Israel-Gaza war: US condemns ‘cynical’ Russia and China veto of ceasefire deal; Israel to go into Rafah ‘with or without US support’ – as it happened

People living in Gaza are facing exorbitant food prices as more than one million residents of the Palestinian territory face famine.

Since Israel’s invasion in October, it has become common for Gaza’s displaced population to share pictures of their shopping baskets and document how high prices have risen amid food shortages.

But in the southern city of Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population now live, onions cost 50 times their pre-war price and leafy vegetables – such as spinach, jute leaves and chard, which are common – sell for 25 times their former price, according to a new analysis by the humanitarian organisation Christian Aid.

William Bell, Christian Aid’s head of Middle East policy, said: “Due to a lack of humanitarian access, there is not enough available food for people to survive, let alone have a healthy diet. As a consequence, children in Gaza are dying of malnutrition and disease while the world turns a blind eye.”

The charity found that a litre of oil now costs £13, up from £4.25 ($5.40) before the war, while a 25kg bag of flour – which might be £15 in Rafah – could sell for more than £300 in northern Gaza, where humanitarian deliveries are limited.

You can read the full piece by Kaamil Ahmed here:

France will work on a new UN resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza following the Russian and Chinese veto against a resolution proposed by the US, French president Emmanuel Macron said on Friday, reports Reuters.

“Following Russia’s and China’s veto a few minutes ago, we are going to resume work on the basis of the French draft resolution in the security council and work with our American, European and Arab partners to reach an agreement,” Macron said at end of a EU leaders’ summit in Brussels.

France’s foreign ministry said on Thursday it had started drafting a resolution with diplomats, saying they would put a draft forward if the US resolution did not pass.

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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that Israel remained determined to send troops into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than one million Palestinians are sheltering, and would do so without US backing if necessary.

According to Reuters, Netanyahu told the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken: “I hope we will do it with the support of the US, but if we have to - we will do it alone.”

Netanyahu said in a statement he had told Blinken, who is visiting Israel as part of his Middle East tour, that there was no way to defeat Hamas without going into Rafah.

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Jason Burke in Jerusalem has additional comments on Gaza by James Elder, a spokesperson with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) in the below piece.

We reported earlier (10:59 GMT) on Elder saying he was “overwhelmed by loss” as he travelled through Khan Younis in southern Gaza. He also warned against a large scale military operation in Rafah calling the city “Gaza’s last hope”.

Jason Burke writes:

“The depth of the horror surpasses our ability to describe it,” said James Elder, a spokesperson with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

“As soon as you drive through the north, you get that universal gesture of hunger of people putting their hands to their mouths. A lot of children, women with very gaunt faces. In [the city of] Khan Younis, there is utter annihilation.

“I’ve not seen that level of devastation in 20 years with the UN. People’s coping capacity in the north has been smashed and in the south it is hanging by a thread,” Elder said in an interview on Friday.

Elder said that he saw a dozen “skeletal” children at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza.

“We are seeing severe malnutrition cases … Children who are on the brink of death, just skin and bones … and these are the ones who have managed to get to hospital. There is a real fear for those that can’t,” Elder said. “This is man-made and preventable.”

Medical staff at the hospital worked 36-hour shifts and then joined their families to search for clean water, food or shelter, Elder said.

Russia and China on Friday vetoed a US-sponsored UN resolution calling for “an immediate and sustained ceasefire” in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza to protect civilians and enable humanitarian aid to be delivered to more than two million hungry Palestinians.

According to the Associated Press (AP), the vote in the 15-member security council was 11 members in favour, three against and one abstention.

Before the vote, Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow supports an immediate ceasefire, but he questioned the language in the resolution and accused the US secretary of state Antony Blinken and US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield of “misleading the international community” for “politicised” reasons, says AP.

According to Reuters, Spain has agreed with the leaders of Ireland, Malta and Slovenia to take the first steps towards recognising a Palestinian state, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said on Friday following a meeting of the European Council in Brussels.

