March 4, 2024 - Israel-Hamas war

Our live coverage of Israel’s war with Hamas has moved here.

Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan speaks during a UN Security Council meeting in New York in November 2023.

Israel has recalled its United Nations ambassador after what the country’s foreign minister said was an “attempt to silence” the UN report on the mass sexual assault committed by Hamas on October 7.

Katz said UN Secretary-General António Guterres should have convened the UN Security Council to review the report’s findings or declare Hamas a terror organization and didn’t. 

However, the secretary-general’s office said Guterres never ordered the UN sexual violence report to be kept quiet.

Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz, left, departs the White House after meeting with US Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday, March 4, 2024 in Washington, DC.

The Biden administration is continuing to call for more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza while it faces backlash for its ongoing military support to the Israeli government in the face of human rights abuse allegations. Still, the US reaffirmed Monday it will continue to provide military assistance to Israel, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

Negotiations continue for an agreement on a temporary ceasefire to release hostages from Gaza — but Israel is absent from the talks.

Meantime, more children have died of dehydration and malnutrition in Gaza as conditions in the enclave deteriorate further, a Palestinian Ministry of Health spokesperson said.

Here are the top headlines:

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations appealed to the international community not to abandon Palestinians in their “hour of need,” as representatives debate the funding status of UNRWA, the primary aid agency in Gaza and for Palestinian refugees in the region.

Several countries continue to withhold funding to UNRWA, or United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, amid allegations from Israel that a number of its staff members were involved in the October 7th attacks.

The ambassador, Riyad Mansour, told the UN General Assembly in New York that the decision to suspend funding, “whether intentionally or not” is “exacerbating the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, which Israel is perpetrating on a scope and scale unseen in modern history.”

Mansour said the assembly “cannot look away” from “Israel’s continued obstruction of (UNRWA’s) humanitarian services and a defamation campaign that has thrown its financial situation into turmoil after the sudden suspension of funding by several major donors.”

Some background: Earlier Monday, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said the agency is facing a “financial crisis.” Following Israel’s claims, 16 countries have paused their funding to the organization, “totaling 450 million dollars,” he said.

Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East Philippe Lazzarini speaks at the UN General Assembly in New York, on Monday, March 4.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is currently facing a “financial crisis” after Israeli authorities said several of the organization’s staff were “allegedly” involved in the October 7 attack.

Following the Israeli “allegations,” 16 countries have paused their funding to UNRWA, “totaling 450 million dollars,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a speech addressing the UN General Assembly on Monday.

In response to Israel’s allegations, Lazzarini said “an independent investigation by the Office of Internal Oversight Services was launched to establish the facts and is ongoing.” The UN secretary-general also commissioned “an independent review of our approach to risk management and neutrality,” Lazzarini said.

Lazzarini said UNRWA “is at a breaking point,” explaining its creation 75 years ago by the UN General Assembly “as a temporary UN entity pending a just political solution to the question of Palestine, the agency’s ability to fulfill its mandate is seriously threatened.”

Lazzarini urged “those member states that are seeking alternatives to UNRWA to do so in a way that does not compromise Palestine refugees’ right to self-determination and aspiration to a just and lasting solution to their plight.”

Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, told CNN Monday from Istanbul, Turkey, that “there is no way to know the fate” of Israeli hostages held in Gaza” until a ceasefire deal is reached and implemented.

Israel believes that 130 hostages remain in Gaza — 99 of whom are believed to be alive — following Hamas’ October 7 attacks that killed around 1,200 people in Israel.

 State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller speaks during a briefing on Monday, March 4.

The United States will continue to support Israel with military assistance, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Monday — despite the government’s refusal to open more crossings for humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Miller said that “the leadership of Hamas that planned and plotted October 7 continue to be at large inside Gaza” and “they continue to pose a threat to innocent civilians inside Israel.” 

“We support Israel’s legitimate military campaign consistent with international humanitarian law and that’s why we continue to support them militarily,” he added.

The Biden administration has faced backlash for its ongoing military support to the Israeli government in the face of human rights abuse allegations and for consistently suggesting that it would not use that assistance as leverage to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Miller on Monday said that there is more that the Israeli government “can do and more that they should do” to address the humanitarian crisis on the ground.

The Biden administration defended its decision to host Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz on Monday for a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Israeli officials have insisted that Gantz does not represent the government during his visit this week. 

Gantz, one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main political rivals, is expected to meet with senior Biden administration officials without the Israeli ambassador present, which is at odds with the standard protocol when leaders of foreign governments visit. 

Kirby noted the meeting was at the request of Gantz.

Kirby wouldn’t say if there were plans for President Joe Biden to smooth things over with Netanyahu after reports the prime minister was “enraged” over Gantz’s visit. 

