Summary of the day so far
It’s 0537am in Gaza and Tel Aviv and this blog is now closing. But first, here is a summary of the latest events:
US says it will support an amended UN resolution aimed at increasing aid into Gaza. The US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield has been speaking at the security council in New York and said “I just want to share with you that we have worked hard and diligently over the course of the past week with the Emiratis, with others, with Egypt, to come up with a resolution that we can support. And we do have that resolution now. We’re ready to vote on it. And it’s a resolution that will bring humanitarian assistance to those in need.”
The vote is now delayed until Friday, it’s understood. The Reuters news agency says the vote was delayed after Russia (also a veto power in the UN security council) and some other council members complained during closed-door talks about the amendments made to appease the US, according to diplomats.
The US had also been wary of a reference in the draft resolution to a cessation of hostilities, according to diplomats. The US and Israel oppose a ceasefire, believing it would only benefit Hamas. Washington instead supports pauses in fighting to protect civilians and free hostages taken by Hamas. The draft resolution now has blunted language to have the council call for “urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
In the The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) latest assessment of the situation. It says that “On 21 December, heavy Israeli bombardments from air, land, and sea, continued across most of the Gaza Strip. Intense ground operations and fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups continued, in most areas of Gaza, with the exception of Rafah. The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups into Israel continued”
The World Food Programme says its latest food security analysis for Gaza, shows that the entire population of Gaza is in crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity.
The Queen of Jordan, Rania Al Abdullah has written an opinion piece in the Washington Post about the war. In it she says: This has become an unequivocal humanitarian nightmare. With each passing day, the threshold of what is acceptable falls to new lows, setting a terrifying precedent for this and other wars to come.
Israeli forces invaded the Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s ambulance center in Jabalia in northern Gaza on Thursday evening, according to the PRCS. The PRCS added that Israeli forces arrested the crews and paramedics and took them to an unknown location while children and women remain trapped inside the center.
US senator Bernie Sanders has called on the US to not provide “another $10bn to the rightwing extremist [Benjamin] Netanyahu government to continue their war against the Palestinian people.” In an address to the US senate, Sanders said: “The Netanyahu government is continuing its military approach which is both immoral and in violation of international law.”
Canada’s immigration minister has announced temporary visas for people in Gaza with Canadian relatives, the Associated Press reports. In an announcement on Thursday, the immigration minister, Marc Miller, said that despite the offer of temporary visas, Canada cannot guarantee safe passage out of Gaza.
Cyprus’s president, Nikos Christodoulides, said on Thursday that his government was awaiting a green light from Israel to send a prepared package of desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza. His comments follow two days of talks between Cypriot and Israeli officials fine-tuning an initiative first proposed by the island republic in November. Christodoulides said: “We are waiting for final approval from Israel. We are ready.”
Updated
Here are some images of a gathering that took place to counter a rally that was calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The protesters are in New York, where the UN security council had been negotiating its latest draft resolution on the Israel-Gaza war.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has released its latest assessment of the situation in Gaza and Israel. Here’s what it has to say on the fighting:
On 21 December, heavy Israeli bombardments from air, land, and sea, continued across most of the Gaza Strip. Intense ground operations and fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups continued, in most areas of Gaza, with the exception of Rafah. The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups into Israel continued.
This is what the update had to say on the number of deaths inside Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza ministry of health:
Between 7 October and 19 December, 19,667 fatalities were reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH), which has not published updated tolls since then. The Gaza Government Media Office reported on the fatalities as of 21 December, although their methodology is unknown. Taken together, with the noted caveats, these figures amount to about 20,000. Of them, more than 8,000 are said to be children and more than 6,200 women.
UN undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, has commented on a report on Gaza and the humanitarian situation there.
The report was released by The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Here’s what Martin Griffiths had to say on X:
This announcement about the risk of famine in Gaza is sobering but not surprising.
— Martin Griffiths (@UNReliefChief) December 22, 2023
We have been warning for weeks that, with such deprivation and destruction, each day that goes by will only bring more hunger, disease and despair to the people of Gaza.
The war must end. https://t.co/YqIeqoAR08
Let’s take a closer look at what we know of the UN draft text.
A key sticking point for the US had been a proposal for UN secretary-general António Guterres to establish a monitoring mechanism in Gaza “to exclusively monitor all humanitarian relief consignments to Gaza provided through land, sea and air routes” from countries not party to the war, Reuters reports.
Instead the amended draft resolution asks Guterres to appoint a senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator to establish a UN mechanism for accelerating aid to Gaza through states that are not party to the conflict, according to Reuters.
The initial draft resolution had demanded that Israel and Hamas allow and facilitate “the use of all land, sea and air routes to and throughout the entire Gaza“ for aid deliveries. That was changed to “all available routes,” which some diplomats said allows Israel to retain control over access.
The US had also been wary of a reference in the draft resolution to a cessation of hostilities, according to diplomats.
The US and Israel oppose a ceasefire, believing it would only benefit Hamas. Washington instead supports pauses in fighting to protect civilians and free hostages taken by Hamas. The draft resolution now has blunted language to have the council call for “urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield has told reporters that it is “a resolution that we can support”, but she declined to specify if that meant the US would vote in favour or abstain, which would allow the resolution to be adopted.
Here’s more on why the vote might have been delayed until Friday.
The Reuters news agency says the vote was delayed after Russia (also a veto power in the UN security council) and some other council members complained during closed-door talks about the amendments made to appease the US, according to diplomats.
But Reuters says Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia declined to speak to reporters after the meeting.
Let’s get some more detail on what we know about the wording of the current draft resolution from the UN security council.
The United Arab Emirates is sponsoring the resolution on the conflict which has been amended in several key areas to secure compromise, according to the draft version seen by Agence France-Presse.
It demands all sides “allow and facilitate the use of all … routes to and throughout the entire Gaza Strip, including border crossings … for the provision of humanitarian assistance.”
The US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield has told reporters that “if the resolution is put forward as is, then we can support it.”
She denied that the draft resolution had been watered down.
“The draft resolution is a very strong resolution that is fully supported by the Arab group,” she said.
Diplomatic wrangling at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan has caused the vote to be postponed several times this week, all of which has taken place against the backdrop of deteriorating conditions in Gaza and a mounting death toll.
Here’s some more on the latest coming out of the UN – including when the vote will actually happen.
Diplomatic sources are telling Agence France-Press that the UN security council has once again pushed back a vote for a much-delayed resolution on the Israel-Gaza war.
The postponement to Friday has come even as the United States, which has opposed a number of proposals during the resolution’s drafting, said it was ready to support it in its current form.
After days of delays, the latest draft version seen by AFP calls for “urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
It does not call for an immediate end to fighting, according to AFP.
US says it will support an amended UN resolution aimed at increasing aid into Gaza
The US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield has been speaking at the security council in New York.
In a transcript released by the US mission to the UN she says:
I just want to share with you that we have worked hard and diligently over the course of the past week with the Emiratis, with others, with Egypt, to come up with a resolution that we can support. And we do have that resolution now. We’re ready to vote on it. And it’s a resolution that will bring humanitarian assistance to those in need. It will support the priority that Egypt has in ensuring that we put a mechanism on the ground that will support humanitarian assistance, and we’re ready to move forward.
Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield goes on to say:
I won’t share how I will vote, but it will be a resolution – if the resolution is put forward as is – that we can support.
When asked about whether the draft resolution has been watered down the Ambassador says:
The draft resolution is not watered down. The draft resolution is a very strong resolution that is fully supported by the Arab group that provides them what they feel is needed to get humanitarian assistance on the ground.
