April 9, 2024 - Israel-Hamas war

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that “no force in the world” will stop Israeli troops from entering Rafah in southern Gaza to eliminate Hamas units said to be there.

Speaking at a recruitment event at a military base, Netanyahu said: "We will complete the elimination of the Hamas battalions, including in Rafah. There is no force in the world that will stop us."

“Many forces are trying to do this, but it will not help, because this enemy, after what it has done, will not do it again, it will cease to exist,” Netanyahu added.

Earlier this week, Netanyahu said that a date had been set for the Rafah operation, but did not specify when it would begin. 

Netanyahu also told the event: “We have three goals: one, to return the abductees. All the observers, and not only them, all together. We'll get them all back. The second goal —eliminate Hamas. The third goal — to ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.”

Netanyahu went on: “There is a fourth goal — Hamas is part of Iran's evil axis that aims to destroy us. When we defeat Hamas, it's not just defeating Hamas — it's defeating the Axis.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed the mayor of the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in a strike in central Gaza on Monday, the IDF and Hamas both said.

Hamas called it “a cowardly assassination of the mayor of Al-Maghazi, Mr. Hatem Saleh Al-Ghamri,” saying Israeli “warplanes directly and without warning bombed the building of the Joint Services Council of the central governorate’s municipalities.” 

Hamas said the strike was “a war crime contrary to international laws that grant immunity and protection to civilian figures.” 

The IDF said its fighter jet struck and “eliminated the terrorist,” characterizing Al-Ghamri as a “Hamas military wing operative in the field of projectile launches within the Maghazi Battalion of the Central Camps.”

Some background: The Al-Maghazi refugee camp is located in the central part of the coastal enclave south of Wadi Gaza, the waterway that divides north from south Gaza.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the camp is filled with narrow alleys, where 33,000 people lived before the conflict, in a relatively densely packed area no more than 0.6 square kilometers (about 0.2 square miles).

CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq and Kathleen Magramo contributed reporting to this post.

Vice President Kamala Harris will meet Tuesday with US families whose loved ones were taken hostage by Hamas amid ongoing negotiations for the release of remaining hostages and a ceasefire in Israel's war in Gaza.

Harris will meet with them in the afternoon, the second such meeting since Hamas' deadly attack on Israel on October 7 last year, according to an advisory from her office. The meeting is closed to the press. 

Her meeting comes after US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with the families on Monday evening.  

CIA Director Bill Burns traveled to Cairo over the weekend where he presented a new proposal to try and help broker a deal between Israel and Hamas and bridge the gap between the two sides.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said that several UN agencies are assisting in the efforts to retrieve bodies in and around Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.

Tedros said in a post on X Tuesday, that WHO, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and others were supporting Gaza’s Health Ministry “in organising dignified burials for the unidentified bodies on Al-Shifa Hospital premises.”

“This war is a moral failure of humanity,” Tedros added.

A video accompanying his post showed UN and Palestinian workers retrieving bodies from mounds of sand in the area of Al-Shifa.

CNN reported earlier today that the Gaza Civil Defense organization said that nearly 400 bodies have been recovered from around Al-Shifa hospital, following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area last week.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that for the first time, the maritime air defense system known as "C-Dome" has intercepted a drone.

The IDF said Tuesday that overnight, a Sa'ar 6-class corvette missile ship “successfully intercepted a UAV that had approached from the east and had crossed into the area of the Gulf of Eilat” in the northern Red Sea.

Houthi rebels in Yemen said last month that they had fired 32 drones towards Israel in support of Hamas. 

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne has suggested that imposing EU sanctions could be a way to pressure Israel into opening Gaza border crossings for humanitarian aid. 

“France was the first country to propose European Union sanctions on violent [Israeli] settlers in the West Bank. We will continue if needed to obtain the opening up of humanitarian aid,” Sejourne added.

The minister said that 300 trucks of aid, at a minimum, need to enter Gaza daily.

Israel has responded to Turkey's decision to ban exports of military-related products, accusing Ankara of breaching a trade agreement.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is "once again sacrificing the economic interests of the people of Turkey for his support of Hamas," adding that Israel will "respond accordingly." 

In response, Katz said he:

Some context: Turkey announced new restrictions on exports to Israel on Tuesday after Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan accused Israel of denying a request to airdrop aid to Gaza.

Children in Gaza have been dying from “starvation-related complications” since Israel began using starvation as a weapon of war, which is a war crime, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report on Tuesday.

Israel denies the accusation, despite widespread evidence of malnutrition in Gaza. The report documents accounts from doctors and families in Gaza that described children, as well as pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, suffering from severe malnutrition and dehydration and hospitals ill-equipped to treat them.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya who heads Kamal Adwan Hospital’s pediatrics unit in northern Gaza told HRW on Thursday that 26 children had died from starvation-related complications in his hospital alone. At least 16 were under 5 months old, and at least 10 were between 1 and 8 years old, he said.

The report also cites other challenges in distributing the little aid that does make it into the enclave, including ongoing Israeli bombardment and lack of security assurances. According to the report, Israel said aid entering Gaza faced no limits apart from security concerns, and some Israeli officials have blamed the UN for distribution delays. Other Israeli officials accused Hamas of aid diversion.

What Israel says: The Israeli Defense Ministry’s body governing civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories (COGAT) denied that the Israeli government was purposely starving Gaza’s civilian population. HRW said it sought comment from COGAT on the findings of its report but did not receive a response.

CNN cannot independently verify the findings in HRW’s report, but has reported similar accounts from Gazan civilians, Palestinian officials in Gaza and international humanitarian organizations documenting the war. 

Turkey announced new restrictions on exports to Israel on Tuesday after Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan accused Israel of denying a request to airdrop aid to Gaza.

The Ministry of Trade slapped a ban on the export of 54 items, particularly products that could be used for military or construction purposes. In the statement, the ministry condemned Israel’s prevention of access to “the most basic food, medical care and supplies” for the people of Gaza. 

Among the specified items listed in the statement were steel and aluminium materials, cement, electrical cables and construction and metal working machinery. Speaking at a news conference in Ankara late Monday, Fidan said Turkey was taking “a series of new measures against Israel” after Israel denied its request to join the Jordanian aid operation.

Key context: Turkey is among the top two countries delivering aid to Gaza, alongside the United Arab Emirates (UAE).