What we know
- The U.S. has submitted a draft resolution to the United Nations calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza that is tied to the release of Israeli hostages, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday. Blinken, on his sixth tour of the Middle East since October, said in an interview on Saudi TV that a truce deal was "getting closer," although he did not elaborate. He will travel to Israel tomorrow after meetings in Egypt today. The language in the resolution is the strongest yet put forward by the Biden administration.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved an Israeli delegation to go to Qatar tomorrow as part of ongoing hostage negotiations, his office said today.
- Netanyahu told Senate Republicans in a video call last night that he would press on with the war in Gaza. But days after he called for new elections in Israel, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., declined Netanyahu's request to address the Senate Democratic Caucus. A spokesperson for Schumer said he had made it clear that he does not think the discussions should happen in a partisan manner.
- The Israeli military said today that it had killed 50 Palestinian gunmen over the past day in fighting around the Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza. It added that over 140 suspected Hamas fighters have been killed during "precise operational activity" at the complex, which it says the militant group was using as a base. Gaza's Health Ministry said around 30,000 people, including patients, medical staff members and displaced people, are sheltering at the facility.
- The death toll in Gaza since Oct. 7 has surpassed 31,900, including at least 27 people who have died of malnutrition, according to the enclave's Health Ministry. Another 73,500 have been reported injured. The Israeli military said at least 247 soldiers have been killed since the ground invasion of Gaza began.
Scenes from inside Al-Shifa Hospital: blood-splattered walls, blown-off ceilings
Amid the banged up corridors of Al-Shifa Hospital's surgical unit in Gaza, blood can be seen splattered on the walls and wrecked medical equipment is strewn across the floor, according to NBC News shot video from inside the hospital yesterday.
Recorded in the aftermath of an intense military raid on the hospital, the video shows walls blown off and ceilings collapsed.
Heavy gunfire can also be heard off camera.
Israeli forces have been operating at Al-Shifa Hospital this week in what the military described as intelligence-based missions to eliminate Hamas and Palestinian Jihad militants.
Today, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari alleged that militants have barricaded themselves inside rooms and that Israeli forces are relocating patients as they operate.
The Gaza media office said 13 patients died this week, blaming the raids for cutting off access to basics such as medicine and food.
NBC News has not independently verified the IDF's or the Gaza media office's claims.
Israel is using starvation as an 'intentional weapon of war,' Rashida Tlaib says in congressional speech
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., accused Israel of committing this century's worst crimes against humanity during a speech today calling for an immediate cease-fire.
Tlaib is the only Palestinian American member of Congress. As she spoke she had two images beside her, one of a 10-year-old Palestinian boy who starved in Gaza and another of children waiting for food with buckets.
"This isn't a tragic accident," Tlaib said. "What we are witnessing, all around this world, is the Israeli government using starvation as a weapon of war. The starvation is a result of the total siege on Gaza and the intentional targeting of local food production, infrastructure, and obstruction of aid convoys."
Israel has denied accusations that it has limited humanitarian aid in Gaza and that it has violated international humanitarian law. Blinken said today in Egypt that Israel needs to "do more" to increase aid into Gaza.
Tlaib ran out of time, ending her speech by telling her congressional colleagues that "lasting cease-fire is what we need."
Gazans increasingly back a two-state solution as support for Hamas drops
Support for Hamas as a political party has fallen to 34% among Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, a 12-point drop from December, according to a poll released yesterday by a leading Palestinian research institute.
While the war is eroding Palestinians’ view of Hamas as the governing body in Gaza, support remains relatively high for the militant group’s role in the war.
Seventy percent of Palestinians said they were “satisfied” with Hamas’ war performance, compared to that of other Palestinian entities, like its political rival Fatah, whose deeply unpopular leader, Mahmoud Abbas, governs the West Bank. Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the war with Israel, which has killed more than 31,000 people in Gaza, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
The poll was conducted in person March 5-10, at the start of the fifth month of the war, with a sample size of 1,580 — 830 of those polled lived in the West Bank and 750 in the Gaza Strip — by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent survey organization based in Ramallah that has surveyors across Gaza. The center has measured public opinion in the Palestinian territories quarterly since the 1990s.
WHO has lost contact with staff at Al-Shifa Hospital
The World Health Organization and its partners have been unable to contact medical staff at Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza since Israeli forces raided the medical complex days ago, according to a statement from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
"Accessing Al-Shifa is now impossible, and there are reports of health workers being arrested and detained," Tedros wrote on X. "A planned mission to Al-Shifa today had to be cancelled due to lack of security."
International aid agencies are seeking information about patients' conditions and about reports of medical staff members' being arrested, he added.
