Israel’s war on Gaza updates: ‘Netanyahu main obstacle to achieving deal’

This live page is now closed. Thank you for joining us.

You can read our story on the crisis facing refugees in Lebanon as war with Israel looms, here.

To read more on the Israeli attack that killed 15 members of a Palestinian family in central Gaza, check out our story here.

Finally, you can find all our latest coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza, here.

We will be closing this live page shortly but before we do, here is a recap of the day’s main events:

• Hamas official Osama Hamdan tells Al Jazeera that “everyone understands” now that Netanyahu and the Israeli government are not willing to agree on a ceasefire deal.
• Israeli negotiators expressed “cautious optimism” about moving towards an agreement on a Gaza ceasefire after talks in Doha.
• A new Israeli order tells residents of parts of the Maghazi refugee camp to flee, further shrinking Gaza’s “humanitarian zone” for the second day in a row.
• The Israeli military has bombed a warehouse sheltering displaced Palestinians in the az-Zawayda area of central Gaza, killing 15 members of one family, including nine children.
• The Palestinian Health Ministry says two men were killed when an Israeli drone struck a car in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank.
• One person has been killed in an Israeli attack on a motorcycle near Lebanon’s Tyre.

We’re getting reports from our colleagues on the ground that an Israeli attack targeting a house in Abasan al-Kabira, east of Khan Younis, has killed four people and wounded at least six people.

Several Palestinians have also been killed and wounded in an Israeli bombing targeting an apartment in the Jabalia camp, in northern Gaza.

The neighbour of a family whose members were killed in the az-Zawayda town attack says there were “no military activities here at all”.

“They were asleep in their beds, kids and babies, then three missiles targeted their place,” Abu Ahmed Hassan told the Reuters news agency.

“The owner of the house was a known merchant.”

Sixty-three percent of respondents want the Israeli government to close an agreement with Hamas over a truce and the return of captives in Gaza, according to a poll by Israeli broadcaster Channel 12.

About a quarter of the respondents said they are undecided on the issue, while 12 percent stressed they oppose a deal, a report by the channel said.

Gaza ceasefire talks, which were continuing in Doha, paused on Friday with negotiators to meet again next week to seek an agreement.

The Israeli government has published plans to set up a new illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. It’s one of five illegal settlements Israeli authorities have promised to make official in June.

The government says the move is in response to several European countries recognising an independent Palestinian state in recent months.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim reports:

Israel’s mass evacuation orders for areas of the Gaza Strip are “no longer a reliable indicator” that an Israeli ground operation is imminent, war monitors report.

Addressing the most recent orders for people to flee Beit Hanoon city in the north of Gaza, US-based think tanks the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and Critical Threats Project (CTP) said Israeli forces had already issued evacuation orders for the area on August 7.

But Israeli ground forces did not advance on Beit Hanoon despite the earlier order for people to leave, and they have “not conducted clearing operations in all of the recent evacuation zones”, according to the latest ISW-CTP joint report.

The ISW-CTP also said that Palestinian fighters launched rockets and mortar shells targeting Israeli forces deployed on the Netzarim and Philadelpi corridors on Friday, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades snipers targeted Israeli forces to the east of Khan Younis, and the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement used a “barrel bomb” against an Israeli armoured personnel carrier in Rafah city.

Hamas fighters also launched two separate rocket barrages targeting Israeli territory on Friday, including five missiles fired at Israel’s Nirim area, east of Khan Younis.

Israeli forces ordered Palestinians to leave neighbourhoods in the Maghazi refugee camp early on Saturday morning.

Ahmad Omrani, one of the people forced to flee Maghazi, said Israel’s constant orders contributed to constant fear among displaced Palestinians.

“The suffering began from the day we left our homes,” Omrani told the Associated Press news agency. “We suffer from fear and anxiety and fear for the children playing in the street. You cannot sleep, sit or eat well.”

Here is footage shared by UN officials after their visit to northern Gaza:

A delegation from the UN finally made it into North Gaza. The video footage from the car shows a harrowing level of destruction. pic.twitter.com/wDRljMh8MR

— AHMED | أحمد (@ASE) August 17, 2024

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation in the US, has called on the Biden administration to force Israel to end the war in Gaza to allow a polio vaccination campaign to be conducted.

