Blinken pushes to get Gaza truce deal over ‘finish line’; three Israelis killed in West Bank shooting

Three Israelis were killed and several injured on Monday in a shooting attack on a car and bus near the settlement of Kedumim in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said Israel’s national ambulance service Magen David Adom.

The United Nations’ Yemen mediator arrived in Yemen’s capital on Monday as part of a bid to subdue heightened tensions in his first visit in almost two years, said a spokesperson.

Blinken calls for push to get Gaza truce deal over ‘finish line’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Monday for a final push for a Gaza ceasefire before President Joe Biden leaves office, after a Hamas official told Reuters the group had cleared a list of 34 hostages as the first to go free under a truce.

“We very much want to bring this over the finish line in the next two weeks, the time we have remaining,” Blinken told a news conference in South Korea when asked whether a ceasefire deal was close.

Israel has sent a team of mid-ranking officials to Qatar for talks brokered by Qatari and Egyptian mediators. Some Arabic media reports said David Barnea, the head of Mossad, who has been leading negotiations, was expected to join them. The Israeli prime minister’s office did not comment.

It remains unclear how close the two sides remain, with some signs of movement but little indication of a shift in some of the key demands that have so far blocked any truce for more than a year.

US President-elect Donald Trump has said there would be “hell to pay” in the Middle East if hostages held by Hamas were not freed before his inauguration on 20 January, now viewed in the region as an unofficial deadline for a truce deal.

According to Gaza health officials, nearly 46,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza. The assault was launched after Hamas fighters stormed Israeli territory in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.

More than 100 hostages are still believed to be held in Gaza, and Hamas says it will not free them without an agreement that ends the war with Israeli withdrawal. Israel says it will not halt its assault until Hamas is dismantled as a military and governing power and all hostages go free.

A Hamas official told Reuters the group had cleared a list submitted by Israel of 34 hostages who could be freed in the initial phase of a truce. The list provided by the official included female soldiers, plus elderly, female and minor-aged civilians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the list had been given by Israel to Qatari mediators as far back as July, and Israel had so far received no confirmation or comment from Hamas about whether the hostages on it were alive.

“Israel will continue to act relentlessly for the return of all our hostages,” it said in a statement.

Israeli forces, which have intensified their operations in recent weeks, continued bombardments across the enclave, killing at least 48 people and wounding 75 over the past 24 hours, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Harsh winter weather continued to exact a toll on the hundreds of thousands displaced into makeshift shelters, with officials saying a 35-day-old baby had died of exposure, at least the eighth victim of the cold in the past two weeks.

Officials from Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip said an Israeli airstrike at a school compound sheltering displaced families had wounded at least 40 people.

While Israel’s military says Hamas has largely been destroyed as an organised military force, its fighters continue to hold out in the rubble of Gaza, which has been largely reduced to wasteland by the months of bombardment.

On Monday, three rockets were fired from Gaza, one of which hit a building in the nearby Israeli city of Sderot without causing casualties, said Israeli police.

Three Israelis killed in northern West Bank shooting

Three Israelis were killed and several injured on Monday in a shooting attack on a car and bus near the settlement of Kedumim in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said Israel’s national ambulance service Magen David Adom (MDA).

Footage posted on Israeli news sites showed at least two men emerge from a car and open fire on nearby vehicles near the Palestinian village of al-Funduq, just down the road from Kedumim.

Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in the settlement where the attack took place, called for an urgent Cabinet meeting “to discuss a shift in strategy and to genuinely eradicate terrorism”.

The northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin “should look like Jabalia”, he wrote, referring to a town in the north of the Gaza Strip that has been destroyed by repeated Israeli bombardment.

Smotrich, on the far right of Israeli politics, has for years called for Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank, which is land that Palestinians want for a future state.

Netanyahu met senior military and security officials to discuss the situation and approved measures to capture Monday’s attackers as well as “a series of additional offensive and defensive actions” in the West Bank.

“No one will be spared,” he posted on X.

There was no immediate comment from the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank.

Hamas, the militant group that runs the Gaza Strip and has a presence in the West Bank, praised the attack as a “heroic response against the occupation’s continued crimes [including] the war of genocide in Gaza”. But it did not claim responsibility.

The West Bank has been transformed by the rapid growth of Jewish settlements since Netanyahu returned at the head of a far-right nationalist coalition two years ago. During that time, a surge in settler violence has led to US sanctions.

Since the 7 October 2023, attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, the violence in the West Bank has spiralled, with hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of Israelis killed.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said he had instructed the military to “act forcefully” in response to Monday’s attack.

Israeli Army Radio said the military had imposed a cordon around all villages in the area to search for the suspects, who it believes fled to a nearby Palestinian village.

MDA said two women in their 60s and a man around 40 years old were pronounced dead at the scene, while eight passengers were wounded including a 63-year-old male bus driver who is in serious condition.

Hamas spokesperson Abu Ubaida said in a post on Telegram that “Israel will never enjoy security” unless the Palestinian people also have security.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have settled in the West Bank since Israel captured the territory in a 1967 war. Most countries consider the settlements illegal, although Israel disputes this, citing historical and biblical ties to the land.

UN envoy arrives in Yemeni capital in bid to quell tension

The United Nations’ Yemen mediator arrived in Yemen’s capital on Monday as part of a bid to subdue heightened tension in his first visit in almost two years, said a spokesperson.

The trip comes amid intensified Israeli and US strikes on Houthi strongholds in the past two weeks in response to the Iran-backed militants launching missiles and drones towards Israel. The strikes disrupted operations at Sanaa International Airport, Hodeidah and Saleef ports, which are the main aid entries.

The Iran-aligned Houthis have controlled most parts of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, since seizing power in 2014 and early 2015. They are playing an escalating role in the Middle East in a campaign aimed at supporting Palestinians in the Gaza war.

The UN mediator Hans Grundberg aims to “improve the environment for resolution of the conflict [and] prepare the ground for concrete actions for advancing the peace process” in a series of national and regional meetings in the coming days, his spokesperson Ismini Palla told Reuters.

Grundberg, a Swedish diplomat, would also push for the release of UN staff and others currently being held there, said Palla.

World Food Programme condemns Israeli attack on its Gaza convoy

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Monday that Israeli forces had opened fire on one of its convoys in the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza in what it called a “horrifying incident”.

The agency said the convoy of three vehicles carrying eight staff members from central Gaza to Gaza City in the north was struck by 16 bullets near the Wadi Gaza checkpoint on Sunday, causing no injuries but immobilising the convoy.

The vehicles were clearly marked and had received prior security clearances from Israeli authorities, according to a WFP statement.

“The World Food Programme strongly condemns the horrifying incident on January 5,” it said.

“This unacceptable event is just the latest example of the complex and dangerous working environment that WFP and other agencies are operating in today,” said WFP, calling for improvements in security conditions to allow aid to continue.

Eradication of Kurdish YPG militia in Syria ‘imminent’, says Turkey

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Monday that eradication of the Kurdish YPG militia in Syria was “imminent” and that Ankara would not agree to any policy that allowed the YPG to maintain a presence there.

“We are in a position to not only see but also to break any kind of plot in the region,” Fidan said in a joint press conference with his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi. DM

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