But Reuters has reported that an actual vote at the UN security council has been delayed another day until Friday, sourcing that to diplomats.
The United States, key allies and Arab nations have been engaging in high-level diplomacy in hopes of avoiding another US veto of a UN resolution on desperately needed aid to Gaza.
The US had voiced concerns about the text’s references to a cessation of hostilities in the war as well as the key sticking point – the inspection of aid trucks entering into Gaza to ensure they are only carrying humanitarian goods.
Updated
The US envoy to the United Nations, ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield has been speaking in New York, and says that the US can support a current draft Security Council resolution on Gaza Aid, according to Reuters.
A short time before that, Reuters reported that the UN security council vote on a bid to boost Gaza action had been delayed another day until Friday, sourcing that to diplomats.
Earlier we were hearing from Associated Press that agreement on a UN resolution on critical aid for Gaza was is ‘very close’ and a vote could be expected.
Shahad Matar, spokesperson for the United Arab Emirates which sponsored the Security Council resolution, told reporters late Thursday that “we’re very close to agreement.” She said the 15 council members would hold closed consultations to see changes to the draft resolution, and a vote would then take place.
The United States, key allies and Arab nations have been engaging in high-level diplomacy in hopes of avoiding another US veto of a UN resolution on desperately needed aid to Gaza.
The US had voiced concerns about the text’s references to a cessation of hostilities in the war as well as the key sticking point – the inspection of aid trucks entering into Gaza to ensure they are only carrying humanitarian goods.
The World Food Programme says its latest food security analysis for Gaza, shows that the entire population of Gaza is in crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity.
The report further highlighted that 26 percent of Gazans have exhausted their food supplies and coping capacities and face catastrophic hunger and starvation. The WFP’s Executive Director Cindy McCain says:
WFP has warned of this coming catastrophe for weeks. Tragically, without the safe, consistent access we have been calling for, the situation is desperate, and no one in Gaza is safe from starvation.
The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history, according to Associated Press. The agency reports:
In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the US-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.
The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are U.S.-made. They say the weapons include 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) “bunker-busters” that have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.
The Associated Press goes on to say that the Israeli military says every strike is cleared by legal advisers to make sure it complies with international law:
“We choose the right munition for each target – so it doesn’t cause unnecessary damage,” said the army’s chief spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
“Hamas is very entrenched within the civilian population,” Efraim Inbar, head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a thinktank, told Associated Press about why the level of destruction is so high. He also said intense bombardment of Hamas’ tunnels is needed to protect advancing Israeli ground forces from attacks.
Updated
The Queen of Jordan, Rania Al Abdullah has written an opinion piece in the Washington Post about the war. In it she says:
This has become an unequivocal humanitarian nightmare. With each passing day, the threshold of what is acceptable falls to new lows, setting a terrifying precedent for this and other wars to come.
No matter what side you support, you can still demand a cease-fire, the release of hostages and detainees, and unrestricted access to aid.
The Queen of Jordan goes on to say:
A cease-fire is just the beginning. We must also embark on the difficult process of rehumanization — recognizing the humanity of others and acting on that universal kinship.
Agreement on a UN resolution on critical aid for Gaza is ‘very close’ and a vote could be expected, Associated Press is reporting.
Shahad Matar, spokesperson for the United Arab Emirates which sponsored the Security Council resolution, told reporters late Thursday that “we’re very close to agreement.” She said the 15 council members would hold closed consultations to see changes to the draft resolution, and a vote would then take place.
The United States, key allies and Arab nations have been engaging in high-level diplomacy in hopes of avoiding another US veto of a UN resolution on desperately needed aid to Gaza.
Whether the changes are enough to meet US concerns about the text’s references to a cessation of hostilities in the war as well as the key sticking point – the inspection of aid trucks entering into Gaza to ensure they are only carrying humanitarian goods – remained to be seen.
The current draft calls for the UN to take over the job from Israel, which the United States and Israel, its close ally, oppose, Associated Press reports.
Reged Ahmad here, picking up the blog from Maya Yang
Updated
Summary
It’s 1:25am in Gaza and Tel Aviv and here is a short summary of where things stand:
Israeli forces invaded the Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s ambulance center in Jabalia in northern Gaza on Thursday evening, according to the PRCS. The PRCS added that Israeli forces arrested the crews and paramedics and took them to an unknown location while children and women remain trapped inside the center.
US senator Bernie Sanders has called on the US to not provide “another $10bn to the rightwing extremist [Benjamin] Netanyahu government to continue their war against the Palestinian people.” In an address to the US senate, Sanders said: “The Netanyahu government is continuing its military approach which is both immoral and in violation of international law.”
The UN security council resolution on Gaza’s aid delivery remains stalled, Agence France-Presse reports. The draft resolution, which is sponsored by the UAE, has already been watered down to secure compromise, according to AFP, which reviewed the draft version. However, the US’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, said on Thursday that the US was still not satisfied with the latest draft.
Canada’s immigration minister has announced temporary visas for people in Gaza with Canadian relatives, the Associated Press reports. In an announcement on Thursday, the immigration minister, Marc Miller, said that despite the offer of temporary visas, Canada cannot guarantee safe passage out of Gaza.
Cyprus’s president, Nikos Christodoulides, said on Thursday that his government was awaiting a green light from Israel to send a prepared package of desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza. His comments follow two days of talks between Cypriot and Israeli officials fine-tuning an initiative first proposed by the island republic in November. Christodoulides said: “We are waiting for final approval from Israel. We are ready.”
Updated
Israeli forces invaded the Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s ambulance center in Jabalia in northern Gaza on Thursday evening, according to the PRCS.
The PRCS added that Israeli forces arrested the crews and paramedics and took them to an unknown location while children and women remain trapped inside the center.
The PRCS went on to urge the international community to demand the release of its staff members and to ensure their protection amid Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
🚨Occupation forces invaded the PRCS ambulance center 🚑 in #Jabalia, north of the #Gaza Strip, this evening. 🛑They arrested the crews and paramedics, taking them to an unknown location. ⚠️Children and women are still trapped inside the center.
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) December 21, 2023
📢We call on the international…
Updated
US senator Bernie Sanders has called on the US to not provide “another $10bn to the rightwing extremist [Benjamin] Netanyahu government to continue their war against the Palestinian people”.
In an address to the US senate, Sanders said:
The Netanyahu government is continuing its military approach which is both immoral and in violation of international law …
The United States must end our complicity in those actions and to do so, we must make two critical changes in our policy.
First, while it is appropriate to support defensive systems like Iron Dome to protect Israeli civilians against incoming rockets, it would be irresponsible to provide an additional $10.1bn in military aid beyond those defensive systems as contained in the proposed supplemental foreign aid package …
Second … the United States should support efforts at the UN security council to end the bloodshed.
The situation in Gaza is a humanitarian disaster. The U.S. must not provide another $10 billion to the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government to continue their war against the Palestinian people which has already killed thousands of innocent men, women, and children. pic.twitter.com/Px2YEz7hEC
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 21, 2023
Updated
US ambassador to the UN on stalled UN security council resolution: 'We're not there yet'
The UN security council resolution on Gaza’s aid delivery remains stalled, Agence France-Presse reports.
The draft resolution, which is sponsored by the UAE, has already been watered down to secure compromise, according to AFP, which reviewed the draft version.
It reports that the resolution calls for the “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities”.
However, the US’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, said on Thursday that the US was still not satisfied with the latest draft.
