February 14, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his first visit to Egypt since 2012 on Wednesday.

Live feeds from news outlets showed Erdogan in Cairo, disembarking his plane with the first lady and being greeted by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Erdogan is due to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip — including a potential ceasefire and delivering aid —with Sisi, according to a spokesperson of the Egyptian Presidency. 

Rift in Turkey-Egypt relations: Diplomatic ties between the two Mediterranean major-Muslim countries reached a low point after now-Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi led a military coup to oust the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s first democratically elected government.

Erdogan, whose religious conservative government had close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, was outraged when it was overthrown in 2014, called Sisi an “illegitimate tyrant.” 

As Turkey continued to back the Brotherhood in Egypt and across the region, the relationship continued to deteriorate. Egypt was also part of the years-long blockade of Qatar led by Saudi Arabia and UAE while Turkey stood by Doha. Much to Ankara’s frustration, in 2020 Egypt inked a maritime agreement with Turkey’s main rival Greece in the eastern Mediterranean.

Thawing of diplomatic relations: Only in 2021, following the end of the diplomatic crisis, did relations between Ankara and Cairo begin to warm. Despite strained political ties, trade has more than doubled since an Egypt-Turkey free trade deal came into effect in 2007.

Murat Aslan, an international politics professor at Hasan Kalyoncu University, says Erdogan’s trip is a turning point in relations for the two countries.

“The region needs cooperation, not confrontation,” he told CNN. 

Ireland and Spain have requested an EU investigation into whether or not Israel is “complying with its obligations to respect human rights in Gaza,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on social media on Wednesday.

Sanchez and Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar wrote a letter to the President of the European Commission, asking the Commission to “undertake an urgent review of whether Israel is complying with its obligations, including under the EU/Israel Association Agreement, which makes respect for human rights and democratic principles an essential element of the relationship.”

The leaders told EU chief Ursula von der Leyen that they are “deeply concerned at the deteriorating situation in Israel and Gaza,” especially with the impact the conflict is having on “innocent Palestinians, especially children and women.”

Noting the provisional measures imposed by the International Court of Justice in late January, where it was ordered that Israel must take “all measures” to prevent genocide in Gaza, the leaders called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to prevent “further irreversible harm to the people of Gaza."

A spokesperson for the European Commission, Arianna Podesta, told CNN that the Commission received the letter on Wednesday morning. “So of course, what we will do now is look into it,” she said.

Ahead of an expected Israeli ground operation on Rafah in southern Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO) has pleaded with Israel to not carry out the incursion, saying it will be a “serious disaster.”

“The situation is already beyond words. I can’t even describe the situation in Gaza. And if this assault happens on Rafah I think it will be a serious disaster,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told CNN’s Becky Anderson in Dubai on Tuesday in an exclusive interview. 

Panic is soaring in Rafah as desperate Palestinians decide whether to flee the last refuge in Gaza while Israel draws up plans for its ground offensive. Dr. Tedros called for a ceasefire, saying it was the only way to find a lasting solution to the conflict. 

“More than 28,000 deaths now, and more than 70% are women and children. That alone is enough to stop the war, because those who are dying are the wrong people and who haven’t done anything to bring this problem," he said.

The Israeli Air Force has begun an “extensive wave of attacks” in Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Wednesday.

Lebanese state media and Hezbollah-owned media reported air raids on several towns on southern Lebanon, including Aadchit, Souaneh and Chehabiya.

The Israeli strikes follow an earlier rocket attack on the northern Israeli city of Safed, which the IDF said originated from Lebanese territory.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on Hamas to "quickly" reach a deal for the release of hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, Palestinian news agency WAFA said. 

CIA, Mossad, Qatari and Egyptian officials met in Cairo on Tuesday for talks about a potential hostage deal, which a US official described as “productive and serious,” although no breakthrough has been reached. 

Abbas urged the group to conclude the deal to “protect Palestinian people and avoid an attack on Rafah.” 

Abbas also called on the US and Arab nations to “work seriously” to complete the deal. 