Kirby added:

“We certainly recognize Prime Minister Netanyahu as the elected prime minister of the government of Israel, and we will continue to deal with him and with his entire war cabinet — and Mr. Gantz is a part of that war cabinet.”

Members of Israel's security forces search for identification and personal effects on October 12, 2023, at the Supernova Music Festival site, where hundreds were killed and dozens taken by Hamas militants near the border with Gaza, in Kibbutz Re'im, Israel.

A United Nations team has found “clear and convincing information” that hostages in Gaza were sexually abused, Pramila Patten, the UN special envoy on sexual violence in conflict told reporters on Monday. There are “reasonable grounds” to believe the sexual violence is ongoing, she added.

The UN team visited Israel between January 29 to February 14 for a mission “aimed at gathering, analyzing, and verifying information on conflict-related sexual violence” during October 7 and its aftermath, according to a 24-page report.

Patten stressed that the mission “was neither intended nor mandated to be investigative in nature,” adding that the team had 33 meetings with Israeli institutions while in Israel, interviewed 34 people, including survivors and witnesses to the October 7 attack, and released hostages, as well as reviewed 50 hours of footage of the attacks.

The mission was not able to meet with any victims of sexual violence on October 7 “despite our efforts,” Patten said. “On the very first day, I made a call for survivors to come forward. But we received information that a handful of them were receiving very specialized trauma treatment and were not prepared to come forward,” she said.

Hamas has previously denied that its militants committed rape during the October 7 attack.

Read more here about the report

The headline and the post were updated with more details on the report.

US Vice President Kamala Harris previewed her meeting with Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz on Monday.

The meeting will focus on a deal to release the remaining hostages held by Hamas, delivering additional humanitarian aid to Gaza and securing a six-week ceasefire in hostilities, she said.

Administrations call for a ceasefire: In remarks in Alabama on Sunday, the vice president forcefully called for more humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying that people in the region are “starving” in the face of “inhumane” conditions and urging Israel to do more in one of the strongest pushes by a US official to date. 

Her remarks came as the administration has faced increased pressure from the progressive flank of the Democratic Party to do more to curb civilian deaths in Gaza.

The UNRWA headquarters in Gaza on February 21.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Monday accused Israel of detaining and torturing some of its staffers, coercing them into making false confessions about the agency’s ties to Hamas.

The false confessions elicited “under torture” were being used “to further spread misinformation about the Agency as part of attempts to dismantle UNRWA,” United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees spokesperson Juliette Touma said in a statement, but did not tie those confessions to the allegations against the 12 staffers accused of participating in the October 7 attacks.

What’s Israel alleging against UNRWA: Israel has accused at least 12 staffers of being involved in the October 7 terrorist attacks and has alleged that about 12% of UNRWA’s 13,000 staffers are members of Hamas or other Palestinian militant groups. Israeli officials have said some of the information about the 12 staffers involved in October 7 was obtained through cell phone data and other sources. UNRWA says it has fired 10 of the 12 accused staffers and that the other two are dead. CNN cannot confirm the allegations.

What UNRWA is saying: The allegations against Israel are part of an as yet unpublished report compiled by UNRWA alleging Israel’s widespread physical and psychological abuse of Palestinians detained in Gaza during the war, including 21 UNRWA staff members, some of whom said they were beaten and threatened. The unreleased report, a copy of which CNN obtained, is largely based on the testimony of Gazan detainees held in Israeli prisons and at military sites and released back into Gaza at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between mid-December and mid-February.

CNN cannot independently verify all of the accounts of abuse listed in the UNRWA report, but has previously documented similar allegations of abuse by Palestinian detainees.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to the allegations about the torture and detention of UNRWA staffers, but said in a statement that mistreatment of detainees is “absolutely prohibited.”

Benny Gantz speaks in Ramat Gan, Israel, in 2022.

Benny Gantz, the Israeli war cabinet Minister and political rival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, does not represent the Israeli government during his visit to Washington, an Israeli government official told CNN Monday, amid evident aggravation from the Israeli prime minister and his allies about the trip.  

Gantz in on a three-day visit to the US capital, where he will meet Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of state Antony Blinken.

The Israeli official insisted that Prime Minister Netanyahu has an “open line” to President Joe Biden and said the two have spoken dozens of times since the October 7 attacks, implying an intervention by Gantz is unnecessary. 

Asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject, the official said Israel would “not carry out hostage negotiations” in the media.

Some context: Since the war broke out, Gantz’s National Unity party has been climbing in opinion polls, while Netanyahu’s Likud has been losing popularity. National Unity was in opposition when Hamas led an attack on Israel on October 7, but Gantz agreed to join the government and become a member of the newly formed war cabinet in the wake of the attack. 

Muhammad Atallah, 9, wants the war to end. He travels 1.5 kilometers every day, transporting water.

