February 13, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

Our live coverage of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has moved here.

More than 100 people were killed as “extremely intense” Israeli airstrikes and shelling pounded multiple locations in Rafah overnight Monday, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, as international alarm and opposition mounts over Israel’s planned ground offensive in the southern Gazan city.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week directed the country’s military to plan for the “evacuation of the population” from Rafah after saying that the Israel Defense Forces would “soon go into Rafah, Hamas’s last bastion.”

Additionally, Egypt is increasing its security presence at its border with the Gaza Strip, wary of a spillover of Israel’s war on Hamas onto its territory.

Here are other headlines you should know:

Samaher Esmail, a Palestinian American detained in the West Bank by the Israel Defense Forces, still has not been given US consular access more than a week later and was beaten and denied medication in Israeli custody, her family said in a statement Tuesday.

The family said that Esmail, 46, was "dragged" from her home by IDF members and "beaten badly in Israeli custody." They also said her home was destroyed in the process.

The IDF confirmed Esmail’s detention, saying she was “arrested for incitement on social media,” but did not respond to the allegations of mistreatment raised by the family.

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said he could not speak to the specific claims made by the family, citing privacy laws.

According to the family, Esmail was detained because of "10-year-old Facebook posts and political cartoons she shared."

"Ms. Esmail’s opinions may be disfavored in Israel proper, but the inescapable reality is they were protected speech which no rational person could consider an incitement to violence," the statement said.

The family said she has not been formally charged with a crime.

According to the statement, Esmail was presented to a military commission on Monday and was granted bail, but the IDF appealed the ruling.

Esmail's family called on the US to do more to obtain consular access to her.

“The United States is not without tools to obtain consular access to Ms. Esmail and to end her ordeal. It just has to find the moral courage to do so, which has been, thus far, a tall order,” the statement said.

Read more on Samaher Esmail's detainment.

Military operations in Rafah could lead to "a slaughter" and leave humanitarian efforts in Gaza "at death’s door," United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths warned Tuesday.

His comments add to growing international opposition to Israel's potential ground offensive into Rafah, where more than 1 million displaced Palestinians are estimated to be crammed into makeshift shelters. 

He urged Israel to listen to the international community’s warnings against "the dangerous consequences" of a ground invasion.

"History will not be kind" if those calls are ignored, he said.

The Israeli military has not yet presented its plan to the government for the evacuation of Rafah, according to a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces.

The military aims to create a plan that evacuates civilians "out of harm's way" and differentiates civilians from Hamas militants, the IDF spokesperson said.

Leo Varadkar, Ireland's Taoiseach (or prime minister), strongly criticized Israel Tuesday, accusing the country of becoming "blinded by rage" as it doubles down on plans to launch a ground offensive on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where Israeli forces previously told hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to seek shelter.

Speaking to lawmakers in the Irish parliament, Varadkar said it was "very clear" to him that Israel is "is not listening to any country in the world," even the United States. 

"They [Israel] have become blinded by rage. And they are going to, I believe, make the situation much worse for their own security in the long term by going down the path they are going," the Irish leader said. 

Varadkar said an Israeli ground offensive on the border city of Rafah "should not happen," drawing attention to the 1.3 million Palestinians who are "taking refuge there." 

Other members of the Irish government joined Varadkar in condemning Israel this week including Trade Minister Simon Coveney, who accused the country of acting like a rogue state and behaving "like a monster to defeat a monster."

Hostage talks held Tuesday in Cairo were productive and serious, but did not yet arrive at a breakthrough that would result in a final deal, a US official said. The negotiations will continue, the official added.

A second US official said the outstanding area of disagreement among the parties in the hostage talks is the ratio of Palestinian prisoners to hostages that would be released as part of the deal.

CNN previously reported that Hamas' counterproposal included a call to release “all prisoners in Israeli prisons, including women, children, the elderly (over 50 years old), and the sick, who were arrested up until the date of signing this agreement.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has balked at the demand, which would be greater than the 3-to-1 ratio of Palestinian prisoners to hostages that was included in the deal in November 2023.

An Israeli official has told CNN that the Israeli delegation is on its way back from Cairo. Meanwhile, two senior Hamas members told CNN that so far there are no plans for a delegation from Hamas to travel to Egypt this week.

CNN's Lauren Izso and Ibrahim Dahman contributed reporting.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released a video recording Tuesday purportedly showing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar inside a tunnel below the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. 

Unveiling the video at his daily news conference, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said the footage was recorded October 10 and shows Sinwar with his wife, children and his brother walking through a dark tunnel. Hagari said the IDF obtained the material in recent days and said the clip was captured on a Hamas CCTV camera.

CNN can neither independently verify that Sinwar is the man seen in the video, nor when it was recorded. The IDF did not provide additional evidence to support their claims.

Two former hostages have thanked Israeli security forces for rescuing them from Gaza on Monday.

Fernando Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, both dual Israeli-Argentine citizens, were taken hostage during the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

They appeared in a video Tuesday published by the Israeli government press office along with two other former hostages, Clara Marman and Gabriela Leimberg, who were released November 28 as part of a hostages-prisoners swap during a four-day Gaza truce.

Fernando is the brother of both Clara and Gabriela, and Luis is Clara’s partner.

Fernando also thanked "all those who participated in this complex operation, to the IDF, to the security forces, to all the soldiers who made us really feel that we were being brought home."

Egypt is increasing its security presence at its border with the Gaza Strip, wary of a spillover of Israel’s war on Hamas onto its territory should the Israeli military begin its ground assault on the enclave’s southernmost city, Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population is sheltering.

The fortification by the border is a “precautionary” measure ahead of an expected Israeli ground operation in Rafah, Egyptian security officials told CNN. As part of its security buildup, the officials said, Egypt has deployed more troops and machinery in North Sinai, bordering Gaza.

Decades-old ties at risk?: Egypt was the first Arab nation to recognize Israel in 1979. The two signed a landmark pact that saw Israel return the Sinai Peninsula it captured from Egypt in the 1967 war in exchange for peace. The treaty also limited the number of troops stationed on the border between Egypt and Gaza, which at the time was controlled by Israel. The treaty turned Egypt into a pariah in the Arab world, but decades later helped pave the way for other Arab nations to sign similar agreements with Israel.

Western media outlets, including the Associated Press and The New York Times, have reported that Egypt has threatened to void the peace treaty if Israeli troops invaded Rafah. Egypt’s foreign minister dismissed those reports, but said in a news conference Monday that Cairo would adhere to the treaty “as long as it remains reciprocal,” the state-run Ahram newspaper reported.

An Israeli official acknowledged that the Egyptians have been concerned with Israel’s operation, but said they are not aware of a specific threat about the treaty.

Keep reading about Egypt and Israel's relationship.