Speaking to reporters, Wood said: “We are still working it, still hoping to get to … be able to support it – we’re not there yet.”
Meanwhile, the UAE’s ambassador to the UN, Lana Nusseibeh, said that “the gap is narrowing” as she headed into a closed-door meeting, AFP reports.
According to a diplomatic source, the latest delay on the UN security council vote was at the request of the US, a staunch ally of Israel, AFP reports.
AFP also reports that the draft resolution calls for all sides to enable unhindered deliveries of aid by land, sea and air, as well as the establishment of a monitoring mechanism to be overseen “exclusively” by the UN.
Speaking to AFP, diplomatic sources say that negotiations are now focused on the mechanism as Israel insists it maintains full control of supplies entering Gaza.
Updated
Canada’s immigration minister has announced temporary visas for people in Gaza with Canadian relatives, the Associated Press reports.
In an announcement on Thursday, the immigration minister, Marc Miller, said that despite the offer of temporary visas, Canada cannot guarantee safe passage out of Gaza.
He added that he expects the program to be ready by 9 January and that the government will start accepting applications for people with extended family connections to Canada including parents, grandparents, siblings and grandchildren.
Miller also said that people will be offered three-year visas if they meet eligibility and admissibility criteria.
Updated
Israeli strikes on south Lebanon killed an elderly woman on Thursday while retaliatatory attacks from Hezbollah wounded two civilians, according to Israel’s military.
Agence France-Presse reports:
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said that Israeli “bombing on the town of Maroun al-Ras this morning killed a woman and wounded her husband.”
Artillery shells struck “residential neighbourhoods” in the town, hitting the house of the couple in their eighties, the agency added.
Rescuers who transported the pair to hospital confirmed her death to AFP, and also blamed Israel for the strike.
Earlier this week, the Iran-backed Hezbollah group vowed that any Israeli attacks on civilians “will be reciprocated.”
The Shiite Muslim movement said it struck the border villages of Dovev and Avivim “in response” to Thursday’s deadly strike, later claiming several other attacks on additional Israeli targets including with drones.
The Israeli army said that “two Israeli civilians were lightly injured as a result of the launches toward the area of Dovev,” adding that the military struck the source of the fire.
Later on Thursday, Lebanon’s NNA reported multiple members of one family had been wounded in a “hostile drone” strike on a house near the area of Maroun al-Ras.
It also reported Israeli bombardment on other locations near the border.
Overnight, Israel had launched a rare deep strike into Lebanese territory, some 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the border, the NNA said.
Updated
Ahead of the UN security council vote surrounding aid delivery into Gaza, the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps said that “Gaza is out of time” and needs aid delivery as soon as possible.
In a statement released on Thursday, Kate Phillips-Barrasso, Mercy Corps’s vice-president of global policy and advocacy, said:
Gaza is out of time. We need a resolution that calls for a suspension of hostilities so we can actually deliver aid to starving people who have gone without the basics of life for two months.
We urge that an exclusive, independent mechanism be part of that agreement both in principle and in practice. As in other conflicts, independent monitoring mechanisms are critical to ensuring aid gets to people quickly and does not involve parties to the conflict determining what gets in and how fast.”
Updated
Here are some more images from the Israel-Gaza war, sent to us over the news wires:
Updated
The Guardian’s Chris McGreal has this report about claims that Israel is deliberately, and illegally, targeting Palestinian journalists as its military onslaught in Gaza continues:
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has accused the Israeli military of targeting journalists and their families in Gaza amid the highest death toll of media workers in any recent conflict.
The New York-based CPJ said at least 68 journalists and other media workers had been killed in Gaza, Israel and southern Lebanon since the Hamas cross-border attack on 7 October and subsequent Israeli assault.
“More journalists have been killed in the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year,” it said.
“CPJ is particularly concerned about an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military. In at least one case, a journalist was killed while clearly wearing press insignia in a location where no fighting was taking place. In at least two other cases, journalists reported receiving threats from Israeli officials and Israel Defense Forces officers before their family members were killed.”
The CPJ called for Israel to “end the longstanding pattern of impunity in cases of journalists killed by the IDF”.
Sixty-one of the journalists killed were Palestinian and three were Lebanese. In addition, four Israeli journalists were among the 1,200 people, mostly civilians, killed by Hamas in the October attack.
Israel has killed at least 20,000 other Palestinians during the present war, about 1% of the population of Gaza, including more than 8,000 children.
Read the full story:
Updated
Cyprus’s president, Nikos Christodoulides, said on Thursday that his government was awaiting a green light from Israel to send a prepared package of desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza.
His comments follow two days of talks between Cypriot and Israeli officials fine-tuning an initiative first proposed by the island republic in November. Christodoulides said:
We are waiting for final approval from Israel. We are ready.
A British naval support vessel, the RFA Lyme Bay, is carrying 90 tons of supplies, including medical aid, and left the port of Larnaca reportedly bound for Gaza, 385km (217 miles) away. The Guardian has learned that the ship is waiting in international waters since being denied permission to dock near Gaza.
Christodoulides said he was “in constant contact” with the UK and the EU. “We are waiting on the Israeli side,” he said.
The Israeli foreign minister, Eli Cohen, who was in Cyprus on Wednesday, inspected storage facilities and security arrangements in Larnaca. Several countries have already dispatched aid to the island, the EU’s most easterly member state. Israel has demanded that shipments be inspected both before and after they are loaded on ships.
Updated
Morgue workers at Gaza’s Nasser hospital have spoken with Reuters about the increasing difficulties they face in calculating the civilian death toll from the Israel-Gaza war in the face of deadly air strikes.
The volunteer workers give a harrowing account of trying to identify mutilated corpses, which they wrap in white cloth, working all the time with the stench of death all around them. According to the Reuters report:
Some of the bodies are badly mutilated. Only those that have been identified or claimed by relatives can go for burial and be included in the Gaza health ministry’s death toll for the war. The rest are stored in the morgue’s refrigerator, often for weeks.
With most hospitals across Gaza now closed, hundreds of doctors and other health workers killed, and communications hampered by lack of fuel and electricity, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to compile the casualty figures.
The morgue workers at the Nasser Hospital are part of an international effort – including doctors and health officials in Gaza as well as academics, activists and volunteers around the world – to ensure the toll doesn’t become a casualty of the increasingly dire conditions of the war.
The report comes as the World Health Organization says northern Gaza no longer has a functional hospital, and the United Nations warns that Gaza’s entire population of 2.3m is facing crisis levels of hunger as the risk of famine increases each day.
You can read the Reuters report here.
We’re still waiting for news about when, or indeed if, the UN security council will vote on Thursday afternoon on a new ceasefire resolution for Gaza.
There had been hope it would take place by lunchtime, but delegates agreed to postpone the vote to allow for more negotiations. The Associated Press reports that the US, key allies and Arab nations are engaged in high-level diplomacy in hopes of avoiding another US veto.
US deputy ambassador Robert Wood , who cast the vote that doomed the most recent ceasefire effort two weeks ago, told reporters on Thursday morning: “We’re still working it. We’re working it very hard.” He said there needed to be some changes in the text “that would make it worthy of our support”.
Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh of the United Arab Emirates, which sponsored the Arab-backed resolution, said: “Everyone wants to see a resolution that has impact and that is implementable on the ground. We believe today, giving a little bit of space for additional diplomacy, could yield positive results.”
No new time has been for a vote, and the AP said diplomats told the news agency that Russia called for closed consultations among the 15 council members on Thursday afternoon.
