Why aren’t you in The Hague? Why aren’t you in The Hague ... to receive food aid in Deir al Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Thursday.Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty ...

A new report published in the U.K. medical journal The Lancet indicates that far from exaggerating the human suffering in Gaza, the ministry has likely underestimated the true number of the dead by as much as 41 percent.

Negotiations between Israel and Hamas hit a last-minute snag, delaying the expected announcement of a ceasefire agreement to pause the devastating 15-month war in the Gaza Strip.

Chaos erupted at Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s final press conference Thursday after an announced Israel-Hamas cease-fire and hostage deal, with State Department employees forcibly removing reporters who accused the cabinet official of allowing a “genocide” in Gaza.

The deal promises the release of dozens of hostages held by Hamas in phases and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip have meanwhile killed at least ... The International Criminal Court, a separate body also based in The Hague, has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu ...

The deal is expected to deliver an initial six-week halt to fighting that is to be accompanied by the opening of negotiations on ending the war altogether.

Hundreds of truckloads of food, fuel and other supplies have arrived in Gaza each day since the cease-fire took effect. But the need is vast after 15 months of war.

Netanyahu is under pressure from right-wing members of his coalition government to resume bombardment of the Gaza Strip until Hamas is destroyed. Several have said they received assurances from Netanyahu that after the first phase of the truce ends, Israeli troops and fighter jets will once again launch in and over Gaza.

Inside a lavish clubhouse on Doha’s waterfront, tensions strained by months of fruitless back-and-forth weighed on negotiators as the hour neared 3 a.m.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations have publicly claimed credit for pushing the agreement over the line.

Israel’s leaders claimed the right to self-defence against Hamas, but as Omer Bartov, a major historian of the Holocaust, recognised in August 2024, they sought from the very beginning “to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable,