Israel and Hamas agree deal on medicine for hostages and more aid for Gaza, says QatarQatar on Tuesday said it has mediated a deal between Israel and Hamas to allow the delivery of medicine to hostages in Gaza and increase the quantity of humanitarian aid delivered to residents of the devastated Palestinian territory. The agreement, which Qatar said was reached with French assistance, marks the first deal between the warring sides since a weeklong ceasefire in November. Read our liveblog to see how all the day's events unfolded.
Summary: Qatar said that it had mediated a deal between Israel and Hamas to allow deliveries of medicine to hostages in Gaza and more humanitarian aid to civilians in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier on Tuesday, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani offered stinging criticism of Israel and the international community over the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. "Gaza is not there anymore," he told the annual gathering in the Swiss mountain resort.
A Greek-owned cargo ship was hit by a missile off Yemen, the maritime risk management company Ambrey has said, in the latest such attack by Houthi rebels on merchant ships in the Red Sea.
EU member states added Yahya Sinwar, the political leader of Hamas in Gaza, to their 'terrorist' sanctions list in response to the deadly Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel. Sinwar is now subject to the freezing of funds and other assets in member states, while EU operators are prohibited from making economic resources available to him.
Israeli officials say 1,139 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks in southern Israel, among them 695 Israeli civilians including 36 children. Militant fighters took some 240 hostages during the attack, and 136 are still in Gaza, Israeli foreign ministry adviser Tal Becker said on January 12. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 24,285 people have been killed and some 61,154 people wounded in Israeli strikes on the enclave since October 7.
US Senate rejects measure to force human rights report on IsraelThe US Senate rejected a resolution on Tuesday that would have frozen security aid to Israel unless the State Department produces a report within 30 days examining whether Israel committed human rights violations in its campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
Seventy-two senators voted to set the resolution aside, versus 11 who backed it, easily clearing the simple majority needed to kill the resolution in the 100-member chamber.
The vote was forced by Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.
While the resolution was handily defeated, it reflected growing concern among some of President Joe Biden's fellow Democrats, especially on the left, over the supply of US weapons to Israel despite the Gaza conflict's steep toll on Palestinian civilians.
"We must ensure that US aid is being used in accordance with human rights and our own laws," Sanders said in a speech urging support, lamenting what he described as the Senate's failure to consider any measure looking at the war's effect on civilians.
The White House had said it opposed the resolution, which could have paved the way toward the imposition of conditions on security assistance to Israel.
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240116-%F0%9F%94%B4-live-israel-says-war-to-wind-down-in-southern-gaza-as-toll-tops-24-000