Israel-Gaza updates: 300,000 have fled Rafah, UN agency says
Israel called again on Saturday for civilians to leave parts of the city.
As the Israel-Hamas war crosses the seven-month mark, renewed negotiations are underway to secure the release of hostages taken by the terrorist organization, as Israeli forces continue to prepare for an apparent invasion of the southern Gazan town of Rafah.
Latest headlines:
- White House National Security Advisor speaks to Israeli counterpart, expresses concern over pending Rafah invasion
- 300,000 have fled Rafah, UN agency says
- Biden admin says it's 'reasonable to assess' Israel violated International law with US arms
- Hamas says cease-fire talks are 'back to square one'
- UNGA passes resolution calling on Security Council to reconsider Palestinian membership
110,000 estimated to have fled Rafah this week
As Israel's offensive on Rafah intensifies, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees estimates that around 110,000 people have now fled Rafah looking for safety.
"The only hope is an immediate Ceasefire," the UNRWA said in a statement Friday.
-ABC News' Will Gretsky
Cease-fire negotiations have stopped, Israeli source says
Cease-fire negotiations between Hamas and Israel are on pause, with no negotiations currently happening, according to an Israeli source familiar with the talks.
-ABC News' Jordana Miller
As Rafah needs rise, humanitarian response forced to ‘scrape the bottom of the barrel’
UNICEF officials continued to raise an alarm over the humanitarian conditions in Gaza, saying people are "exhausted, terrified" and don't have access to proper sanitation facilities and warn that if aid is not allowed into Gaza in the next 48 hours conditions will deteriorate further.
"I have been working on large-scale humanitarian emergencies for the best part of the last 30 years and I've never been involved in a situation as devastating, complex or erratic as this," James Elder a spokesperson for UNICEF, said.
"When I arrived in Gaza in the middle of November, I was shocked by the severity of the impact of this conflict on children and, impossibly, it has continued to worsen since. Yesterday, I walked around Al-Mawasi, the so-called 'humanitarian zone’ that people in eastern Rafah are being told to move to. More than 100,000 people have fled Rafah in the last 5 days and the stream of displacement continues. The roads to Mawasi are jammed – many hundreds of trucks, buses, cars and donkey carts loaded with people and possessions," Elder said.
Food stock for people in the south is expected to run out on Saturday while lack of fuel means that hospital wards cannot function. Elder also warned that a ground offensive in Rafah will lead to the number of children dead increasing "dramatically," with 14,000 being killed already.
"For 5 days, no fuel and virtually no humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. This is already a huge issue for the population and for all humanitarian actors but in a matter of days, if not corrected, the lack of fuel could grind humanitarian operations to a halt," Elder said.
"At a time when people are being forced to pick up and move again, the lifesaving supplies that sustain and support them have been entirely cut off. Let’s be very clear – this will result in children dying. Deaths that can be prevented," Elder said.
-ABC News' Will Gretsky
Netanyahu speaks to Phil McGraw on Rafah operation, college campus protests
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear in a 46-minute interview with McGraw that Israel plans to proceed with its operation in Rafah.
McGraw interviewed Netanyahu from Jerusalem with a sweeping view of the city in the background on a streaming platform called Merit+.
Netanyahu said Israel has destroyed "20 battalions of Hamas' 24 terrorist battalions," and the final four are in Rafah.
"We’ve achieved, we’ve destroyed about 20 battalions of Hamas' 24 terrorist battalions, we have another four ... they're in Rafah, and that’s why we want to go into Rafah because we can’t leave them there," Netanyahu told McGraw.
Netanyahu also criticized students protesting on college campuses, saying their understanding of history goes "back to breakfast, at best."
"What is happening on American campuses and American cities, you got ... first of all, you have a lot of ignorant people there," Netanyahu said. "I'm sorry to say, whose sense of history at best goes back to breakfast. Not even that, OK? They don't have the faintest clue what Hamas is."
Netanyahu pointed to what he said were dangerous comments from American college presidents.
"When the president of the university is asked, well, what would you say if somebody calls for the genocide of Jews? And [they] say it depends on the context. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't."
ABC News' Ellie Kaufman and Hajah Bah
Former State Department officials say US avoided legal obligations in arms report
An independent, self-formed task force of former State Department officials and international law experts say the U.S. "shirked" its legal obligations with Friday's National Security Memorandum-mandated report that examined Israel's use of U.S.-supplied arms.
"The Administration must come to terms with the fact that what it faces in its lethal military assistance to Israel's operations in Gaza - and beyond - is not a policy problem: it is a legal problem," the officials said Friday, adding, "The Administration’s report is at best incomplete, and at worst intentionally misleading in defense of acts and behaviors that likely violate international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes. Once again, the Biden Administration has stared the facts in the face - and then pulled the curtains shut."
More than 34,000 Palestinians have died, including 14,000 children, the officials said, noting that "most of them [were] killed by U.S. munitions."
-ABC News' Christopher Boccia