Witkoff to send new deal proposal, Netanyahu announces death of Mohammed Sinwar

Israel's continued assault on the Gaza Strip has become unacceptable and must stop immediately, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Wednesday.

"The legitimate reaction of the Israeli government to a terrible and senseless terrorist act is taking on dramatic and unacceptable forms, which we call on Israel to stop immediately," Tajani told parliament

Initial reports were received of an Israeli strike in Yemen. 

This is a developing story.

Hostage families and demonstrators calling for a hostage deal protested in Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning, where they blocked the Ayalon Highway near the HaShalom Interchange, Israeli media reported. 

Wednesday marks 600 days since the October 7 massacre, where Hamas abducted 251 Israelis and foreign nationals. 58 hostages remain in Hamas captivity, though only 20 are believed to be alive. 

The Prime Minister's Office on Wednesday denied the New York Times report that, in a conversation between US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister threatened to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, with the US expressing concerns that such strikes could disrupt nuclear talks.

The PMO called the report "fake news."

International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan allegedly planned to issue arrest warrants for National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. 

Khan reportedly prepared to seek these warrants before he went on leave as the UN investigates sexual assault allegations made against him. 

Israel accused Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, of “libel” for a second time after the relief chief said there are 10,000 aid trucks on the Gaza border, cleared and ready to go.

“We’ve got 10,000 trucks on the border right now, cleared [and] ready to go, and we’ll do everything to get them in and save lives,” Fletcher told CNN’s Christine Amanpour on Monday.

When she repeated the number back to him incredulously, Fletcher nodded and replied, “Full of food.”

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) posted the video on X/Twitter, saying, “Look, it’s @UNReliefChief with another libelous lie.”

“There are no 10,000 trucks waiting to go into Gaza. What there are, are hundreds of trucks’ worth of aid the UN hasn’t picked up from the Gazan side over the last few days after we gave you plenty of routes you can use to safely distribute the aid throughout Gaza.”

The IDF on Tuesday celebrated the announcement of the opening of two large food distribution centers by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which in turn said it had handed out around 462,000 meals’ worth of food.

However, the first day of distributions was plagued by ongoing controversy.

At one point in the afternoon, the Palestinian crowds who had come to receive food overran the facility’s outer defenses, trying to seize as much food as they could for themselves. This led the IDF and the US security contractors running the facility to fire warning shots in the air to make the crowd back off.

There were no reports of killing Palestinian civilians, but there were many videos on social media showing chaotic scenes of Palestinian civilians fleeing the sound of gunfire coming from a food facility where they had hoped to receive nourishment.

Some on social media said that the shooting was targeting the Palestinian civilians, while the IDF said the shots were fired in the air and that no helicopter had opened fire, but that it was merely patrolling the nearby coast.

The opening of the humanitarian aid distribution centers marks the beginning of the end of Hamas rule, an Israeli source told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday as the IDF announced the two large food distribution centers, which are said to be able to feed up to 600,000 Palestinians over the course of a week.

This is happening alongside the decisive military defeat of Hamas through intense and widespread fighting that includes conquering, clearing areas, and holding them, according to the source. 

Despite Hamas’s attempts to prevent the population from reaching the aid centers, the terror organization is failing.

The more Hamas tries to continue blocking the population, the more it will face mass resistance, the source said. 

Throughout the Israel-Hamas War, the issue of humanitarian aid being allowed into Gaza has been one of the largest issues dominating any and all attempts at understanding the war and attempts at how Gazan civilians have been impacted by it. 

This itself isn’t entirely a new issue — Israel’s longstanding blockade over Gaza and control of most of the entrances into the region have traditionally limited supplies in the area. This is further worsened by longstanding accusations that Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization that rules Gaza, maintains control over the aid in order to further their stranglehold on the populace. 

But the humanitarian crisis that has erupted in Gaza due to the war has placed renewed focus on the issue, as has the Israeli government’s sporadic blocking or limiting of all aid. 

But who is sending aid to Gaza? And what are Israel’s concerns over the aid?

Here’s everything you need to know.

A majority of Israel’s public are “not concerned” about the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, a survey published by the Institute for National Security Studies on Tuesday revealed.

The INSS poll found that 64.5% of the Israeli public is unconcerned with the aid situation in Gaza, as aid started to flow into the enclave on Tuesday. 

The IDF opened the first two aid centers on Tuesday, which are run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Sources told The Jerusalem Post that new guidelines and techniques would be followed to prevent Hamas from gaining control of the food in northern Gaza. 

The poll found that only 32% of the public is concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.