Israel-Iran latest: Netanyahu heckled by relatives of Hamas attack victims as Ayatollah condemns Israel strikes

Egypt’s president said his country has proposed a two-day cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas group in Gaza in an effort to free four hostages and release Palestinian prisoners.

Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi yesterday said the ceasefire proposal also includes the delivery of humanitarian aid to the besieged Strip.

Mr al-Sisi made the announcement as efforts to defuse the devastating, more than year-long war resumed in Qatar with the directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency taking part.

“I expect Hamas would listen to the new offers, but it remains determined that any agreement must end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza,” a Palestinian official told Reuters.

Egypt, along with Qatar and the US, have been working to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but months of negotiations sputtered to a halt in August.

The UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for this afternoon at Iran’s request on Israel’s air strikes against the country.

Switzerland, which holds the council’s rotating presidency, announced the meeting yesterday and said the Iranian request was supported by Russia, China and Algeria, the Arab representative on the council.

Meanwhile, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said his country will respond to Israel “appropriately”, after Israel openly attacked Iranian military sites for the first time this weekend.

“We are not seeking war, but we will defend the rights of our nation and country and will respond appropriately to the Zionist regime’s aggression,” Pezeshkian was quoted by state TV on Sunday as saying.

One civilian was killed in Israel’s attack on Iran, the nation’s officials said, without offering any details on the circumstances of his death.

The state-run IRNA news agency identified the dead man as Allahverdi Rahimpour and said he lived in a suburban area of southwestern Tehran.

Israeli warplanes on Saturday attacked military targets in Iran in response to Iran launching nearly 200 ballistic missiles toward Israel earlier this month.

The social platform X has suspended a new account of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei that posted messages in Hebrew.

The account was suspended early this morning with a note appended to it saying: “X suspends accounts which violate the X Rules.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what the violation was. The move came after Israel openly attacked Iran for the first time this weekend.

Mr Khamenei said in a speech yesterday that Israel’s strikes — in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack this month — “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” while stopping short of calling for retaliation.

The X account opened Sunday with a message in Hebrew reading: “In the name of God, the most merciful,” a standard Islamic greeting.

Mr Khamenei’s office has maintained multiple accounts for the 85-year-old supreme leader on X for years and has sent messages in a variety of languages in the past.

A second message corresponded to a speech Mr Khamenei gave yesterday and was sent on his English account as: “Zionists are making a miscalculation with respect to Iran. They don’t know Iran. They still haven’t been able to correctly understand the power, initiative, and determination of the Iranian people.”

Protesters disrupted a speech by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a ceremony yesterday remembering the victims of Hamas’s attack on southern Israel last year.

People shouted “Shame on you” and made a commotion, forcing Mr Netanyahu to stop his speech shortly after it began. The speech was broadcast live.

Many Israelis blame Mr Netanyahu for the failures that led to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack and hold him responsible for not yet bringing home the remaining hostages held by the militant group in Gaza.