Israel rejects mounting pressure for Palestinian state

Two U.S. Navy SEALs lost in nighttime seas during a raid on a small boat off Somalia were declared dead today.

The 10-day mission has shifted from search and rescue to recovery, U.S. Central Command said in a statement.

“We regret to announce that after a 10-day exhaustive search, our two missing U.S. Navy SEALs have not been located and their status has been changed to deceased,” it said.

The two were not publicly identified, and CENTCOM said no further information would be made immediately available “out of respect” for their families.

Two U.S. defense officials said one of the SEALs had tried to board the vessel amid rough seas and fell into the water. The second dived in after the first, as is protocol, the officials said.

The vessel, known as a dhow, was carrying “Iranian advanced conventional weapons” as the raid took place Jan. 11, CENTCOM said today.

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TEL AVIV — The Louisiana mosque of a Palestinian American teenager who was fatally shot in the occupied West Bank on Friday has been devastated by news of his death.

“We are like brothers and sisters," Karim Taha, a board member of Masjid Omar, the mosque Tawfic Hafeth Abdel Jabbar belonged to, said in a phone call today. "We all lived here in the ‘West Bank,’” he said, referring to the West Bank of the Mississippi River, where the teen lived.

“We all share happiness and sadness. We’re just like a family here," he said.

Abdel Jabbar's father, Hafeth Abdel Jabbar, told NBC News his 17-year-old son had been in the West Bank since May to spend time in Al-Mazra’a Al-Sharqiya, the village his dad grew up in. The teen had gone out to have a picnic with friends when he was fatally shot, he said.

The IDF and Israel police have said they are investigating the incident, which they both said was alleged to involve a civilian, an off-duty police officer and an IDF soldier.

“Everybody’s sad," Taha said. "And I guess there’s nowhere safe in Palestine now. Either you get hit by a soldier or the settlers.”

The repeated rejections by Netanyahu and other Israeli ministers prompted a call for international sanctions from the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates in a statement today.

The ministry accused Israel's current right-wing coalition of sabotaging the peace process, condemning Netanyahu's recent statements about the matter as racist and "anti-peace" colonialism.

The statement added that "it is time for the international community to impose sanctions on Netanyahu and his coalition" to hold the Israeli lawmakers responsible for Netanyahu’s “systematic failure” and the humanitarian disaster befalling Palestinians.

A total of 150 aid trucks and six fuel trucks went through the Rafah crossing today into Gaza, Dr. Khaled Zayed, head of the Egyptian Red Crescent, told NBC News.

There were also 35 wounded people, accompanied by relatives, who were transported into the northern Sinai Peninsula to receive medical treatment, Zayed said.

Jagan Chapagain, CEO of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the Palestine Red Crescent Society received 80 trucks yesterday.

"Yet, the situation remains dire and the amount of aid entering into Gaza is not enough to address the immense needs," Chapagain wrote on X.

SAN FRANCISCO — Amid a tough re-election fight, Mayor London Breed has declined to veto a nonbinding resolution from the San Francisco supervisors calling for an extended cease-fire in Gaza, a measure she blamed for inflaming tensions in the city.

The first-term Democrat posted her decision online Friday, faulting the board for veering into foreign policy in which its members have no legal authority or expertise. She said the debate over the resolution left the city “angrier, more divided and less safe.”

“Their exercise was never about bringing people together,” Breed wrote in a statement. “It was about choosing a side.”

A divided board approved the resolution earlier this month, which also condemned Hamas as well as the Israeli government and urged the Biden administration to press for the release of all hostages and delivery of humanitarian aid. Cease-fire advocates in the audience erupted into cheers and chants of “Free Palestine.”

Breed earlier criticized the supervisors, saying, “The process at the board only inflamed division and hurt.”

San Francisco joined dozens of other U.S. cities in approving a resolution that has no legal weight but reflects pressure on local governments to speak up on the Israel-Hamas war, now in its fourth month following a deadly Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants.

