Arab leaders endorse Gaza rebuild scheme as alternative to Trump’s plan to ‘take over’ region – Middle East crisis live

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Jeremy Corbyn has urged the prime minister to set up an independent inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Israel’s military assault on Gaza, as the ceasefire shows no movement towards a second phase that was due to start last weekend.

In a letter to Keir Starmer, the independent MP warned “history is repeating itself” and demanded an independent inquiry over beliefs that the government has taken decisions “that have implicated officials in the gravest breaches of international law”.

“Britain has played a highly influential role in Israel’s military operations,” the letter said, adding:

Many of us have repeatedly raised objections over the continued sale of F-35 components. We have repeatedly asked for the truth regarding the role of British military bases. And we have repeatedly requested the publication of legal advice behind the government’s (currently unknown) definition of genocide.”

Corbyn criticised the current Labour government, which is facing legal action over existing arms licenses to Israel, of meeting the calls from MPs with “evasion, obstruction and silence” and “leaving the public in the dark”. The Islington North MP said he will be working with other MPs to establish an independent, public inquiry into the UK’s involvement since October 2023.

Jeremy Corbyn pictured with protesters in Whitehall, London, last month to march in solidarity with the Palestinian people after US president Donald Trump made controversial comments about Gaza. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images

The letter also drew parallels to the 2016 Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War, which after a series of delays, delivered a damning verdict on the decision by former prime minister Tony Blair to commit British troops to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, including that peaceful options for disarmament had not been exhausted and that Blair had deliberated exaggerated the threat posed by the Iraqi regime.

“Published in 2016, the report found serious failings within the British government, which ignored the warnings of millions of ordinary people over its disastrous decision to go to war,” the letter said.

It added:

Many people believe that the government has taken decisions that have implicated officials in the gravest breaches of international law. These charges will not go away until there is a comprehensive inruity with the legal power to establish the truth.”

A slow convoy of a dozen ambulances and buses brought 25 wounded and sick Palestinian children from Gaza and across Israel on Tuesday, past the heavily armed forces that bombarded the territory for 15 months, and that may be about to start again.

The patients were among the 4,500 people in Gaza believed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be in urgent need of evacuation, and they were transferred to Jordan by a joint operation by the Jordanian army, the country’s health ministry and the WHO.

The journey started at the Kerem Shalom crossing, which was the main portal of entry for humanitarian assistance through most of the war, and during the six-week ceasefire that followed.

Now that Benjamin Netanyahu has cut off all aid from entering Gaza, Kerem Shalom is all but deserted. The large car park, formerly full of aid trucks, was empty on Tuesday, except for a few soldiers and the Jordanian visitors.

Four Jordanian air force helicopters landed on an apron of asphalt, to fly four children in particularly critical condition to Amman for emergency care. The remaining 25 came out in large ambulances, including buses for their parents, guardians and young siblings.

They drove up from the southern tip where Gaza, Israel and Egypt meet, and through the area of kibbutzes and farmland where the war started on 7 October 2023 with a surprise and ferocious assault by Hamas on the rural community, in which Palestinian militants killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians.

The convoy headed north past lines of Merkava tanks and their troops, who have been ordered to take a heightened state of readiness for war as the ceasefire stalled at the end of its first six-week phase.

Opening summary

Arab leaders have endorsed a plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip under the future administration of the Palestinian Authority (PA), presenting an alternative to US president Donald Trump’s widely condemned proposal to take over the territory and displace its people.

The prospect of the PA governing Gaza remains far from certain, however, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Israel has ruled out any future role for the body, and Trump closed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) liaison office in Washington during his first term while stepping up support for Israel.

Trump triggered global outrage by suggesting the US “take over” the Gaza Strip and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, while forcing its Palestinian inhabitants to relocate to Egypt or Jordan.

Tuesday’s Arab League summit in Cairo – a day after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his support for Trump’s proposal – offered an alternative with the adoption of a “comprehensive Arab plan”. The Egyptian-devised reconstruction plan for Gaza would cost $53bn and avoid displacing Palestinians from the territory.

The White House said the plan adopted by Arab states did not address Gaza’s reality and that Trump stood by his proposal, Associated Press (AP) reported.

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In other developments:

• A convoy of a dozen ambulances and buses brought 25 wounded and sick Palestinian children from Gaza and across Israel on Tuesday, past the heavily armed forces that bombarded the territory for 15 months. The patients were among the 4,500 people in Gaza believed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be in urgent need of evacuation, and they were transferred to Jordan by a joint operation by the Jordanian army, the country’s health ministry and the WHO.

• Israel’s cutoff of food, fuel, medicine and other supplies to Gaza’s 2 million people has sent prices soaring and humanitarian groups into overdrive trying to distribute dwindling stocks to the most vulnerable. The aid freeze has imperiled the tenuous progress aid workers say they have made to stave off famine over the past six weeks during phase one of the ceasefire deal Israel and Hamas agreed to in January.

• The US state department has reinstated the “foreign terrorist organization” designation for Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi group, fulfilling an order announced by Donald Trump shortly after he took office. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced on Tuesday the department had restored the designation, which carries with it sanctions and penalties for anyone providing “material support” for the group.

• More than 200 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered on Tuesday in front of Columbia University in New York to demonstrate against former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, who was at the campus for a speaking engagement. After more than a year of protests at the campus by both supporters of Israel and opponents of the assault on Gaza after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, the appearance of the former leader of Israel’s far-right was met with expected pushback.