Israel's war on Gaza
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Israel parliament backs Netanyahu’s opposition to ‘unilateral’ Palestinian state
Israel’s parliament has voted to back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration opposing the “unilateral” creation of a Palestinian state, following growing international calls for the revival of efforts to reach a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict, Reuters reports.
Netanyahu’s Likud party said in a statement that 99 of 120 lawmakers voted to support the declaration passed earlier this week by the cabinet.
The Israeli position also says that any permanent accord with the Palestinians would have to be reached through direct negotiations between the sides, and not by international dictates.
US Senator Sanders evades calling Israeli actions ‘genocidal’
Death toll from Israeli bombardment in Gaza hits 29,313
The health ministry in Gaza has said that at least 29,313 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory during Israeli bombardment since Oct 7.
A ministry statement said a total of 118 people died in the past 24 hours, while another 69,333 have been wounded October 7.
Israeli airstrike kills two people in Damascus, Syrian state TV says
An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in the Kafr Sousa district in Syria’s capital Damascus, killing two people, Syrian state media and a security source said.
A military source cited by Syrian state TV said the strike at around 9:40am (0740 GMT) wounded a number of other people, identifying the dead as civilians.
Images published by Syrian state media showed the charred side of a multi-story building. The security source said the “attack did not achieve its aims”, Reuters reports.
Israeli forces relentlessly pounding Gaza
Six people were reportedly killed when a car was targeted in Nuseirat.
We suspect the car was carrying a displaced family.
To the western part of the central area, Nuseirat refugee camp, a kamikaze drone just targeted a house. There are reports of people who were killed and injured. They were all rushed to al-Aqsa Hospital, which is a very overwhelmed and exhausted health facility.
In a mass evacuation zone, al-Mawasi, in an area that has been designated by the Israeli military as a safe zone for people to evacuate to, people found themselves subjugated to relentless air attacks as well, and also with some 30 tanks and bulldozers.
In Rafah overnight, an attack killed five members of one family who were sheltering inside a residential home.
Families of children killed in Gaza blame US, Arab countries
A father in Gaza who lost his one-and-a-half-year-old child to Israeli bombing says he blames the US and Arab countries for his suffering.
“This is a crime in which everyone participated. The US veto participated in this crime as did those Arabs and Muslims who failed to support us,” Abdul Rahman Juma’a said.
An elderly member of the Abu al-Nour family also chided Arab countries.
“People who are from another sect at the end of the world have stood by us better than Arabs,” he said.
Another man, Abdul Karim Abu Mustafa, said his nephews who were killed were not guilty of anything.
“They were sitting on the beach of Khan Younis at night, presumably in a safe area, when they were attacked. They are three children. … They are not guilty,” Mustafa said.
Syrian state TV says 2 killed in strikes on Damascus
The channel did not state who was killed and there has been no confirmation of the strikes from Israel.
Rami Abdulrahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, confirmed that two people were killed inside an apartment.
The strike damaged the fourth floor of a 10-storey building, shattered window glass on nearby buildings, and damaged dozens of cars parked in the area.
An empty parked bus for the nearby Al-Bawader Private School was also damaged, and people were seen rushing to the school to collect their children.
Over a dozen Israeli attacks on Syrian territory during 2024: SOHR
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) says the blasts in Damascus this morning were “a result of a new Israeli targeting of Syrian territory”.
Since the start of the year, SOHR says it has documented 13 Israeli attacks on Syrian territory: Eight air strikes and five rocket attacks by ground forces.
It added that the attacks destroyed nearly 31 targets and left 31 fighters dead and 13 others injured.
Eight civilians, including a woman, were also killed in the Israeli strikes this year, according to SOHR.
World slams US ceasefire veto at UN Security Council
The US has again vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution on Israel’s war in Gaza, prompting widespread criticism.
The move on Tuesday was the third US veto of a UNSC resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, and came a day after Washington circulated a resolution that would support a temporary ceasefire linked to the release of all Israeli captives from the Palestinian enclave.
China said the move is “nothing different from giving the green light to the continued slaughter”.
France’s UN envoy expressed regret that a UNSC ceasefire resolution could not be adopted.
Hamas said that “President Joe Biden and his administration bear direct responsibility for derailing the resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza”.
Cuba said the US’s veto made it complicit in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.
Israeli commander tells troops ‘we are not on a killing spree’ in Gaza: Monitors
Major-General Herzi Halevi, chief of staff of the Israeli military, has told his soldiers fighting in Gaza that they are not there for “revenge or genocide”, according to war monitors.
In a letter to his commanders, Halevi also said that Israeli soldiers in Gaza were not to take “souvenirs” or to make “revenge videos”, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) report.
“We are not on a killing spree, revenge, or genocide,” Halevi wrote in the letter, according to the ISW/CTP report.
The letter also told Israeli soldiers “not to use force where it is not required, to distinguish between a terrorist and [not] a terrorist, not to take anything that is not ours, a souvenir or a military item, and not to shoot revenge videos”, the ISW/CTP report.
Numerous videos have circulated on social media of Israeli soldiers shooting and bombing civilians and destroying Gaza’s public infrastructure and private property.