SIDON, Lebanon — An Israeli airstrike hit two vehicles near a Lebanese army checkpoint in south Lebanon on Sunday, killing a Hezbollah member and wounding several other people, including civilians, Lebanese state media and health officials reported.

The strike appeared to be part of a shift in Israeli strategy toward targeted killings in Lebanon after more than three months of near-daily clashes with Hezbollah militants on the border against the backdrop of the war in Gaza.

Hezbollah announced that one of its members, identified as Fadel Shaar, had been killed in the strike in the town of Kafra. Local civil defense and hospital officials said seven people were wounded, including two women, one of whom was in critical condition.

Video from the scene showed a passenger sedan in flames next to a small truck stopped in the middle of the road.

The Israeli military did not comment on the strike.

Gaza's main sewage station has flooded and is now seeping out into the surrounding areas, according to a translated post on X from Gaza's municipality account.

The post included pictures of what appeared to be floodwaters as the municipality said the destruction of some parts of the station and its electrical generators have caused the station to fail. NBC News has not verified the post.

"We appealed several times to relief institutions and international organizations for the need to intervene to solve the health and environmental crises, but there is no real response so far," the municipality said.

Last week, the World Health Organization said two dozen cases of hepatitis A had been confirmed in Gaza by test kits the organization provided. Hepatitis A is a preventable and highly contagious liver infection caused by ingesting contaminated food and water, according to the WHO.

TEL AVIV — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his opposition to establishing a Palestinian state during a speech today, saying he informed President Joe Biden of his view that it would conflict with Israel's security.

"Gaza must be demilitarized, under full security control of the state of Israel," Netanyahu said. "I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of Jordan."

While he says he appreciates U.S. support, Netanyahu is unwilling to accept the U.S. view on the necessity of a two-state solution. The prime minister also said he opposed Hamas conditions on the release of more than 100 hostages who remain captive in Gaza Strip — the end of war and a complete removal of Israel's presence in the enclave.

"I am not ready to put up with such a fatal injury to Israel’s security, so we will not agree to it," he said. "The conditions set by Hamas sharpen a simple truth — there is no substitute for victory."

Netanyahu is facing increasing internal discord in Israel as citizens continue to call for another hostage deal. The Times of Israel reported today that thousands gathered in rallies in Tel Aviv, Caesarea and Jerusalem, where many demanded new elections be held.

Israel's military said that fighter jets attacked Hezbollah infrastructure today, as the organization also claimed its own attacks against sites in northern Israel.

According to the IDF, jets attacked what was described as an observation post and a launch post belonging to Hezbollah in Markaba, a Lebanese village close to the border with Israel. The military also said that jets and tanks attacked a "Hezbollah operational command center and military compound" in various locations in southern Lebanon, without providing additional detail.

Hezbollah also claimed that it "directly hit" Israeli sites today, including a rocket attack on Israeli-occupied land in the Shebaa Farms.

Death is accelerated in Gaza as patients rush to overwhelmed hospitals, where treatment options are limited as health care workers are outnumbered and undersupplied, Ministry of Health spokesperson Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra says.

NBC News reported Thursday that deaths in Gaza are are now frequently slow, painful and often preventable.

"There are hundreds of serious and complex cases awaiting their turn in surgical operations, and there is an urgent trade-off between the wounded," Al-Qudra said. "70% of the medical aid that entered the Gaza Strip is outside the scope of our basic needs."

Al-Qudra accused Israel of deliberately “suffocating and destroying the health system.”

Reacting to mounting international pressure on Israel to negotiate for a two-state solution, ministers in Israel's security Cabinet rallied round Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rejection of the idea.

“There is a broad consensus in Israel against a Palestinian state and the division of the land,” said far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on X, adding “the White House also needs to be disillusioned with the concepts that led to Israel’s national disaster.”

Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of Israel's far-right "Jewish Power" party and the minister of national security added in a separate post, “I do deny a Palestinian state. Always!”