CAIR has previously called on the Biden administration to take measures to prevent the spread of polio in Gaza after the virus was detected in wastewater, as well as the first case of that disease that was detected in a Palestinian child.

The disease has appeared due to Israel’s systematic destruction of the civilian and medical infrastructure in Gaza, CAIR said in a statement.

Israel has launched a vaccination campaign for its own military personnel.

“President Biden’s enabling of the systematic destruction of almost all civilian infrastructure in Gaza has resulted in the reappearance of a disease that could be devastating to Palestinian children,” the group’s communications director Ibrahim Hooper said.

Families of captives have been protesting for months and held a news conference outside Israel’s Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, accusing Netanyahu of blocking a potential deal.

They claimed that Netanyahu was undermining the agreement by introducing new conditions during negotiations.

The families emphasised that this is their final opportunity to save the lives of their children, who have been held in Gaza for more than 10 months. The families are threatening to escalate if a deal is not reached.

On Thursday, an Israeli delegation and mediators began the latest round in months of talks to end the war in Gaza, which has killed at least 40,000 Palestinians.

Palestinian activists have shared videos on Instagram showing the aftermath of Israeli shelling that struck an apartment in Burj al-Nouri, located north of the Nuseirat refugee camp.

The footage, verified by Al Jazeera, shows bystanders rescuing an injured person, carrying him on a blanket as he is rushed into a car.

We have chosen not to share the video as it might be distressing to some viewers.

Israeli soldiers took 53-year-old Ahmad Abu Helal from his family in Khan Younis because he speaks Hebrew and he can translate for them.

Then they executed him using a quadcopter, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which has documented numerous incidents of extrajudicial killings committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians across the Gaza Strip.

The group said Abu Helal, a father of five, was executed after he was forced to translate soldiers’ instructions to residents of Khan Younis.

📝The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has documented numerous incidents of extrajudicial killings committed by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) against #Palestinian civilians across the #gaza Strip, including the case of Ahmed Mohammed Abu Helal, 53, who is a… pic.twitter.com/ZDatBxPKn4

— Palestinian Centre for Human Rights – PCHR (@pchrgaza) August 17, 2024

The PA Health Ministry has identified the two men who were killed by an Israeli drone attack on their car in Jenin in the occupied West Bank earlier today

Rafat Dawasi and Ahmad Abu Ora were killed instantly in the attack that left their car ablaze, the ministry said.

Dawasi was from Silat al-Harithiya, a village in the Jenin governorate, and Abu Ora was from Aqqaba, near Tubas, it added.

Naama Weinberg says a “vast majority” of Israeli support a ceasefire deal that would bring the captives back from Gaza.

“Most of our ministers and Knesset members support this deal. The Americans who have Israel’s security interest in mind support this deal,” she said at a demonstration.

“There is only a slim minority of messianic extremists in our government who have come out against this deal. And Netanyahu is aligning himself with them for his own political survival.”

Here are a few highlights of the pieces we’ve published about the war over the past day:

• From Gaza: Gaza records first polio case as UN calls for truce to tackle virus
• Watch: Israeli settlers rampage through Palestinian village
• Feature: End game – What’s Israel’s plan in the occupied West Bank?
• News: How Canada’s ‘off-the-record’ arms exports end up in Israel

And there’s plenty more, here.

The Israeli military has said that a second soldier was killed in the same attack in the central Gaza Strip that we reported on earlier.

The military identified the soldier as Sergeant Major Mordechai Yosef Ben Shoam, 34, a settler from the colony of Geva Binyamin, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Earlier, Hamas issued a statement saying it had planted the bomb and that its fighters also opened fire at the troops in the convoy.

His killing brings the military death toll since October 7 to 692 and to 334 in the ground invasion.

We now have more lines from Hamas’s spokesperson Osama Hamdan who, as we reported, said Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu was the main obstacle to reaching a ceasefire deal.

Hamdan said the Israelis declared in the latest round of talks in Qatar that they want the right to come back to fight, a condition he said was unacceptable for Palestinians.

“The main purpose of these negotiations is to stop the suffering of the Palestinians,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Even if there was a prisoner exchange, they want to have the right to attack whenever they want. How can any Palestinian accept that?”

Hamdan added that “in Israel, they don’t need to have an excuse to kill Palestinians.”

“They want to get rid of the Palestinians. This is why we insist on having a guaranteed ceasefire and a complete withdrawal.”