We’ll bring you any developments as they happen.
Updated
Summary
Here is where the day stands:
The US branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres has joined 13 other humanitarian and civil rights organizations in an open letter to the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, to protect civilians in Gaza from Israeli attacks across the strip. The letter urged the defense secretary to “categorically oppose the targeting of civilians and civilian objects, indiscriminate attacks that fail to distinguish between civilian and military objects, and attacks that cause disproportionate civilian harm”, among other requests.
There are no fully functioning hospitals left in Gaza, the World Health Organization said. “Gaza’s health system needs urgent resuscitation,” the WHO said. Due to Israeli strikes across the strip, 23 hospitals in Gaza are not functioning at all, while nine are partially functioning and four are at minimum function.
Meta’s content moderation policies and systems are increasingly silencing pro-Palestine content on Facebook and Instagram, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said. A new HRW report titled Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook “documents a pattern of undue removal and suppression of protected speech including peaceful expression in support of Palestine and public debate about Palestinian rights”, HRW said.
Gaza’s entire population is facing crisis levels of hunger as the risk of famine increases each day, according to a report published by a UN-backed body on Thursday. The report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said: “There is a risk of famine and it is increasing each day that the current situation of intense hostilities and restricted humanitarian access persists or worsens.”
A Qatari armed forces aircraft carrying 20 tons of aid including food and medical supplies for Palestinians in Gaza has headed to Arish, Egypt, the Qatari foreign ministry announced. Wednesday’s aircraft brings the total number of Qatari aircraft carrying aid for Gaza to 47 with a total of 1,501 tons of aid.
625,000 Palestinian students have been deprived of their education across Gaza as a result of Israeli attacks across the strip, the Palestinian foreign ministry announced. Across the densely populated territory, 47% of the population is younger than 18.
The US said on Thursday that there were “serious and widespread concerns” that the current draft of a UN security council resolution that aims to boost humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip “could actually slow down” deliveries. “The goal of this resolution is to facilitate and help expand humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza, and we cannot lose sight of that purpose,” said Nate Evans, spokesperson for the US mission to the UN, ahead of a likely vote on Thursday.
Israeli police say 19 Israeli prison guards are under investigation in the death of a 38-year-old Palestinian security prisoner. The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group, says the prisoner was found with “severe signs of violence” on his body and died on 18 November at the Ketziot prison in the southern Negev desert. He was 18 years into a 25-year sentence for attempted murde.
Updated
The US branch of Medécins Sans Frontieres has joined 13 other humanitarian and civil rights organisations in an open letter to the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, to protect civilians in Gaza from Israeli attacks across the strip.
The letter, which comes as over 20,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in the last two months, urged the defence secretary to:
Categorically oppose the targeting of civilians and civilian objects, indiscriminate attacks that fail to distinguish between civilian and military objects, and attacks that cause disproportionate civilian harm; as well as the deprivation of life-saving humanitarian assistance and the use of siege tactics to deprive the civilian population of items indispensable to its survival …
Withhold US assistance, in accordance with US law and policy, that would facilitate violations of international humanitarian law…
Refrain from transferring explosive weapons to Israel for use in Gaza and emphasize adherence to US commitments made on the use of explosive weapons in populated areas…
Reject forcible displacement and the use of so-called “safe zones”.
Updated
There are no fully functioning hospitals left in Gaza, the World Health Organization said.
“Gaza’s health system needs urgent resuscitation,” WHO said.
Due to Israeli strikes across the strip, 23 hospitals in Gaza are not functioning at all, while nine are partially functioning and four are at minimum function.
🚨There are no fully functioning hospitals in #Gaza today.
— WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean (@WHOEMRO) December 20, 2023
🏥 23 are not functioning at all
🏥 9 are partially functioning
🏥 4 are at minimum functioning
Gaza’s health system needs urgent resuscitation.
Humanitarians need safe passage
People in Gaza need peace
Ceasefire NOW pic.twitter.com/QPDvp6HHuF
Updated
Human Rights Watch: systemic censorship of Palestinian content by Meta
Meta’s content moderation policies and systems are increasingly silencing pro-Palestine content on Facebook and Instagram, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.
A new HRW report titled Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook “documents a pattern of undue removal and suppression of protected speech including peaceful expression in support of Palestine and public debate about Palestinian rights”, HRW said.
According to HRW, it identified six key patterns of censorship, each recurring in at least 100 instances: content removals, suspension or deletion of accounts, inability to engage with content, inability to follow or tag accounts, restrictions on the use of features such as Instagram/Facebook Live, and “shadow banning”.
It also found that Meta had invoked its dangerous organizations and individuals policy, which “fully incorporates the United States designated lists of ‘terrorist organizations’”.
HRW added that Meta misapplied its policies on violent and graphic content, violence and incitement, hate speech, nudity and sexual activity, and also inconsistently applied its “newsworthy allowance” policy, in turn removing dozens of pieces of content documenting Palestinian injury and death that has news value.
Updated
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has announced that communication has been cut off from the Jabalia ambulance centre in northern Gaza.
The PRCS in a tweet on Thursday:
We received reports that Israeli forces raided the center two hours ago, and arrested crews and paramedics and took them to unknown location. Women and children remain trapped alone inside the center.
🚨 Urgent:-PRCS: communication cut off from the Jabalia ambulance 🚑center, northern #Gaza. We received reports that Israeli forces raided the center two hours ago, and arrested crews and paramedics and took them to unknown location. Women and children remain trapped alone inside…
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) December 21, 2023
Updated
The international humanitarian organisation Action Against Hunger (AAH) has said that the risk of famine faced by Palestinians as a result of Israeli attacks on Gaza is becoming a grave concern.
In a statement released on Thursday in response to the UN-backed report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which which found that 2.3 million Palestinians are facing crisis levels of hunger, Chiara Saccardi, the Middle East regional head of AAH said:
The combination of incessant shelling, shortages of food, water, fuel, and the inability of humanitarian agencies to fully operate in Gaza has caused this desperate situation. The UN and humanitarian organisations have been warning for weeks about the need to remove barriers to aid entering Gaza to avoid this reality.
Noelia Monge, AAH’s head of emergencies, expressed similar sentiments, saying:
Everything we are doing is insufficient to meet the needs of 2 million people. It is difficult to find flour and rice, and people have to wait hours to access latrines and wash themselves. We are experiencing an emergency like I have never seen before.
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The UAE foreign minister has met with a senior Palestinian Authority official in Abu Dhabi during which they discussed international efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza.
Reuters reports:
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan met the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) secretary general, Hussein Sheikh, to also discuss the humanitarian crisis in the coastal enclave.
In the meeting, Sheikh Abdullah stressed the importance of prioritising negotiations towards a framework for a two-state peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, the Emirati state news agency WAM reported.
The UAE, a Gulf power, is one of few Arab states that has official diplomatic relations with Israel. It established ties in 2020 under a US-brokered deal that paved the way for other Arab states to build their own relations with Israel.
Abu Dhabi has condemned the 7 October Hamas attack and called on the Palestinian Islamist group to release hostages held in Gaza. The Gulf state has also condemned Israel’s bombardment of the enclave and used its non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council to push for a ceasefire in the war.
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Gaza's 2.3 million people face crisis levels of hunger and risk of famine, report says
Gaza’s entire population is facing crisis levels of hunger as the risk of famine increases each day, according to a report published by a UN-backed body on Thursday.
