition had “no plans” to change the rules, as it emerged during a parliamentary hearing Australia had amended or lapsed at least 16 defence-related export permits to Israel after a review.