Crying, he told CNN affiliate CCTV that he was in pain and needed medicine because he was been “carrying so many tanks of water using a wheelchair.”

Local residents in Gaza continue to grapple with a shortage of drinking water, food, electricity and other necessities as the Israel-Hamas conflict rages on. 

In late January, CNN reported that Gaza was headed towards a full-scale famine. Displaced civilians and health workers told CNN they go hungry so their children can eat what little is available. If Palestinians find water, it is likely undrinkable.

File photo shows Robert A. Wood, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, speaking at a Security Council meeting on March 23, 2023, at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

The United States told the United Nations General Assembly Monday that “sensitive negotiations” are the best way to go diplomatically to end the Gaza crisis, not another Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The General Assembly met Monday to examine the US veto of the latest Security Council draft resolution calling for a ceasefire in war-torn Gaza. The US was required by a relatively new UN mandate to defend its veto in the Security Council in a special Assembly session.

The draft resolution at hand would not have achieved the goal of sustainable peace nor resulted in a ceasefire, Robert A. Wood, United States Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, said during the General Assembly.

Washington will continue working to get more aid in as well as engaging tirelessly in direct diplomacy and negotiations on the ground, he said adding, “We remain committed to engage constructively on our resolution in the days to come.”

The Gaza Ministry of Health said Monday that 124 people were killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll in the Gaza Strip to at least 30,534 since October 7. 

CNN cannot independently confirm the numbers due to the lack of international media access to Gaza. 

People gather around a truck that was carrying humanitarian aid and was hit in a reported Israeli airstrike on the main coastal road in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on March 3.

At least eight people have been killed and several others injured in an Israeli strike on an aid distribution truck in central Gaza, Gaza’s health ministry told CNN.

The truck, carrying aid from the country of Kuwait, was struck on the al-Rashid coastal road in the city of Deir al Balah on Sunday.

CNN footage showed a medium-sized truck destroyed, with seats covered in blood. Some people could be seen gathered around the wrecked vehicle, looking through the sand for aid that is still intact and can be used. 

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Sunday it transferred five dead and four injured after a truck was targeted by an Israeli drone in the Al-Quran area, southwest of Deir al Balah.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement Sunday it “eliminated” a Hamas terrorist, Mahmoud Muhammad Abd Khad, in “an aerial strike in the central Gaza strip.”

The IDF shared aerial footage showing the targeting of a vehicle, which CNN has geolocated to the al-Rashid coastal road in Deir al Balah.

The IDF has not responded to CNN’s request for comment on claims an Israeli strike in central Gaza targeted an aid truck and killed several people.

Palestinian grave digger Saadi Baraka builds the walls for a shallow grave at the Deir el-Balah cemetery, Gaza, on November 10.

There is no more space to bury the dead in one of Gaza’s main cemeteries, its caretaker said Monday, and municipality workers are having to use primitive tools to accommodate the incessant flow of the newly deceased needing a final resting place.

Saadi Baraka is one of the most well-known grave diggers in Gaza. He works at the two main cemeteries in the central area of the strip, both in Deir al-Balah, and says he has overseen the burial more than half of the total number of dead from Israel’s war in Gaza.

Baraka, who works 12 hours a day, receives people carrying in their deceased loved ones to be laid to rest. He told CNN he had to expand the cemetery by about 6,000 square meters in the last two months.

Video shot for CNN shows workers building new tombs out of bricks atop existing graves, workers mixing cement and using soil and sand from the cemetery to close the gaps between the newly built graves, and old pieces of metal slabs being used to cover the graves.

“I have buried 16,880 people. I swear to God that 85% are women and children. They killed all the women. They were all killed because they are the ones that stayed at home. I didn’t bury more than three from Hamas. [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is lying when he says he is killing Hamas people,” Baraka tells CNN.

More than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, the Ministry of Health there says. Israel estimates about 10,000 of the dead in the war are Hamas fighters. CNN cannot independently verify the casualty tolls in Gaza or the Israeli estimates of Hamas fighters killed.

The number of children who have died of dehydration and malnutrition in northern Gaza has risen to 15, a Palestinian Ministry of Health spokesperson said, amid desperate conditions due to Israel’s throttling of aid and destruction of the besieged enclave — reinforcing the urgency of this week’s ceasefire talks. CNN cannot independently confirm the deaths of the children or their causes due to the lack of international media access to wartime Gaza.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian-American doctor nursing Palestinians with trauma injuries out of tents in the southern city of Rafah has warned that Gaza’s health care system “has been completely destroyed.” 

