Gaza Offensive
READ: Poll shows 96pc of Saudis oppose normalisation with Israel
— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) December 23, 2023
Fighting rages in northern Gaza after UN stops short of ceasefire call
Israeli forces fought Hamas militants on Saturday in northern Gaza, where it is seeking full control so it can focus on the south, a day after the UN Security Council called for more aid for the Palestinian enclave but stopped short of demanding a ceasefire.
Thick smoke hung over the northern town of Jabalia - which is also home to Gaza's largest refugee camp - and residents reported persistent aerial bombardment and shelling from Israeli tanks, which they said had moved further into the town.
Israel escalating massacres to disrupt resolution: Palestinian ministry
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said in a statement that Israel “deliberately escalates its massacres to create an environment that disrupts the implementation of [Friday’s] Security Council resolution".
Dozens of civilians have been killed today following a series of Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling in central Gaza’s Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps and Deir el-Balah, as well as Jabalia refugee camp in the north, according to Palestinian Wafa news agency.
Palestinians wait to collect food at donation point
Iran threatens Mediterranean closure over Gaza, without saying how
An Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said the Mediterranean Sea could be closed if the United States and its allies continued to commit "crimes" in Gaza, Iranian media reported on Saturday, without explaining how that would happen.
Iran backs Hamas against Israel and it accuses the United States of backing Israeli crimes in Gaza.
Several arrested in occupied West Bank raids: Rights groups
Israeli forces have arrested at least 8 Palestinians, including two children, across the occupied West Bank in overnight and morning raids, the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Society Prisoner’s Club has said.
The raids took place in several cities including Hebron and Jenin, the prisoner rights groups said, adding that the total number of arrests made since October 7 stands at 4685.
Israeli bombing kills dozens in Jabalia
An Al Jazeera correspondent has reported that dozens of people have been killed in Israeli bombing targeting Jabalia in northern Gaza.
The correspondent added that people are unable to reach the injured to treat them.
200 Hamas, Islamic Jihad fighters arrested in Gaza this week: Army
The Israeli army says it arrested 200 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters inside Gaza over the past week.
The military said they were transferred to Israel for further investigation.
It added that so far, 700 Hamas members have been taken for interrogation.
More from the UNRWA director
Thomas White says people in Gaza should not be treated as “pieces on a checkerboard”, following Israel’s latest evacuation order on Friday affecting some 150,000 people.
“… many have already been displaced several times. The Israeli Army just orders people to move into areas where there are ongoing airstrikes,” he posted on X.
People in #Gaza are People. They are not pieces on a checkerboard - many have already been displaced several times. The Israeli Army just orders people to move into areas where there are ongoing airstrikes. No place is safe, nowhere to go. @UNRWA
— Thomas White (@TomWhiteGaza) December 23, 2023
WHO chief calls for ‘immediate ceasefire’ in Gaza
The head of the World Heath Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says while he welcomed the UNSC resolution calling for the scaling up of aid to Gaza, he asserted that an “immediate ceasefire” was the “most pressing requirement”.
“The devastating toll of the war so far cannot be ignored, including the loss of over 20,000 lives, predominantly women and children, and over 53,000 injuries,” he posted on X.
“The threat of hunger, famine, and the spread of disease looms large.”
I welcome the recent resolution passed by the UN Security Council addressing the Gaza crisis. The resolution highlights the need for urgent pauses and humanitarian corridors to ensure the safe delivery of food and health supplies to those in need. Additionally, it demands the… https://t.co/oNvCTEKuBe
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) December 22, 2023
‘UN is becoming irrelevant, marginalised’
The UN Security Council’s failure to pass a resolution calling unequivocally for a ceasefire in Gaza has highlighted how the international body has become “irrelevant” to resolving the war, says Tamer Qarmout, assistant professor in Public Policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
“When the UN was formed after the second world war, it was supposed to tackle, to prevent similar conflicts such as the one happening in Gaza,” Qarmout told Al Jazeera.
“But It’s a political organisation that is controlled by powerful countries, especially those with veto power at the UN Security Council. So politics is there in every policy, little detail of the UN work.