The report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said:
There is a risk of famine and it is increasing each day that the current situation of intense hostilities and restricted humanitarian access persists or worsens …
Between 24 November and 7 December, over 90 percent of the population in the Gaza Strip (about 2.08 million people) was estimated to face high levels of acute food insecurity, classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse). Among these, over 40 percent of the population (939,000 people) were in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and over 15 percent (378,000 people) were in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5).
Between 8 December 2023 and 7 February 2024, the entire population in the Gaza Strip (about 2.2 million people) is classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse).
This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country. Among these, about 50 percent of the population (1.17 million people) is in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and at least one in four households (more than half a million people) is facing catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5, Catastrophe). These are characterized by households experiencing an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion of coping capacities.
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The Committee to Protect Journalists has also said that Israel should refrain from imposing further communication blackouts across Gaza.
“This will allow journalists to continue to report and obtain information from local sources,” CPJ said.
The organization also said that Israel must break its pattern of impunity in journalist killings.
“These investigations should be swift, transparent, and thorough, following internationally accepted standards in line with the Minnesota Protocol,” CPJ said, referring to a set of international guidelines for investigations into suspicious deaths in which the responsibility of a state is suspected.
🛑 #Israel must break its pattern of impunity in cases of journalists killed by the Israel Defense Forces #IDF and investigate killings and other attacks on journalists during the ongoing war.
— Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom) December 21, 2023
Read our full statement here:https://t.co/1nvw8uhc1k
[🧵5/8] pic.twitter.com/clZWjBr0X1
🛑 #Israel should refrain from imposing further communications blackouts in #Gaza.
— Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom) December 21, 2023
Read our full statement here:https://t.co/1nvw8uhc1k
[🧵7/8] pic.twitter.com/Qnxp3QijCd
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More journalists have been killed in the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war than have ever been killed in a single country over a year, according to analysis released by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In a statement released on Thursday, the CPJ said:
By December 20, 2023, at least 68 journalists and media workers had been killed since the October 7 start of the conflict. Of those 68, 61 were Palestinian, four Israeli, and three Lebanese.
CPJ is particularly concerned about an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military. In at least one case, a journalist was killed while clearly wearing press insignia in a location where no fighting was taking place. In at least two other cases, journalists reported receiving threats from Israeli officials and IDF officers before their family members were killed.
CPJ is investigating in more detail the circumstances of all 68 deaths. This research is hampered by the widespread destruction in Gaza, and, in a number of cases, the fact that the journalists were killed along with family members who typically are sources for such information.
The Israel Defense Forces has said it cannot guarantee the safety of journalists operating in Gaza.
This month, in reference to two Israeli strikes in Lebanon in October, which killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists, the Human Rights Watch condemned the attacks as an “unlawful and apparently deliberate attack on a very visible group of journalists”.
Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders concluded that two journalists who were killed last month in Israeli strikes in Lebanon were “explicitly targeted”.
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A Qatari Armed Forces aircraft carrying 20 tons of aid including food and medical supplies for Palestinians in Gaza has headed to Arish, Egypt, the Qatari foreign ministry announced.
Wednesday’s aircraft brings the total number of Qatari aircraft carrying aid for Gaza to 47 with a total of 1,501 tons of aid.
Qatari Aircraft Carrying Aid to Support Palestinian Brethren in Gaza Heads to Egypt's Arish#MOFAQatar pic.twitter.com/K2ymEHjsK8
— Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Qatar (@MofaQatar_EN) December 21, 2023
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The World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Wednesday that he has “lost count of the number of times when I thought the crisis in Gaza could not get more horrific”.
In a post on Thursday, Tedros described the extent of the humanitarian crisis faced by Palestinians as a result of Israel’s attacks on the strip.
He wrote:
“We are witnessing:
On average around 300 deaths a day while hostilities have raged
A devastated health system with only 9 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals partially functioning; with none functioning in the north
Children orphaned after parents have been slain
disease, hunger and lack of clean water and sanitation posing further risks beyond the bombs and bullets
A constantly perilous and restricted humanitarian space in which to deliver life-saving medical supplies in
Mental health trauma that will haunt many for years.”
I have lost count of the number of times when I thought the crisis in #Gaza could not get more horrific.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) December 21, 2023
But it has happened again.
The fact we are talking about 20,000 people killed, mostly children and women, and with over 52,000 (and counting) afflicted by life-threatening… pic.twitter.com/vwXLeD6MkP
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625,000 Palestinian students have been deprived of their education across Gaza as a result of Israeli attacks across the strip, the Palestinian foreign ministry announced.
Across the densely populated territory, 47% of the population are below 18 years old.
Since Israel’s attacks on Gaza, more than 10,000 infants and children have been killed by Israeli strikes, according to the Switzerland-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. Meanwhile, more than 18,000 children have been injured by Israeli strikes.
#Gaza_under_attack#CeasefireNow#Palestine#Israeliwarcrimes pic.twitter.com/INyNnMq3yN
— State of Palestine - MFA 🇵🇸🇵🇸 (@pmofa) December 21, 2023
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US says there were 'serious concerns' current UN ceasefire draft would slow down aid
The US said on Thursday that there were “serious and widespread concerns” that the current draft of a UN security council resolution that aims to boost humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip “could actually slow down” deliveries.
“The goal of this resolution is to facilitate and help expand humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza, and we cannot lose sight of that purpose,” said Nate Evans, spokesperson for the US mission to the UN, ahead of a likely vote on Thursday.
“We must ensure any resolution helps and doesn’t hurt the situation on the ground,” he said.
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For Zaki Abu Sleyma, a Gaza resident, the water now flowing into the devastated enclave from a desalination project in Egypt tastes “like sugar” after weeks of Israel’s bombardment and siege left him and many others drinking unclean, brackish water.
The water comes from three plants built by the United Arab Emirates on the Egyptian side of the border and pumped into Rafah that started working on Tuesday, part of an effort to relieve one of the biggest humanitarian challenges in Gaza.
“We were really suffering … we used to bring water from the sea before. This water tastes like sugar, it is drinkable,” Abu Sleyman told Reuters.
But while clean water is badly wanted, Gaza’s ruined infrastructure means it is hard to distribute beyond the border town of Rafah, let alone pump up to rooftop tanks that allow people to use it in the enclave’s remaining buildings.
Israel cut off all external electricity supply to Gaza when the war began on 7 October with a Hamas attack on Israeli towns that killed 1,200 people. Its siege of the Palestinian territory has also stopped most fuel supplies, meaning local power generators do not work either.
“We hope they can provide us with an electricity station … as you can see we fill the buckets and take the water upstairs,” said Abu Sleyma. Filling upstairs tanks so that water can be used in taps in the house is hard, painful work.
Even in Rafah, where the Israeli army has told civilians to seek refuge, the dearth of food and clean water is so severe it is causing people to lose weight and get ill. At a water tank standing among houses in Rafah, a group of children took turns cupping their hands to drink from a pouring pipe, a rare sight in recent weeks.
Mohammed Sobhi Abu Reyala, head of water and sewage directorate in Jabalia, said that the displacement of thousands of Gazans to Rafah had compounded already existing problems in the city, where there was a lack of fuel to operate wells.
“Honestly, this new line which was provided via our brothers in the Arab Republic of Egypt, our brothers in Egypt, played a major role in alleviating the suffering of the displaced and the people of Rafah concerning water,” sad Abu Reyala.
The plants, connected to Egypt’s border with the Gaza strip by a 900-metre pipeline, desalinate around 600,000 gallons of water a day, covering the needs of about 300,000 people.