Here’s what else to know

Israeli Minister in Washington, DC: Israeli war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz, one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main political rivals, is holding meetings with high-level US officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during a three-day trip to Washington. Israel’s public broadcaster Kan reported that Netanyahu was not aware of Gantz’s plans and instructed the Israeli embassy in Washington to not facilitate the visit. But Gantz said he personally informed Netanyahu about his plans, according to a statement released by his office.

US official in Beirut: A senior adviser to US President Joe Biden, Amos Hochstein, is in Lebanon, warning that an escalation of violence is not in the interest of the Lebanese and Israeli people. Hochstein is in Beirut for talks with senior Lebanese officials to find a diplomatic solution to the ongoing hostilities along the Israel-Lebanon border. This comes as Volker Turk, the United Nations human rights chief, likened the situation in Gaza to a “powder keg” that could spark a wider regional war at any moment.

Israel absent at ceasefire talks: Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators are meeting in Cairo to untangle deadlocked ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas after Israel said it would not send a delegation. The decision to skip the talks was made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli official said.

US vice president calls for more aid to Gaza: Kamala Harris on Sunday forcefully called for more humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying that people in the region are “starving” in the face of “inhumane” conditions and urging Israel to do more in one of the strongest pushes by a US official to date.

CNN investigation: The delivery of vital humanitarian aid intended for Gaza, including anesthetics, ventilators, and water filtration systems, is being obstructed by Israel, a new CNN investigation has found. Humanitarian workers and government officials working to deliver urgently needed aid for Gaza say a clear pattern has emerged of Israeli obstruction, as disease and near-famine grip parts of the besieged enclave.

Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog speaks during an event on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C, on February 14.

Israeli war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz, one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main political rivals, is expected to meet with senior officials of Joe Biden’s administration without the Israeli ambassador on Monday, as is standard when leaders of foreign governments visit.

The Israeli ambassador to Washington, DC, Michael Herzog, has been instructed by Netanyahu’s office not to handle Gantz’s visit, said an official familiar with the trip.

It’s a sign of the disapproval Netanyahu has with Gantz going to the US capital.

Earlier, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan reported that Netanyahu was not aware of Gantz’s plans and instructed the Israeli embassy in Washington to not facilitate the visit.

But Gantz said he personally informed Netanyahu about his plans to visit Washington, DC, over the weekend, according to a statement released by his office. 

The Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, declined to comment. CNN has reached out to the prime ministers’ office for comment. 

An escalation of violence is not in the interest of the Lebanese and Israeli people, and a “limited war” is “not containable,” a senior adviser to US President Joe Biden, Amos Hochstein, warned in a news conference from Beirut on Monday.

Hochstein, who has visited Lebanon several times since hostilities broke out between Hezbollah and Israel, is in Beirut for talks with senior Lebanese officials to find a diplomatic solution to the ongoing hostilities along the Israel-Lebanon border. 

“I am mindful that my arrival comes on the heels of a tense few weeks on both sides of the border,” Hochstein said.

US administration and intelligence officials are concerned Israel is planning a ground incursion into Lebanon that could be launched in the late spring or early summer if diplomatic efforts fail to push Hezbollah back from the northern border with Israel, senior administration officials and officials familiar with the intelligence say.

In February, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, dismissed foreign efforts aimed at stopping the fighting between the group and Israel, saying international proposals only focused on Israel’s security without offering a ceasefire in Gaza. 

Since then, Israel has been striking deeper into Lebanon. Strikes in February came within 27 miles of the capital of Beirut, the farthest into Lebanese territory from the border since the violence started immediately following Hamas’ October 7 massacres in Israel.

The logo of the Eurovision 2024 contest is displayed during a press conference at public broadcaster RTBF in Brussels on February 20.

A song chosen to represent Israel at Eurovision has been rewritten to remove any allusions to the Hamas attacks on October 7.

The original lyrics to “October Rain,” the song most likely to be submitted to the international song contest, were leaked to the media and later confirmed by Israel’s national broadcaster Kan. They included lines such as “There’s no air left to breathe” and “They were all good children, each one of them” — apparent references to the attacks which triggered the current conflict in Gaza, according to Reuters. 

Performers in the Eurovision Song Contest are barred from making political statements during the competition, and Kan said Sunday that the lyrics of “October Rain” had been changed on advice from the country’s president, Isaac Herzog.

According to Kan, the contest’s organizers had suggested they would disqualify both “October Rain” and an alternative entry “Dance Forever,” which has been linked to the Nova music festival where hundreds of partygoers were killed.

In a statement, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which runs the Eurovision, said: “The EBU and KAN are still in the process of discussing their entry and that remains a confidential process until a final decision has been reached. All broadcasters have until 11 March to formally submit their entries for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.”

The official Eurovision site currently shows the Israeli representative for the upcoming contest in Sweden in May as Eden Golan, a 20-year-old singer from Tel Aviv. However, it lists her song as “to be announced.”