In breaking news, Reuters reports that the UN security council did not pass the US resolution calling for an “immediate” ceasefire in Gaza as part of a hostage deal.

A UN humanitarian official appealed on Friday for more than $4bn (£3.17bn) in aid for more than 10 million Syrians, saying that the country’s largely forgotten crisis remains “one of the most deadly to civilians in the world”, reports the Associated Press (AP).

Adam Abdelmoula, resident coordinator in Syria for the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, made the appeal days after Syria marked the 13th anniversary of the conflict that has killed nearly a half million people and left large parts of the country destroyed.

“Today, we are facing an unprecedented situation in Syria - one that we cannot afford to ignore,” Abdelmoula told reporters in Geneva. “Inaction will be costly for all of us and will inevitably lead to additional suffering.”

About 16.7 million people require some form of humanitarian assistance in Syria, an increase from 15.3 million last year, he said. More than seven million people are internally displaced and nearly as many are refugees in other countries, including neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, reports the AP.

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The war has left 90% of Syria’s population below the poverty line as millions face cuts in food aid because of a funding shortfall. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) ended its main assistance program in the country in January.

“The Syria crisis remains one of the most deadly to civilians in the world. Hostilities continue to plague various parts of Syria and have recently seen a sharp spike, especially in the north,” Abdelmoula said.

He suggested that Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza had given cover for more military activity in parts of Syria.

“We saw the world’s attention focusing on Gaza, and that provided some kind of diversion of attention that allowed the significant escalation of hostilities in the northeast without much attention being paid to that situation by the international community,” Abdelmoula said.

“We are competing with so many crises. If you look at the global picture, you have Gaza, you have Ukraine, you have Sudan, you have Afghanistan ... and the list goes on and on,” he said.

“With each emerging crisis, the Syria one that is now over a decade old keeps being pushed to the back burner,” said Abdelmoula. “We are struggling to keep it in the global attention. And that is proving to be challenging every year.”

Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run government media office in Gaza, said the misidentification and the inclusion of pictures of medical staff and people outside the country by the Israeli military in a composite picture of what was described as detainees from al-Shifa hospital showed it was spreading false narratives to justify its assault on the medical complex.

R Adm Daniel Hagari, Israel’s main military spokesperson, displayed a composite picture of what were described as detainees from al-Shifa hospital during a briefing late on Thursday.

Reuters reports that on Friday, the Israeli military said some of the photographs were of militants who had not been detained but whose pictures were included through human error.

According to the Times of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israeli internal security forces, known as the Shin Bet, denied the composite was an attempt at “psychological warfare.”

In a joint statement published on the Israeli online newspaper’s article, the IDF and Shin Bet said: “Due to human error, there are several photos in the graphic of terrorists who have not yet been caught but are, according to the information we have, in the area of ​​the hospital and are holed up there.”

The Times of Israel said the IDF would “provide the identities of all those it had captured once the operation at Shifa is over”.

Israeli troops entered the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in the early hours of Monday morning and have been combing through the sprawling complex, which the military says is connected to a tunnel network used as a base for Palestinian fighters.

It says troops have killed hundreds of fighters in the operation and also detained more than 500 suspects, including 358 members of the Islamist militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Hamas and medical staff deny that the hospital is used for military purposes or to shelter fighters.

In recent days, Hamas spokespeople have said that the dead announced in previous Israeli statements were not fighters but patients and displaced people and have accused Israel of war crimes.

The US secretary of state Antony Blinken has spent around 40 minutes in talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, Reuters reports.

Ahead of the meeting, Blinken said he would push for more aid to flow into Gaza and address the growing gap between the two countries. Blinken also met the Israeli war cabinet.

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“A hundred percent of the population of Gaza is experiencing severe levels of acute food insecurity. We cannot, we must not allow that to continue,” Blinken told a news conference on Thursday evening.