“I don’t think this war can be resolved through UN channels … The UN is becoming irrelevant, marginalised, very politicized and its mandate is being questioned now,” he added.
Israeli attacks in Gaza ongoing
All day yesterday and overnight, there were more relentless air attacks in the Gaza Strip – mainly refugee camps – that concentrated on the central part.
More residential blocks were targeted directly and destroyed, creating more displaced Palestinians.
Many ended up going to areas designated safe by the Israeli military in Deir al-Baleh (in central Gaza). Unfortunately, the area came under heavy bombardment and artillery shelling in the early hours of this morning. It completely shatters any sense of safety and security.
Once again, people are saying this narrative about designated safe areas (in Gaza) is contradictory, vague and confusing for them.
In Jerusalem’s Christian Quarter, ‘it doesn’t even feel like Christmas’
Last month the heads of the churches in Jerusalem released a joint declaration “to stand strong with those facing such afflictions by this year foregoing any unnecessarily festive activities”, calling instead to “advocate, pray and contribute generously” for the victims of the ongoing war in Gaza.
Subsequently, all Christmas-related activities outside of prayer, whether it be the annual Christmas market near the New Gate or holiday parties and gatherings, have been cancelled. This Christmas, most families are making do with eating a simple meal and attending Mass.
“In the first and second Intifada, we had some difficult times,” said Bishop Emeritus of the Lutheran Church Munib Younan, 73, sitting next to a winter fire. “But it was different. Because we put up the [Christmas] trees. We wanted to bring joy in the times of difficulties. But now you see children [in Gaza] who have no home, who are hungry.
“To put [up] a tree is expressing a kind of joy,” said Bishop Younan. “And now is a time of sorrow. If you lose a member of your family, in our custom, you don’t put [up] a tree at that time. You concentrate that time on prayers.”
Heavy bombardment reported in Jabalia
An Al Jazeera correspondent has reported that Israeli forces are trying to advance into the city of Jabalia from the west and east, and have disrupted all lines of communication in the region.
The correspondent also said there was heavy Israeli bombing on the al-Jarn area in Jabalia.
Houthis spokesperson says no need for Iran’s help in Red Sea attacks: Report
Citing Western and regional security officials, The Wall Street Journal reports that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is providing Houthi rebels with weapons, including drones and missiles, and “real-time intelligence” to target commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
According to the report, the officials are claiming that an Iranian controlled Red Sea surveillance vessel is sending tracking information to the Houthis to use in their attacks on ships in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
The Iranian mission to the United Nations did not respond to a WSJ request for comment.
However, a Houthis spokesperson told the news outlet that Iran’s help was not needed.
“It’s strange to attribute everything to Iran as if it were the world’s strongest power,” the spokesperson said. “We have intelligence facilities that have proven themselves over the years of aggression against us.”
Israel’s ‘selective restraint’: US-funded projects in Gaza spared destruction
The Israeli military’s ability to avoid destroying civilian infrastructure funded by the US government in Gaza demonstrates that Israeli forces are practising “selective restraint” in what they target for destruction, Human Rights Watch’s ex-director Kenneth Roth said.
Roth made his remark following an investigation by the Associated Press news agency, which found that Israeli air strikes and shelling in Gaza appear to be avoiding most major infrastructure projects funded by the US government.
“That selective restraint by Israel’s bombers suggests that blaming [the] use by Hamas for all civilian damage is far from the whole story,” Roth said on social media.
According to the AP, the US has spent some $7bn on development and humanitarian aid projects in Gaza and the occupied West Bank over a number of decades, including $270m under current US President Joe Biden.
The US government has also shared the GPS coordinates and other details of US-funded projects in Gaza with the Israeli military for years, the AP reports.
‘Aid is not the solution to this problem’: Oxfam official
Oxfam America’s Scott Paul has stressed that aid to Gaza “can’t work while the bombs are falling and destroying houses, factories, farms, mills, [and] bakeries”.
“There’s no point in bringing in flour if you can’t bake bread with it. So the focus is entirely wrong,” Paul told Al Jazeera.
He said there is a “wide gulf” between the Biden administration and the rest of the world on what’s really needed in Gaza; most countries support an immediate ceasefire while the US remains opposed to such a move.