UK High Court rejects legal challenge to arms sales to Israel
The High Court of Justice in London rejected a petition filed by a group of legal advocacy groups calling for the suspension of British arms exports to Israel.
The group requested a judicial review in January as to whether the UK government was violating its own strategic licencing criteria, which states that weapons should not be sold to actors when there is a clear risk they could be used to violate international humanitarian law.
The court ruled against the suspension of arms sales, but lawyers for the coalition, led by Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, have said they will appeal the decision.
WFP halts food aid deliveries to north Gaza amid ‘complete chaos, violence’
The UN food agency has paused delivering aid to northern Gaza, citing Israeli gunfire as well as “complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order” in the area amid severe hunger among the population.
The latest suspension on Tuesday increases fears of starvation in northern Gaza, which has been almost completely cut off from aid since late October amid Israel’s devastating war on the enclave.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said the decision “has not been taken lightly” as it risks people dying of hunger.
But it said that “the safety and security to deliver critical food aid – and for people receiving it must be ensured”.
Palestinian farmers lose 1,200 tonnes of olive oil from 2023 harvest due to Israeli restrictions: UN
Palestinian olive oil production in the occupied West Bank’s 2023 harvest has suffered a $10m hit, the UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) has reported.
The fall in the 2023 harvest was caused by Israel restricting access to “more than 96,000 dunums [9,600 hectares or 23,722 acres] of olive-cultivated lands”, OCHA added.
Israeli settlers also attacked Palestinian farmers and vandalised 2,000 trees, during the harvest season, which took place around September to November, OCHA says.
“On 28 October, a 29-year-old Palestinian, a father of four children, was shot and killed by an Israeli settler while harvesting olives in As Sawiya village, south of Nablus,” the OCHA report added.
Bolivia backs Brazilian president over Gaza Holocaust comments
Bolivian President Luis Arce has expressed “solidarity and support” with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and said that he was “telling the truth” when he compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to “when Hitler decided to kill the Jews”.
“History will not forgive those who are indifferent to this barbarity,” Arce wrote on X.
We previously reported that Colombian President Gustavo Petro also said that Lula “has only spoken the truth” with his Holocaust comparison.
“I express my complete solidarity to President Lula of Brazil. In Gaza there is a genocide and thousands of children, women and elderly civilians are cowardly murdered,” Petro wrote on X.
Tel Aviv has declared Lula a “persona non grata” in Israel until he retracts his comments.
Israeli soldier killed, three seriously injured in northern Gaza fighting
The Israeli military has announced the death of a 21-year-old soldier from the 932nd battalion of the Nahal Brigade, who was killed while fighting in northern Gaza.
Three other soldiers were also seriously wounded in fighting in northern Gaza, an area which the Israeli military declared some months ago was cleared of main-force Palestinian fighters.
The injured Israelis served with the 932nd battalion of the Nahal Brigade, the 636th battalion of the Judea and Samaria Division and the Givati Brigade, according to a post on social media.
As of Tuesday, a total of 234 Israeli soldiers were reported to have been killed and 1,396 wounded in fighting in Gaza, according to figures provided by the UN and sourced to Israel’s military.
It is not known if the latest reported deaths and injuries were included among the total provided by the UN.
Nasser Hospital has ‘become a place of death’: UN official
An official with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has described “appalling” conditions inside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, which have transformed “a place of healing” to “a place of death”.
Jonathan Whittall, senior humanitarian affairs officer with the OCHA, made his comments during a mission to the besieged hospital with the WHO and the Palestine Red Crescent to evacuate the most critically ill who have been trapped inside for weeks amid Israeli bombardments.
“There are 150 patients in one of these buildings. They have no food and water, no electricity. There’s very few doctors and nurses that are remaining inside this hospital. The conditions are appalling,” Whittall said in a video posted on social media.
“There are dead bodies in the corridors. Patients are in a desperate situation. This has become a place of death, not a place of healing.
“This is a preventable tragedy that should not have happened”.
China disappointed over US veto on Israel-Hamas ceasefire vote
(Reuters) – China expressed "strong disappointment" over the United States blocking a draft United Nations Security Council resolution on the Israel-Hamas war calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, Xinhua said on Wednesday, citing its UN representative Zhang Jun.
The United States on Tuesday vetoed for the third time a draft United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution, blocking a demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire as it instead pushes the 15-member body towards a rival draft that calls for a temporary ceasefire linked to the release of hostages held by Hamas.
Houthis claim attacks on Israeli, US ships
(Web Desk) - Yemen’s Houthi rebels say they have targeted what they claim to be an Israeli cargo ship, the MSC Silver, in the Gulf of Aden near the entrance to the Red Sea with a number of missiles.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea did not elaborate, but in a statement on Tuesday said the group had also used drones to target a number of United States warships in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea as well as sites in the southern Israeli resort town of Eilat.
US vetoes another UN Security Council resolution urging Gaza war ceasefire
(Web Desk) - The United States has vetoed another United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Israel’s war on Gaza, blocking a demand for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Arab nations, led by Algeria, put the draft resolution to a vote on Tuesday with the expectation that it would not pass after the US – Israel’s key ally – had warned it would not back the text and proposed a rival draft instead.