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A group of Dutch civil servants staged an unusual protest in front of the country’s foreign affairs ministry on Thursday to call for a ceasefire in war-torn Gaza.
About 150 ministerial workers held up placards and unfurled a banner reading “Civil Servants Demand Ceasefire” over lunchtime, saying they were protesting the government’s current stance on the call for an end to hostilities.
A spokeswoman for the group, Angelique Eijpe, said:
There’s concern over the fact that the Dutch government is still not calling for a permanent ceasefire and that is in essence why we’re here today.
Eijpe told AFP she resigned last month over the continued Dutch position in the conflict.
The Netherlands, like Germany and Italy, last week abstained from voting for a ceasefire during a UN General Assembly meeting, despite an overwhelming number of countries voting in favour.
The Dutch foreign minister, Hanke Bruins Slot, afterwards said the abstention resulted from the text of the resolution “not being clear enough” on Israel’s right to defend itself, and it did not refer to the 7 October attack by Hamas.
But some civil servants disagreed with the Dutch position, staging the protest, which lasted about half an hour. Although protests often happen in the Netherlands, it is rare for civil servants to make their voices heard contrary to official policy.
“We are here because we disagree with the Netherlands’ stance on the ceasefire issue,” Jesse Jansen, a 34-year-old protester, told AFP. “We cannot just stand by and watch while international and humanitarian law are being violated.”
About 200 civil servants in October wrote letters to the Dutch cabinet asking it to call on Israel to halt the Gaza bombardment “and to protect innocent civilians.”
Support for a ceasefire call has been growing in the Netherlands, with almost two-thirds of Dutch people interviewed being in favour, a poll by the RTL public broadcaster said on Tuesday.
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Nineteen Israeli prison guards under investigation over death of Palestinian prisoner
Israeli police say 19 Israeli prison guards are under investigation in the death of a 38-year-old Palestinian security prisoner.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group, says the prisoner was found with “severe signs of violence” on his body and died on 18 November at the Ketziot prison in the southern Negev Desert. He was 18 years into a 25-year sentence for attempted murder, according to PA.
Police announced the investigation of the guards on Thursday after a gag order expired. The Israel prison service says it is cooperating. The Prisoners’ Club says about 7,800 Palestinians are currently held by Israelis, including hundreds rounded up since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
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Here are the latest images coming across the wires from Gaza and Israel:
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The UN Security Council has a long-delayed vote scheduled for Thursday on a new resolution about desperately needed aid to Gaza.
Tens of thousands of people are crammed into shelters and tent camps amid shortages of food, medicine and other basic supplies. A World Health Organization official who visited two hospitals in northern Gaza said they were having to carry out more amputations because of staff, electricity and supply shortages, AP reports.
As diplomatic efforts continued to secure aid deliveries and another ceasefire in the conflict, Israel carried out more strikes and other operations across Gaza, but a territory-wide communications outage made it difficult to confirm details about the fighting. Hamas, meanwhile, fired a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv, underscoring the militant group’s resilience in the face of Israel’s blistering campaign to destroy it.
Nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel declared war on Hamas, according to the health ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Israel says more than 130 of its soldiers have died in its ground offensive after Hamas raided southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and taking about 240 hostages.
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He’s raising millions in aid for Gaza. But still he couldn’t save his family
Hani Almadhoun works in the US to support the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency. The bad news keeps coming from home in Gaza
Hani Almadhoun braces himself whenever he hears his iPhone ping, the sound now a harbinger of bad news from his family in Gaza.
On Thanksgiving, it was a Facebook notification with a message that his 17-year old nephew had been shot in the head by a sniper.
A Telegram alert was how Almadhoun learned that his brother Mahmoud was taken by the IDF. He spotted him in a photo, blindfolded and stripped down to his underwear.
As the war continued, the bad news seemed to get closer. “At first it was the death of a good friend, someone who was in the US on a Fulbright, then it was cousins, then more cousins, then it was my sister-in-law’s entire family.”
It’s a situation that is common these days for diaspora Palestinians with family members and friends back in the Gaza Strip. Almadhoun, who hails from Gaza but has been in the US since 2000, works as the director of philanthropy for UNRWA USA, a charity that fundraises for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. The limitations of his work add another layer of helplessness.
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Summary
Prospects for an exchange deal involving the release of more hostages remained uncertain as Hamas insisted it would not discuss anything less than a complete end to Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh visited Egypt on Wednesday for the first time in more than a month for discussions with Egyptian officials who are seeking to mediate another truce. Reuters reports that a source said envoys were intensively discussing which of the hostages still held by Palestinian militants in Gaza could be freed in a new truce and which Palestinian prisoners Israel might release in return.
The World Health Organization said on Thursday that northern Gaza had been left without a functional hospital due to a lack of fuel, staff and supplies. “There are actually no functional hospitals left in the north,” Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in Gaza, told reporters via video link from Jerusalem. “Al-Ahli [hospital] was the last one but it is now minimally functional.”
An Israeli air strike killed a Hamas-appointed senior border official and three others in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip near the border with Egypt, Hamas and health officials said. They said Col Bassam Ghaben, the Hamas-appointed director of the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom commercial crossing, and three other Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike near the gate of Rafah crossing.
An Australian doctor who coordinated medical aid to Gaza has expressed horror at the “huge proportion of children being killed or maimed for life” as the UN security council again delayed a vote on a ceasefire resolution. Dr Natalie Thurtle, who helped oversee the response by Médecins Sans Frontières until last week, said it was “very confronting for colleagues trying to provide healthcare when it’s possible to be shot through the window of the hospital”.
An Israeli strike killed an elderly woman and wounded her husband in their home in southern Lebanon, Lebanon’s state news agency and a security source said. The incident brought the civilian death toll from Israeli shelling of southern Lebanon in recent weeks to about 20, including journalists and children, according to a Reuters count.
More than 8,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails, amid an intensified wave of arrests and detentions in Gaza and the West Bank since the 7 October attacks by Hamas, according to human rights groups. Addameer, a human rights group supporting Palestinian political prisoners, said the detainees included hundreds from Gaza, including 123 women, though the true total from the territory could be much higher.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, warned the failure of the UN security council to pass a resolution on Gaza would mean applying “dangerous double standards.” Safadi said the draft resolution, which is expected to be voted on later on Thursday, focused on speeding up aid shipments that Jordan says Israel has been obstructing to prevent sufficient life-saving assistance from entering.
Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), a human rights organisation partly founded by the late journalist Jamal Khashoggi, said it had submitted a dossier to the International Criminal Court naming 40 senior Israeli commanders who it argues should be investigated as war crimes suspects in relation to the war in Gaza. The watchdog accuses the commanders, headed by defence minister Yoav Gallant, of having responsibility for indiscriminate and deliberate attacks on Palestinian civilians, using starvation as a weapon of war, blocking humanitarian aid as the fighting has unfolded, and imposing a state of siege on Gaza.
Sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and a Reuters camera crew witnessed rocket interceptions over Israel’s commercial capital after a TV channel showed launches from the Gaza Strip. There was no immediate word of any damage or casualties in what appeared to have been a long-range salvo by Palestinian militants.
Palestinian factions will reject any talks about prisoner swaps until after Israeli “aggression” has ended, a statement published by Hamas said. “There is a Palestinian national decision that there should be no talk about prisoners or exchange deals except after a full cessation of aggression,” the statement said. In addition to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, a smaller Palestinian militant group, is also holding hostages in Gaza, Reuters reported.
