Israel-Gaza war live: Israeli negotiators in Cairo for ceasefire and hostage talks as Kamala Harris urges peace | Israel-Gaza war

It’s just past 10am in Gaza and Tel Aviv, welcome to our latest live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis. I’m Vivian Ho and I’ll be with you for the next while.

US vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said in her Democratic National Convention speech on Thursday that now was the time for a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Israel’s war in Gaza.

“I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself,” Harris said while adding “what has happened in Gaza is devastating” and “heartbreaking.”

Harris said:

President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination

It came as Israeli negotiators were taking part in talks on Gaza in Cairo, a government spokesperson said, according to Agence France-Presse.

Hopes for a deal are low. A main sticking point remains Hamas’s longstanding demand for a “complete” Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has opposed.

Netanyahu’s spokesperson Omer Dostri told AFP that the Mossad spy agency chief David Barnea and Ronen Bar, head of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security service, were in the Egyptian capital and “negotiating to advance a hostage (release) agreement”.

First, a summary of the latest developments:

• Successive Israeli evacuation orders in Gaza, including 12 just this month, have displaced 90% of its 2.1 million residents since the Israel-Hamas war began last October, often multiple times, the top United Nations humanitarian official for the Palestinian territory says. Muhannad Hadi said the evacuation orders are endangering civilians instead of protecting them. “They are forcing families to flee again, often under fire and with the few belongings they can carry with them, into an ever-shrinking area” that is crowded and unsafe.

• US officials have expressed optimism that a ceasefire deal in the war in Gaza “is in sight”, despite growing indications from Israel and Hamas that a breakthrough is not imminent and as renewed fighting rages in parts of the Palestinian territory.

• Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday denied reports suggesting Israel is considering agreeing to the deployment of an international force along a narrow border strip between Gaza and Egypt known as the Philadelphi Corridor.
  “Prime minister Netanyahu insists on the principle that Israel will control the Philadelphi Corridor to prevent the rearmament of Hamas, which would allow them to repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7,” his office said in a statement.

• Rights groups on Thursday expressed renewed concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza after Israel’s latest evacuation orders in parts of the overcrowded central city of Deir al-Balah.

• In the central Gaza town of Deir Al-Balah, which houses about 1 million residents and displaced Palestinians, according to the municipal council, residents said tanks advanced further from the east and blocked some roads connecting the city with the nearby Khan Younis in the south.

• Palestinian health officials say Israeli strikes have killed at least 16 people in the Gaza Strip. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital received the bodies, including the remains of a woman and three children, after strikes overnight and into Thursday. An Associated Press reporter at the hospital counted the bodies.

• Israel’s military court has extended the house arrest of soldiers accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee until 4 Sept but will allow the defence to hold a hearing on Sunday to request an alternative to detention, the military said on Thursday. The soldiers have been accused of sexually abusing a member of an elite Hamas unit at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev desert in southern Israel, according to Israeli press reports.

• Palestinians said Thursday they are planning to introduce a UN general assembly resolution in September enshrining the recent sweeping ruling by the UN’s top court that declared Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories unlawful – and setting a time frame for it to end. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, told the UN security council that the resolution, which would not be legally binding, is essential to spur the end of Israel’s occupation. “We are sick and tired of waiting,” he said. “The time for waiting is over.”

• The Israeli police and internal security service said Thursday they arrested four suspects for “terrorist” acts against Palestinians during a deadly settler attack last week on an occupied West Bank village.

• Israeli attacks on Palestinian water supplies in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip accounted for a quarter of all water-related violence in 2023, as armed conflicts over dwindling resources surged globally, according to new research.

• More than 40,265 Palestinians have been killed and 93,144 have been injured in Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 Oct, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

• A Greek-flagged oil tanker carrying 150,000 tonnes of crude that was evacuated by its crew after being attacked in the Red Sea now poses an environmental hazard, the EU’s Red Sea naval mission “Aspides” said on Thursday.

• Hezbollah has provided a glimpse of its secret tunnels housing weapons – a move experts say is a warning to Israel as the underground facilities could prove vital to the group should wider war erupt.

• On the third night of the Democratic national convention, the group Muslim Women for Harris released a statement announcing that it was disbanding in response to the Harris-Walz campaign’s refusal to allow a Palestinian person to speak on the main stage. The Uncommitted movement, which won 30 delegates, also began a sit in over the same issue.