A US official said the outstanding area of disagreement among the parties in the hostage talks is the ratio of Palestinian prisoners to hostages that would be released as part of the deal.

The Israeli delegation has since returned from Cairo, but Egyptian government sources told state media that consultations will continue in Egypt over the next three days.

Palestinian civilians on Wednesday are fleeing Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, amid an ongoing Israeli military operation, according to a journalist at the hospital, the Ministry of Health in Gaza, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

A journalist at the hospital with whom CNN spoke on Wednesday said that hundreds of patients and people sheltering at the hospital are leaving. The sound of heavy gunfire can be heard in the background.

“The Israeli occupation forces thousands of displaced people, families of medical staff, and patients who cannot move to forcibly evacuate from the Nasser Medical Complex,” Dr. Ashraf Al-Qidra, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Hamas-controlled Gaza said in a statement on Wednesday. “They are threatened with extreme danger.”

What Israel is saying: The IDF in a statement Wednesday said that its soldiers had “opened a secure route to evacuate the civilian population taking shelter in the area of the Nasser Hospital toward the humanitarian zone.”

It said that it did “not intend to evacuate patients and medical staff,” and that the operation was “being conducted in a controlled and precise manner by IDF troops in order to prevent terrorists exploiting the evacuation.”

More on the situation on the ground: Video filmed on Tuesday at the hospital shows columns of smoke at its perimeter, an Israeli bulldozer destroying a hospital perimeter wall, and an armored vehicle entering the hospital grounds. The sound of gunfire can be heard throughout.

At least eight people were wounded after a rocket attack on the northern Israeli city of Safed on Wednesday, the Ziv Medical Center said in a statement. 

The Israel Defense Forces said a base in the north of the country was targeted by rockets from Lebanon, without specifying which city.  

Hezbollah, an Iran-backed armed group that is a regional force in its own right, has not claimed the attack.

Some context: From the day after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, crossfire has broken out on Lebanon's border with Israel.

These exchanges are between Israel and Hezbollah, as well as other factions operating in southern Lebanon.

This post was updated with the latest number of wounded people and context.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron on Tuesday urged Israel to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches Gaza, warning that it would be in breach of international law if it doesn't. 

Limited aid: Only a trickle of aid is getting into Gaza since Israel placed the territory under a complete siege after Hamas' October 7 attacks, halting the supply of electricity, food and water to the enclave.

Israel has since begun allowing some aid to enter, but aid workers and the UN say it's a long and arduous process. The United Nations’ Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, Martin Griffiths, has described the process as “in all practical terms, impossible.”

The Palestinian Red Crescent has said an average of 95 aid trucks per day entered Gaza between October 10 and February 1, down from 500 commercial and aid trucks a day before the war.

Nowhere to go: Cameron also urged Israel to "stop and think before going ahead with any operations in Rafah," where more than 1.3 million displaced Palestinians are believed to be crammed into makeshift shelters.

Panic is soaring in Rafah as desperate Palestinians decide whether to flee the last refuge in Gaza as Israel draws up plans for a ground offensive that the United Nations aid chief has warned could lead to “a slaughter.”

A growing number of countries and international organizations are now scrambling to convince Israel to halt its planned offensive, with Ireland’s Taoiseach (or prime minister) Leo Varadkar accusing the country of becoming “blinded by rage.”

The South African government made an “urgent request” to the International Court of Justice Tuesday to determine if Israel’s extended military actions in the southern Gazan city require it to “use its power to prevent further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.”

Israel has been bombarding Rafah with airstrikes for weeks and says it is committed to a ground offensive as the alternative “is to surrender to Hamas and to sacrifice 134 people,” Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told CNN Tuesday, referring to the Israelis held hostage in Gaza. “That is not an option from Israel’s perspective,” he said.

It remains unclear how or when a ground offensive would unfold, and that uncertainty is adding to anxiety among Palestinians in Rafah about where to go and what to do.

He added that he prays the world pressures Israel to end the war and “release us.”

Read more on the situation in Rafah.