The Israeli army has acknowledged a significant misstep over the mistaken shooting of three Israelis held hostage in Gaza. An investigation has found that, five days before the shooting, a military search dog with a body camera had captured audio of them shouting for help in Hebrew, Associated Press reports.
The German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd said that it would reroute 25 ships by the end of the year to avoid the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis are targeting merchant ships. “We will reroute around 25 vessels up to the end of 2023,” a spokesperson said in a written reply to an inquiry by Reuters. “Further decisions will be taken at the end of the year.” One of Hapag-Lloyd’s ships, the Al Jasrah, which was attacked near Yemen in December, was on its way to Singapore, the spokesperson also said.
Egypt’s foreign minister said that countries on the Red Sea have a responsibility to protect its waters. “We continue to cooperate with many of our partners to provide suitable conditions for the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea,” Sameh Shoukry added in a press conference with the British foreign secretary, David Cameron, in Cairo.
Israel ordered the evacuation of large areas of southern Gaza’s main city on Wednesday, the United Nations has said. Israel had released maps showing new areas covering about 20% of Khan Younis that had been marked for evacuation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has passed 20,000, Hamas says. According to the latest figures from the media office of the territory’s government, those killed since the war began on 7 October included about 8,000 children and 6,200 women.
The UN security council has postponed a vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza until Thursday as diplomats struggle to agree on the language of the draft resolution. The UN resolution, drafted by the United Arab Emirates, has been changed several times amid reported policy differences inside the Biden administration.
The Israeli military says it has uncovered a major Hamas command centre in the heart of Gaza City, inflicting what it described as a serious blow to the militant group. The army had exposed the centre of a vast underground network used by Hamas to move weapons, militants and supplies throughout the Gaza Strip, it said on Wednesday.
The first aid convoy to travel direct from Jordan to Gaza since the start of the war has delivered 750 metric tonnes of food to the Palestinian territory, the UN World Food Programme has said. The 46-truck convoy travelled through the Israel-Gaza Kerem Shalom border crossing, through which Israel last week approved the temporary delivery of aid into Gaza, opening a new route for supplies. Meanwhile, Israel’s foreign minister has said it wants to fast-track the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza through a maritime corridor from Cyprus.
Emmanuel Macron has said that Israel’s goal of fighting terrorism did not mean it had to “flatten Gaza”. The French president called on Israel “to stop this response, because it is not appropriate, because all lives are worth the same and we defend them”.
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Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), a human rights organisation partly founded by the late journalist Jamal Khashoggi, said it had submitted a dossier to the International Criminal Court naming 40 senior Israeli commanders who it argues should be investigated as war crimes suspects in relation to the war in Gaza.
The watchdog accuses the commanders, headed by defence minister Yoav Gallant, of having responsibility for indiscriminate and deliberate attacks on Palestinian civilians, using starvation as a weapon of war, blocking humanitarian aid as the fighting has unfolded, and imposing a state of siege on Gaza.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director at Dawn, said:
While Israel has done its best to conceal the identities of many of its officers, they should be put on notice that they face individual criminal liability for the crimes under way in Gaza.
Last month, Karim Khan, the court’s chief prosecutor, said his office was conducting an investigation into the situation in Palestine that encompassed the events since Hamas launched its cross-border raid on 7 October, and he invited third parties to submit information and evidence to him.
Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which establishes the authority of the war crimes court, and does not accept its jurisdiction, but the Palestinian Authority signed up at the end of 2014.
The ICC says that it is able to investigate and operate in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and it can examine the actions of any party on that territory, including Israelis as well as Palestinians.
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Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, warned on Thursday the failure of the UN security council to pass a resolution on Gaza would mean applying “dangerous double standards.”
Safadi said the draft resolution that is expected to be voted on later on Thursday focused on speeding up aid shipments that the kingdom says Israel has been obstructing to prevent sufficient life-saving assistance from entering.
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The German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd said on Thursday that it would reroute 25 ships by the end of the year to avoid the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis are targeting merchant ships.
“We will reroute around 25 vessels up to the end of 2023,” a spokesperson said in a written reply to an enquiry by Reuters. “Further decisions will be taken at the end of the year.”
One of Hapag-Lloyd’s ships, the Al Jasrah, which was attacked near Yemen in December, was on its way to Singapore, the spokesperson also said.
Apart from Hapag-Lloyd, other operators’ ships have also been attacked, including those of rivals Maersk and MSC.
Shipping freight rates and shipping stocks have risen as a result of the disruptions, which means that many east-west trades incur more expenses by having to circumnavigate Africa via the Cape of Good Hope.
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Sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and a Reuters camera crew witnessed rocket interceptions over Israel’s commercial capital on Thursday after a TV channel showed launches from the Gaza Strip.
There was no immediate word of any damage or casualties in what appeared to have been a long-range salvo by Palestinian militants in the third month of a Gaza war between Israel and Hamas.
Palestinian factions reject any talks about prisoner swaps until after Israeli “aggression” is ended, a statement published by Hamas on Thursday said.
“There is a Palestinian national decision that there should be no talk about prisoners or exchange deals except after a full cessation of aggression”, the statement said.
In addition to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, a smaller Palestinian militant group, is also holding hostages in Gaza, Reuters reported.
Egypt’s foreign minister said on Thursday that countries on the Red Sea have a responsibility to protect it.
“We continue to cooperate with many of our partners to provide suitable conditions for the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea,” Sameh Shoukry added in a press conference with the British foreign secretary, David Cameron, in Cairo.
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Four Palestinians killed in Israeli air strike near Rafah
An Israeli air strike killed a Hamas-appointed senior border official and three others in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip near the border with Egypt, Hamas and health officials said on Thursday.
They said Col Bassam Ghaben, the Hamas-appointed director of the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom commercial crossing, and three other Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike near the gate of Rafah crossing.
There was no immediate Israeli response to a Reuters request for comment.
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An Israeli strike killed an elderly woman and wounded her husband in their home in southern Lebanon early on Thursday, Lebanon’s state news agency and a security source said.
The incident brought the civilian death toll from Israeli shelling of southern Lebanon in recent weeks to about 20, including journalists and children, according to a Reuters count.
Another Israeli strike overnight killed a member of Hezbollah, according to the armed group, which has lost more than 100 fighters in the recent hostilities with Israel.
Hezbollah has been trading fire with Israel at the border since Palestinian ally Hamas attacked southern Israel, igniting a conflict that has drawn in the heavily armed group and other Iran-aligned factions across the Middle East.
Northern Gaza no longer has a functional hospital, WHO says
The World Health Organization said on Thursday that northern Gaza had been left without a functional hospital due to a lack of fuel, staff and supplies.
“There are actually no functional hospitals left in the north,” Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in Gaza, told reporters via video link from Jerusalem.
“Al-Ahli [hospital] was the last one but it is now minimally functional.”
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An Australian doctor who coordinated medical aid to Gaza has expressed horror at the “huge proportion of children being killed or maimed for life” as the UN security council again delayed a vote on a ceasefire resolution.
Dr Natalie Thurtle, who helped oversee the response by Médecins Sans Frontières until last week, said it was “very confronting for colleagues trying to provide healthcare when it’s possible to be shot through the window of the hospital”.
As the reported death toll in Gaza passed 20,000 and France called on Israel to “stop” wide-scale military operations, Thurtle said it was “impossible to set up a meaningful response to this catastrophe because of the ongoing military activity”.
More than 8,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails, amid an intensified wave of arrests and detentions in Gaza and the West Bank since the 7 October attacks by Hamas, according to human rights groups.