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza — Israel’s military says it discovered prison cells where hostages were held in a Hamas tunnel network under the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

NBC News was given access to the cells on Friday, following Israeli troops into the basement of a house and then into a dark tunnel beneath. Each cell had a caged door that could be locked from the outside, a sink, toilet and a shower — though none had running water. One had a dirty single mattress.

“We’re feeling the way the hostages felt,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, told NBC News. “It’s dark. It’s hot. It’s wet. It’s lonely. There’s no daylight. You lose the sense of direction, the sense of time.”

Israel’s military said it had discovered hair and other DNA evidence confirming that hostages were held in the cells. Hagari said that the layout of the compound matched descriptions given by hostages released in late November, and the IDF also released pictures of what it said were children’s pictures discovered at the site — drawn by child hostages during their days of captivity.

One-hundred and five hostages are believed to remain alive and in captivity in the Gaza Strip, along with the bodies of 27 others. One-hundred and ten hostages have been returned to Israel and other countries, and the bodies of 11 more have been recovered.

Israeli warplanes bombed multiple areas of Khan Younis, Gaza’s biggest southern city, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries overnight, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Information.

Warplanes targeted the Al-Amal neighborhood in the city’s west, killing “several” people and wounding others, the ministry said, although it did not state how many. It added that there was artillery shelling “in the vicinity of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.”

Nasser hospital is the largest remaining hospital still partly working in Gaza. On Friday, medical staff working there warned fighting had come into the vicinity of the hospital, leading to fears of evacuation orders and forced closure as the facility continues to receive wounded patients daily.

Israel will transfer funds earmarked for the Palestinian Authority via a third-party country without funding for Gaza, the Security Cabinet confirmed today.

The Palestinian Authority, which was due to receive the funds in September, has previously refused to accept the money without funding for its services and employees in Gaza, which Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has steadfastly refused to include, despite pressure from the U.S.

The prime minister’s office said in a statement today that “the United States and Norway respect the decision of the political and security cabinet that ordered a halt to the transfer of Gaza funds to the Palestinian Authority” and that the frozen funds for Gaza will remain in the hands of a third-party country.

“The money will not be transferred under any circumstances, except with the approval of the Minister of Finance of Israel, not even through a third party,” the statement added, saying that violation of the agreement would lead to a freezing of “all the Palestinians’ settlement funds.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said today that refusals to accept a two-state solution were "unacceptable" and that "the right of the Palestinian people to build their own state must be recognized by all."

The comments, posted on X, follow repeated and increasingly forceful rejections of a Palestinian state from several senior Israeli politicians this week.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “in the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea,” evoking a phrase currently popular among Palestinian liberation campaigners that Israelis have repeatedly claimed is genocidal.

Guterres' comments also followed repeated demands for a two-state solution by leaders across the world this week, including in the U.S., the U.K. and France.

Writing on X, Stéphane Séjourné, the French foreign minister said, “Palestinians have the right to sovereignty and statehood. France will remain faithful to its commitment to achieve this goal.”

An airstrike on the Syrian capital of Damascus that killed at least five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including a high-ranking intelligence officer, prompted a warning from Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

The strike would "not go unanswered," he said yesterday. Iran has blamed the attack on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.

Earlier this month, a strike in Beirut attributed to Israel killed Saleh Al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official.

The collapsing health situation in the Gaza is "catastrophic and painful," a Health Ministry spokesperson said in a statement today, accusing Israel of "deliberately strangl[ing]" the system.

Medical teams across the strip "cannot respond to the volume and type of daily infections," spokesperson Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra said, adding that the accumulation of cases and the lack of treatment facilities in hospitals was accelerating the loss of life.

World Health Organization officials said earlier this week that the health system in Gaza was "collapsing" amid mass displacement and shortages of supplies and staff, leading to the rapid spread of disease.