“There is a problem to be solved in terms of the mechanism of aid delivery,” Paul added.
But many humanitarians, he said, are frustrated when they “hear a lot of talk about the counting of aid trucks, when we should be counting the lives lost and the inhumanity we see around us”.
Guterres pays tribute to UN workers killed in Gaza
The UN chief says “most of our staff have been forced from their homes” amid Israel’s continued bombardment of the enclave.
“I pay tribute to them [and] the thousands of aid workers risking their lives as they support civilians in Gaza,” he wrote on X.
According to the latest figures from the UN’s humanitarian office, at least 136 staff members of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) have been killed in Gaza alongside one World Health Organization staffer since the war began.
A UN Development Programme (UNDP) staff member, Issam al-Mughrabi, also was killed on Friday along with his wife, three sons and two daughters in an Israeli air attack near Gaza City.
“The air strike also reportedly killed more than 70 members of his extended family,” UNDP said in a statement.
Women, children majority of 20,000 people killed by Israel in Gaza: UN
Approximately 70 percent of the 20,057 people killed in Gaza as a result of Israel’s military onslaught were women and children, while another 53,320 Palestinians have been injured during the same period, the UN reports.
The latest situation update from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) also reports:
Between Monday and Wednesday, 390 Palestinians were reported killed and another 734 injured by Israeli attacks on Gaza, the territory’s Ministry of Health said.
On Friday, the Israeli military warned that an area measuring some 15 percent of the entire area of the Gaza Strip’s “middle area governorate” must be evacuated. According to the UN, the area currently hosts six shelters housing some 61,000 displaced people and was home to 90,000 before the war.
Palestinian civil defence and a journalist group report that 310 medics and 82 Palestinian reporters and media workers have been killed by Israeli attacks since October 7.
The entire population of Gaza faces famine amid the Israeli military siege and war on the territory.
US Muslim group urges probe into Israeli detention of Palestinian-American child
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is urging the FBI and US State Department to investigate the detention of 13-year-old Malik Jaffal in the occupied West Bank.
Jaffal was released from Israel’s Ofer military prison on Wednesday after Israeli forces arrested him on December 13 and tried to get him to falsely confess to throwing stones at the army, his family told NBC News. He also was shot in the arm by Israeli forces last month.
In a statement on Friday, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said the Israeli government “has shown its utter disregard for the basic human and civil rights of both Palestinians and [an] American”.
“We call on the State Department and the FBI to investigate this incident and take the appropriate action that we failed to take when the Israeli government murdered American citizen and journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in broad daylight.”
Palestinian women and children released from Israeli prisons as part of a Gaza truce deal last month have said they were subjected to a range of abuses, including a lack of food, beatings and intimidation.
Palestinian fighters call Israeli battalion’s 48-hour withdrawal from Gaza a ‘defeat’
Palestinian fighters are engaged in close-quarters, urban warfare in their attempt to blunt Israel’s advance in the north of the Gaza Strip, and claimed victory when an Israeli battalion was rotated out of the Palestinian territory for a “rest”, according to war monitors.
As Israeli forces attempt to clear the Jabalia area of northern Gaza “building by building”, Palestinian fighters are hiding in wait and conducting ambushes with small arms and grenades, according to US-based think tanks The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP).
Palestinian fighters are putting up some of the stiffest resistance in Jabalia’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, the ISW and CTP said in their latest situation report.
Near daily attacks on Israeli forces in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood “suggests that it is one of the remaining areas of significant Palestinian militia defensive capabilities in the northern Gaza Strip”, the monitors said.
Palestinian armed groups continue to fight in the central Gaza Strip and in the south, and branded as a “defeat” when Israel removed its 13th Battalion of the Golani Brigade from Gaza for a 48-hour “breather” following 21 days of intense fighting in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City, the monitors added.
“The unit has lost 44 soldiers since October 7 and faced a complex, multi-part ambush in [Shujayea] on December 12, which left nine soldiers dead,” according to the ISW/CTP.
Jabalia shelling – Dozens killed as Israel intensifies bombardments
Israeli missile and artillery attacks on residential homes killed dozens in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza and were described as the “carpeting bombing” of a civilian area.
