Middle East crisis live: two far-right Israeli ministers threaten to quit Netanyahu government if US truce deal agreed

Fayiz Abu Ataya was born into war and knew nothing else. Over his first and only spring, in a town stalked by hunger, he wasted away to a shadow of a child, skin stretched painfully over jutting bones.

In seven months of life, he had little time to make a mark beyond the family who loved him. But when his death from malnutrition was reported last week, it sounded a warning around the world about a rapidly deepening crisis in central and southern Gaza, triggered by the Israeli military operation in the southern town of Rafah.

At least 30 child victims of malnutrition have been recorded in Gaza, but almost all died in the north, until recently the area with the most extreme shortages of food and medical care, where a top US aid official said famine had taken hold in some areas.

The arrival of Israeli troops in Rafah in May shifted the grim calculus of threat in the strip.

“The ongoing situation in Rafah is a disaster for children,” said Jonathan Crickx, chief of communication for Unicef in Palestine. “If nutrition supplies, especially ready-to-use therapeutic food, used to address malnutrition among children, cannot be distributed, the treatment of more than 3,000 children with acute malnutrition will be interrupted.”

Welcome to our latest live blog covering the Israel-Gaza war and wider Middle East crisis – here’s an overview of where things stand.

Two far-right Israeli ministers have threatened to quit prime minister Benjamin Netanyhau’s government if he goes ahead with a ceasefire and hostage-release deal outlined by Joe Biden.

The US president said on Friday that Israel had offered a new roadmap towards a full ceasefire including the release of hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza.

But Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, said on Saturday they would quit his government if the deal went ahead.

Ben-Gvir said his party would “dissolve the government” if the proposal went through and slammed the deal as “a victory for terrorism and a security risk to the state of Israel”.

“Agreeing to such a deal is not total victory, but total defeat,” he said. Smotrich said he would “not be part of a government that will agree to the proposed outline”.

Their comments came as Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators called on Israel and Hamas to “finalise” the truce deal Biden outlined.

In other news:

• Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday there could be no permanent ceasefire in Gaza until Hamas was destroyed, casting doubt on a key part of a truce proposal that Joe Biden said Israel itself had made. The US president said the previous day that Israel had proposed a deal involving an initial six-week truce with a partial Israeli military withdrawal and the release of some hostages while the two sides negotiated “a permanent end to hostilities”. However, the Israeli prime minister’s statement said any notion that Israel would agree a permanent ceasefire before “the destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities” was “a non-starter”.

• The families of some Israeli hostages held by Hamas called for all parties to immediately accept the ceasefire proposal. Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, also said Netanyahu should accept the deal.

• Residents reported tank fire in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in west Rafah, while witnesses in the east and centre of Gaza’s southernmost city described intense artillery shelling. “From the early hours of the night until this morning, the aerial and artillery bombardment has not stopped for a single moment,” a resident from west Rafah told Agence France-Presse.

• At least 36,379 Palestinian people have been killed and 82,407 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said. An estimated 95 Palestinians were killed and 350 injured over the past 24 hours, the ministry said on Saturday.

• Hezbollah said it launched a series of attacks on Israeli military positions on Saturday after state media reported Israel had stepped up its own strikes the night before. The Lebanese militant group said on Saturday it had carried out “an air assault using explosive drones against … the Yiftah barracks, targeting the positions of enemy officers and soldiers”. The attack was in retaliation for a drone strike on a motorcycle in Majdal Selm earlier in the day, it said. The Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee said two people were injured in the drone strike.

• Egyptian, US and Israeli officials would meet in Cairo over the weekend for talks about the Rafah crossing, Egypt’s state-run Al-Qahera News said. The crossing has been closed since Israel took over the Palestinian side in early May.

• The Chilean president said his country was joining South Africa in its case at the international court of justice accusing Israel of “genocide” in the war against Hamas. Speaking to the National Congress, Gabriel Boric on Saturday decried the “catastrophic humanitarian situation” in Gaza and called for “a firm response from the international community”.

• Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted an invitation to address both houses of the US Congress, his office said on Saturday, adding that he would become the first foreign leader to make four such appearances there. The Israeli prime minister said he would be presenting “the truth about our righteous war against those who seek our destruction”.

• Tehran summoned Sweden’s temporary charge d’affaires over “baseless and spiteful accusations”, the Iranian foreign ministry said on Sunday, after Stockholm’s intelligence agency said Iran was “using criminal networks” inside the Scandinavian country to attack Israel and its interests.