At least two-thirds of the hospitals in Gaza have ceased functioning entirely as a result of partial or total damage, according to the organization.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza — Israel’s military says it discovered prison cells where hostages were held in a Hamas tunnel network under the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

NBC News was given access to the cells on Friday, following Israeli troops into the basement of a house and then into a dark tunnel beneath. Each cell had a caged door that could be locked from the outside, a sink, toilet and a shower — though none had running water. One had a dirty single mattress.

“We’re feeling the way the hostages felt,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, told NBC News. “It’s dark. It’s hot. It’s wet. It’s lonely. There’s no daylight. You lose the sense of direction, the sense of time.”

Israel’s military said it had discovered hair and other DNA evidence confirming that hostages were held in the cells. Hagari said that the layout of the compound matched descriptions given by hostages released in late November, and the IDF also released pictures of what it said were children’s pictures discovered at the site — drawn by child hostages during their days of captivity.

One-hundred and five hostages are believed to remain alive and in captivity in the Gaza Strip, along with the bodies of 27 others. One-hundred and ten hostages have been returned to Israel and other countries, and the bodies of 11 more have been recovered.

The U.S. Air Force carried out another attack against a Houthi anti-ship missile yesterday, the U.S. Central Command said, the seventh strike against Houthi rebels this month.

Central Command said the missile was aimed into the Gulf of Aden and that U.S. forces “struck and destroyed the missile in self-defense” after determining it was a threat to U.S. Navy ships in the area.

The Israeli military continued its land, sea and air operation in Gaza on Saturday and into Sunday across both the north and south of the Gaza Strip, the IDF said in a statement today.

In Tuffah in the northern Gaza Strip, ground forces killed 15 people the IDF identified as "terrorists," and conducted raids on "Hamas structures." In Khan Younis, snipers assisted by Israel's air force killed more people, and the IDF said that it had "located large quantities of weapons inside a Hamas structure."

Naval forces were assisting troops on the ground with observation and in strikes, the IDF added.

Earlier this month, the IDF laid out plans for a more "targeted" phase of the war, but the death toll in Gaza has yet to abate.

Nearly 180 people were estimated to have been killed within the last 24 hours, sending Gaza's death toll past 25,000, according to Gaza's Ministry of Health.

LONDON — Two British warships collided in a harbor in Bahrain, causing damage to the vessels but no injuries, the Royal Navy said.

The HMS Chiddingfold appeared to reverse into the HMS Bangor as it was at a dock, according to video posted on social media.

“Why this happened is still to be established,” said Rear Adm. Edward Ahlgren. “We train our people to the highest standards and rigorously enforce machinery safety standards, but unfortunately incidents of this nature can still happen.”

Ahlgren said an investigation is under way into what went wrong.

The two minehunters have been based in the Middle East to help protect merchant vessels.

The British military last week joined the U.S. in bombing more than a dozen sites used by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, whose relentless attacks on cargo vessels and warships in the Red Sea have disrupted global shipping.

A number of U.S. personnel were evaluated for possible traumatic brain injury following a missile and rocket attack on a military base in western Iraq, U.S. Central Command said in a statement Saturday.

The attack was reported at 6:30 p.m. local time at Al-Assad Airbase, where some American personnel are based, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. The exact conditions of those affected were unavailable; at least one Iraqi service member was injured, Central Command said.

U.S. coalition and Iraqi partners were trying to verify reports of several minor injuries among U.S. personnel and one seriously injured Iraqi Security Force personnel, three defense officials said.

Iraqi military officials said the headquarters of the country’s 29th Brigade, 7th Division were damaged in the attack.

Central Command blamed Iranian-backed militants for the attack that included multiple ballistic missiles and rockets. “Most of the missiles were intercepted by the base’s air defense systems while others impacted on the base,” Central Command said.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed credit for the attack, saying the munitions were launched “in continuation of our approach to resist the American occupation forces in Iraq and the region, and in response to the Zionist entity’s massacres against our people in Gaza.”

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