The night-long attack prevented rescue workers and paramedics from reaching the devastated neighbourhood, and the bodies of the civilians killed had yet to be removed from their destroyed homes.
Al Jazeera’s reporting team were forced to dive for cover as Israeli forces continued to pound the residential area with artillery shells.
UN resolution ‘falls painfully short’ of addressing Gaza crisis: MSF
The emergency medical group Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) said the UN Security Council resolution demanding increased humanitarian aid for war-torn Gaza was “watered-down” and fell “painfully short” of what is needed to address the crisis.
“This resolution has been watered down to the point that its impact on the lives of civilians in Gaza will be nearly meaningless,” MSF-USA executive director Avril Benoit said in a statement.
“The way Israel is prosecuting this war, with US support, is causing massive death and suffering among Palestinian civilians and is inconsistent with international norms and laws,” Benoit said.
“Anyone with a conscience agrees that a massive scale-up of the humanitarian response in Gaza must take place without delay,” she said.
“More and more member states recognise that a ceasefire is indispensable to addressing the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, yet the Council has yet again failed to call for one.”
“Today’s UN Security Council resolution falls painfully short of what is required to address the crisis in Gaza: an immediate & sustained ceasefire.” https://t.co/48stWpjjkc
— Doctors w/o Borders (@MSF_USA) December 23, 2023
Only gauze and iodine for injured patients at Gaza field hospital
GAZA (Reuters) - All Palestinian surgeon Bashir al-Hourani has to work with in the central Gaza school where he helps run a field clinic amid Israel's pounding offensive is gauze and disinfectant as he treats walking wounded turned away from overstretched hospitals.
"We don't have anything else," he said, showing a bottle of iodine he was using to wash the long operating scar running down the torso and stomach of an injured man.
"This patient should be in hospital but because of overcrowding he was transferred to the field hospital," he said.
Gaza-bound aid trucks endure grueling wait at border
KEREM SHALOM (Israel) (AFP) – Awaiting inspection by Israeli soldiers, a miles-long queue of aid trucks bound for the war-battered Gaza Strip is held up for hours at a recently reopened but since bombarded crossing.
The trucks arrive from Egypt, loaded with crucial food and humanitarian supplies for Gaza's besieged and hungry population.
The vehicles wait on the Israeli side of Kerem Shalom crossing, which on Thursday was hit by a deadly Israeli strike more than two months into war with Gaza's Hamas rulers, triggered by deadly attacks on Israel.
Israelis dig in for unprecedentedly long war, with some doubts
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - As the war in Gaza enters an 11th week, Israelis appear resigned to a long road before the military achieves its stated aim of destroying Hamas and bringing more than 100 hostages back home.
For days, in the face of growing international pressure to halt the fighting and increase the flow of aid into the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued video statements reiterating his determination to win the war.
"Anyone who thinks we're going to stop is detached from reality," he said this week.
Hamas and Palestinian Authority split on UN Gaza resolution
CAIRO (Reuters) - The Palestinian foreign ministry and the Islamist group Hamas issued opposing statements on Friday in response to the adoption by the United Nations Security Council of a resolution intended to help bring more humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian foreign ministry, which is part of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, called the resolution "a step in the right direction," and said it would help "end the aggression, ensure the arrival of aid and protect the Palestinian people."
"We consider it a step that may contribute to alleviating the suffering of our people in the Gaza Strip," the foreign ministry statement said.
UN urges more Gaza aid, UN chief says Israel creating distribution 'obstacles'
UNITED NATIONS/CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council called for boosting humanitarian assistance for Gaza, but the U.N. chief said the way Israel was conducting its military operation was creating "massive obstacles" to aid distribution inside the battered enclave.
After days of wrangling to avert a threatened U.S. veto, the Security Council on Friday passed a resolution urging steps to allow “safe, unhindered, and expanded humanitarian access” to Gaza and “conditions for a sustainable cessation” of fighting.
The resolution was toned down from earlier drafts that called for an immediate end to 11 weeks of war and diluting Israeli control over aid deliveries, clearing the way for the vote in which the United States, Israel’s main ally, abstained.
