February 9, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

The speaker of the Israeli parliament on Friday canceled a meeting scheduled with Secretary-General António Guterres because of the UN leader's call for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire" in Gaza.

Guterres said Thursday the level of destruction and number of people killed in Gaza show that “there is something wrong in the way the military operations are being conducted.”

Responding to a reporter who said Hamas is hiding within the civilian population, Guterres reiterated his condemnation of the use of human shields, adding that the protection of civilians is a must even in those circumstances. 

In a news conference held after Ohana's statement, Guterres' spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters the secretary general's office knew about the cancelation first through the media before receiving an official notification, adding that Guterres' statement on Thursday was not new.

The United Nations is "extremely worried about the fate of civilians in Rafah," UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Friday as Israel began drawing up an evacuation plan for the estimated 1.3 million Palestinians living in the southern Gaza city.

Speaking at his daily news briefing, Dujarric said people "need to be protected," but added that the UN also "does not want to see any forced mass displacement, of people, which is by definition against their will.”

UN Humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths also issued a statement Friday urging for the protection of civilians.

Griffiths added that Rafah's population of over 1 million people "have endured unthinkable suffering" and have been moving for months. 

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed Israel's military to plan for the “evacuation of the population” from Rafah, his office said in a statement, ahead of an anticipated ground assault.

The post was updated with the statement from Martin Griffiths.

CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to travel to Cairo for a Tuesday meeting on the ongoing Gaza hostage negotiations, according to two sources familiar with the plans. 

One of the sources said Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Israel's Mossad Director David Barnea are also expected to attend.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plans for a military escalation in Gaza's southern city of Rafah.

A statement issued by the Palestinian Authority’s presidential office said the real aim of Netanyahu's dual proposal to evacuate people from the overcrowded city of Rafah is to displace the Palestinian people from their land. 

The presidency denounced the potential forcible displacement of Palestinians from Rafah, already burdened with hundreds of thousands of displaced people from northern Gaza, as a "real threat" and "dangerous prelude" to implementing Israeli policies aimed at displacing Palestinians from their land. 

Palestinians in Rafah told CNN they have nowhere to go if Israel were to enter the city in southern Gaza, located near the border with Egypt.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday directed the military to plan for the “evacuation of the population” from Rafah, his office said in a statement. On Thursday, he said the Israel Defense Forces would “soon go into Rafah, Hamas’s last bastion.” 

Mahmoud Khalil Amer, who was displaced from the Al Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, said his staying in a tent near a cemetery in Rafah. 

“I am basically sleeping next to the dead,” he said. “It feels like hell, I feel all the pain, we are not living, the dead are better than us,” he said. "They are rested. But for us, our lives are torture, we can hardly get any water, we don’t have any money. The situation is very bad. The people who used to have stable jobs and income are now suffering and their situation is horrible."

Abu Mohamed El-Helw, displaced from Khan Younis, said that “there is no place left” for people in Rafah to go “unless they open the borders and let us out.” 

El-Helw said people “are tired from the war” and have become “used to” threats from Israel. 

More than 1.3 million people are believed to be in Rafah, the majority displaced from other parts of Gaza, according to the United Nations. 

CNN's Mick Krever contributed reporting.

Moody’s Investors Service warned Thursday it could downgrade Israel’s credit rating due to the severity of the military conflict with Hamas.

A downgrade could make it more expensive for Israel to borrow just as the country gears up for what could be a prolonged war.

Moody’s said its review will focus on the duration and scale of the conflict — and how it impacts Israel’s economy, institutions and public finances. The credit ratings firm said the review could take longer than the typical three-month period.

In July, before the deadly terror attacks by Hamas against Israel, Moody’s warned that a controversial overhaul of Israel’s judicial system risked plunging the country into further turmoil that could hurt its economy and security.

A Hamas delegation led by deputy leader Khalil Al-Hayya has left Cairo after talks on a potential Gaza ceasefire, a senior Hamas member told CNN.

They left as planned because discussions wrapped up, said the Hamas member, who did not reveal any details on the talks.  

Some background: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday dismissed Hamas’ proposals for a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza as “delusional,” in a setback to diplomatic efforts to pause the war.

Speaking to reporters, Netanyahu insisted that there was no alternative to “complete victory” over Hamas in Gaza.

An Israeli undercover operation on a hospital in the occupied West Bank last month may amount to a war crime, according to five United Nations special rapporteurs.  

The experts said that outside active hostilities, “at most Israeli forces may have been entitled to arrest or detain them,” and were only entitled to use force “if strictly necessary to prevent an imminent threat to life or serious injury.”  

About the deadly raid: On January 30, undercover Israeli forces infiltrated the Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin and killed three Palestinian men, according to the hospital and the Palestinian state news agency.  

Dramatic CCTV video captured around a dozen commandos disguised as nurses, women in hijabs, and others, with one pushing a wheelchair and another carrying a baby car seat, as they stormed a hospital corridor carrying assault weapons.  

Hamas said the three men were sleeping at the time of the attack.

Last month, Israel's Defense Forces chief of staff Herzi Halevi claimed the men who were shot and killed were involved in a terrorist cell planning to carry out a “serious attack” on Israeli civilians.  

The Israeli Security Agency, better known as Shabak, which conducted the raid was not immediately available for comment on the UN experts’ statement. 

CNN's Abeer Salman and Richard Greene contributed reporting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has directed the military to plan for the evacuation of the more than 1.3 million people the United Nations estimates are in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, his office said Friday.

In the statement, his office said that it was not possible to both eliminate Hamas and leave “four Hamas battalions in Rafah.”

Here's what you need to about this and other developments in the Israel-Hamas war:

Where will the civilians go?: Rafah is the last major population center in Gaza not occupied by the Israel Defense Forces and it has rapidly become home to a huge population of displaced Palestinians. Satellite images showed this week how a tent city has swelled in size in just a few weeks. CNN has also previously reported on Palestinian civilians who followed evacuation orders being killed by Israeli strikes, underscoring the reality that evacuation zones and warning alerts from the Israeli military haven’t guaranteed safety for civilians in the densely populated Gaza Strip, where Palestinians have no safe place to escape Israeli bombs.

Here's what the United States has said: “To conduct such an operation right now with no planning and little thought in an area where there is sheltering of a million people would be a disaster,” Deputy State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel told a news briefing Thursday. Also, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised concerns about the expansion into Rafah during meetings with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials this week, two Israeli officials told CNN on Wednesday.

Non-governmental organizations issue warnings: Several non-governmental organizations have warned about the humanitarian consequences of Israeli operations in Rafah. For instance, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said the city, which borders Egypt, could soon turn "into a zone of bloodshed and destruction that people won’t be able to escape."

Hostage families frustrated: With hopes for a new deal to return Israeli hostages from Gaza in doubt, many, including the families of those hostages still held by Hamas, have directed their anger at Netanyahu, who dismissed the terms of a ceasefire and hostage deal put forward by Hamas.

Half of UNRWA requests to deliver aid in Gaza denied: The UN's main relief agency in Gaza said Friday that half of its aid mission requests to deliver aid in Gaza since the beginning of the year have been denied. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has not been able to deliver aid in Gaza since January 23, agency Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on X, adding that people in the territory are on the verge of famine.