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari alleged today that militants have barricaded themselves inside rooms at Al-Shifa hospital and that Israeli forces are relocating patients as they operate inside. The IDF alleges that it has killed or arrested hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Jihad militants at the hospital complex.
NBC News has not independently verified the IDF's statement.
Security Council to vote on U.S. resolution for cease-fire tomorrow morning
The U.S. is putting forth a resolution to the United Nations Security Council tomorrow morning that will call for an "immediate" cease-fire in Gaza as part of a hostage deal, said Nate Evans, spokesperson for the U.S. delegation.
Though it calls for an immediate and sustained cease-fire, the U.S. resolution also ties a pause in hostilities to the immediate release of all hostages remaining in Gaza, according to a draft seen by NBC News earlier today.
"This Resolution is an opportunity for the Council to speak with one voice to support the diplomacy happening on the ground and pressure Hamas to accept the deal on the table," Evans said.
This draft comes after the U.S. used its veto to reject three prior cease-fire resolutions brought to the Security Council since the war began in October. The most recent veto was the Algerian proposal in February that had 13 out of 15 members' approval, with the United Kingdom abstaining.
U.S. draft resolution for a cease-fire comes amid Biden's vocal displeasure with Netanyahu
Tensions are apparent between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and, in a change of course, the U.S. has submitted a draft resolution to the U.N. calling for an immediate cease-fire.
MSNBC analyst Peter Baker notes that part of Biden's challenge is that Netanyahu's policies are supported by Israel's political establishment, even as the president makes his disagreement known to the public.
"Now this language you're hearing today suggests a further slip-step toward, you know, a more vocal, a more assertive position by the president," Baker said. "But if you look inside his administration, he is the one person who is standing by Israel the most."
Pregnant Palestinian women risking death with early births 'to preserve' baby's lives, UNRWA says
Pregnant Palestinians in northern Gaza are trying to go into labor early, risking their own lives in the hopes that their babies may live, the United Nations' Palestinian refugee agency said.
The agency shared a video from one of its staff members, Scott Anderson, taken while he was visiting Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City. He said that while he remembers the joy of his own child's birth, parenthood in Gaza has become a "frightening experience."
"Mothers are concerned they won't be alive in two weeks," Anderson said. "They’re concerned that the hospital won't be here in two weeks and they're trying to have babies early — to give up their own lives to preserve their baby's."
Two infants Anderson visited were 2 months old and had signs of malnutrition.
The United Nations reported earlier this month that only two hospitals are offering maternity services in Gaza, though an estimated 180 women are giving birth every day. In northern Gaza, where famine is imminent, pregnant Palestinians face malnourishment in addition to the high risk of infection and communicable diseases.
Aid to Gaza has improved, but it's 'not enough,' Blinken says during visit to Egypt
Israel must do more to facilitate aid into Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said today, saying that recent efforts have improved the flow of goods but it's still "not enough."
Blinken, who is once again visiting the region, spent Thursday meeting with ministers from other Arab nations and held a news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. The group discussed a number of issues, including concerns over an invasion into Rafah and pathways to regional stability.
"I think if you look back on these past couple of months since I was here in January, we have been working very closely together with our Arab partners on all of these post-conflict pieces," Blinken said. "There's not only more consensus on the priorities ... I think there's increasingly a consensus on the steps needed to get there."
As for aid, Blinken noted that it's not just a surge of supplies that is needed, but to ensure that the aid is sustained over time.
"The cease-fire that we are working on would be the best, most immediate way ... but it is not the only way," Blinken said.
Dozens of former U.S. officials urge Biden to take harder line with Israel
WASHINGTON — Nearly 70 former U.S. officials, diplomats and military officers on yesterday urged Biden to warn Israel of serious consequences if it denies civil rights and basic necessities to Palestinians and expands settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.
“The United States must be willing to take concrete action to oppose” such practices, the group said in an open letter to Biden, “including restrictions on provision of (U.S.) assistance (to Israel) consistent with U.S. law and policy.”
Among the signatories were more than a dozen former ambassadors, as well as other retired State Department officials and former Pentagon, intelligence and White House officials, including Anthony Lake, a national security adviser to former President Bill Clinton.
The letter underscored rising dismay in the United States over Israeli operations against the Gaza Strip’s ruling Hamas militants ignited by their Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel in which they killed some 1,200 people and took 253 hostages.
In its letter, the group said that an Israeli military operation against Hamas was “necessary and justified.”
But Israel’s operations “have been marked by repeated violations” of international law banning indiscriminate killing and the use of weapons that do not permit discrimination between combatants and civilians, the group said. Israel denies that its operations breach international law.
“Tens of thousands of Gazan civilians have been killed, the majority of whom are women and children,” the group said. “Civilian killings of this nature and magnitude cannot be justified.”