Addameer, a human rights group supporting Palestinian political prisoners, said the detainees included hundreds from Gaza, including 123 women, though the true total from the territory could be much higher.
Earlier this month the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group that keeps a tally of detainees from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, said there were about 7,800 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, the highest total for at least 14 years.
The numbers for those held in administrative detention – indefinitely and without charge – was at a historic high, campaigners said. Eighty percent of detainees since 7 October fell into this category, said Tala Nasir, a lawyer working with Addameer.
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The United States, key allies and Arab nations have engaged in high-level diplomacy in hopes of avoiding another US veto of a new UN resolution on desperately needed aid to Gaza ahead of a long-delayed vote now scheduled for Thursday morning.
AP reported:
The US has been struggling to change the text’s references to a cessation of hostilities in the Israel-Hamas war. Another sticking point is the inspection of aid trucks into Gaza to ensure they are only carrying humanitarian goods. The current draft proposes a UN role, an idea Israel is likely to oppose.
US president Joe Biden told reporters on his way back from Milwaukee, Wisconsin late Wednesday afternoon that “we’re negotiating right now at the UN the contours of a resolution that we may be able to agree to.”
Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh of the United Arab Emirates, which sponsored the Arab-backed resolution, said earlier that high-level discussions are underway to try to reach agreement on a text that can be adopted.
“Everyone wants to see a resolution that has impact and that is implementable on the ground,” she told reporters after the 15 council members held closed consultations early Wednesday afternoon and agreed to the delay. “We believe today, giving a little bit of space for additional diplomacy, could yield positive results.”
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Relatives of people still held hostage in Gaza have made a public appeal to the international community for the captives to be released.
A video of what they said includes a woman who tells of a two-year old boy who keeps asking every day: “Where is daddy?”
The woman says, fighting tears:
And the only answer we have is that daddy’s love him. And that’s it, we don’t know what to say.
Another woman describes “a three-year-old who knows what being held hostage in Gaza is like”.
A man says in appealing for help to bring loved ones home:
We don’t have a single moment to lose any more.
About 128 Hamas-held hostages reportedly remain in Gaza, although Israeli officials believe that several of that number have died.
The video is here:
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Here are some of the latest images from the Gaza Strip and Israel coming in over the newswires.
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The Israeli army has acknowledged a significant misstep over the mistaken shooting of three Israelis held hostage in Gaza.
An investigation has found that, five days before the shooting, a military search dog with a body camera had captured audio of them shouting for help in Hebrew, Associated Press reports.
The Israeli army’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, said on Wednesday that the recording was not reviewed until after the hostages were killed while trying to make themselves known to Israeli forces.
The incident has sparked an uproar in Israel and put pressure on the government to reach a new deal with Hamas. The chief of the military has said the shooting was against its rules of engagement.
Hagari also indicated that Israel was winding down its operations in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, where it has been battling Hamas militants for weeks.
He said the army had moved into a final remaining Hamas stronghold, the Gaza City neighbourhood of Tufah.
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Hostage exchange deal prospects uncertain after Egyptian talks with Hamas end ‘without results’
Prospects for an exchange deal involving the release of more hostages remained uncertain as Hamas insisted it would not discuss anything less than a complete end to Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh visited Egypt on Wednesday for the first time in more than a month for discussions with Egyptian officials who are seeking to mediate another truce.
Reuters reports that a source said envoys were intensively discussing which of the hostages still held by Palestinian militants in Gaza could be freed in a new truce and which Palestinian prisoners Israel might release in return.
However, the meeting with Haniyeh ended “without results”, a Palestinian official told the BBC.
Taher Al-Nono, Haniyeh’s media adviser, told Reuters that Hamas was not willing to discuss releasing more Israeli hostages until Israel permanently ends its military campaign in Gaza and humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians increases.
We cannot talk about negotiations while Israel continues its aggression. Discussing any proposal related to prisoners must occur after the cessation of aggression.
Israel has insisted all remaining women and infirm men among the hostages be released, the source briefed on the negotiations said.
The Wall Street Journal quoted Egyptian officials as saying Hamas rejected an Israeli offer to stop fighting for one week in exchange for dozens of hostages.
Islamic Jihad, a smaller Palestinian militant group that is also holding hostages in Gaza, said its leader would visit Egypt in coming days as well to discuss a possible end to the conflict.
White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Wednesday:
These are very serious discussions and negotiations, and we hope that they lead somewhere.
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Opening summary
Welcome back to our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a rundown on the latest developments to bring you up to speed.
The prospects for an exchange deal involving the release of more hostages in Gaza remains uncertain after Hamas said it would not discuss anything less than a complete end to Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
The Palestinian militant group’s most senior political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, visited Egypt on Wednesday for talks with Egyptian officials seeking to mediate another truce but the meeting ended “without results”, a Palestinian official told the BBC.
The White House said the negotiations were “very serious … and we hope that they lead somewhere”.
But Taher Al-Nono, Haniyeh’s media adviser, said Hamas was not willing to discuss releasing more Israeli hostages until Israel ended its military campaign in Gaza and the volume of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians increased.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared to rule out a ceasefire as he vowed on Wednesday that Israel would continue its war against Hamas “to the end”.
More on that story shortly. In other headlines as it just passes 7.15am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv:
At least 12 people were killed in a series of explosions in Rafah in southern Gaza, near the border with Egypt, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said. Dozens of people, including women and children, were wounded when the blasts occurred near the Kuwaiti hospital on Wednesday, it said. An Al Jazeera broadcast captured a strike near the hospital while one of its correspondents was live on air.
Israel ordered the evacuation of large areas of southern Gaza’s main city on Wednesday, the United Nations has said. Israel had released maps showing new areas covering about 20% of Khan Younis that had been marked for evacuation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has passed 20,000, Hamas says. According to the latest figures from the media office of the territory’s government, those killed since the war began on 7 October included about 8,000 children and 6,200 women.
The UN security council has postponed a vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza until Thursday as diplomats struggle to agree on the language of the draft resolution. The UN resolution, drafted by the United Arab Emirates, has been changed several times amid reported policy differences inside the Biden administration.
The Israeli military says it has uncovered a major Hamas command centre in the heart of Gaza City, inflicting what it described as a serious blow to the militant group. The army had exposed the centre of a vast underground network used by Hamas to move weapons, militants and supplies throughout the Gaza Strip, it said on Wednesday.
The first aid convoy to travel direct from Jordan to Gaza since the start of the war has delivered 750 metric tonnes of food to the Palestinian territory, the UN World Food Programme has said. The 46-truck convoy travelled through the Israel-Gaza Kerem Shalom border crossing, through which Israel last week approved the temporary delivery of aid into Gaza, opening a new route for supplies. Meanwhile, Israel’s foreign minister has said it wants to fast-track the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza through a maritime corridor from Cyprus.
Emmanuel Macron has said that Israel’s goal of fighting terrorism did not mean it had to “flatten Gaza”, referring to its response to Hamas’s attack on 7 October. The French president called on Israel “to stop this response because it is not appropriate, because all lives are worth the same and we defend them”.
The UN human rights office (OHCHR) has said it received “disturbing” information alleging that Israel Defence Forces (IDF) summarily killed at least 11 Palestinian men in front of their family members in Gaza. A report by the OHCHR in the occupied Palestinian territory said the incident took place on 19 December in the Al Remal neighbourhood in Gaza City, and warned that the allegations “raises the alarm about the possible commission of a war crime”. The Guardian was unable to confirm the claims. The IDF has not responded to them.
The head of the UN World Health Organisation has said he is “deeply concerned” about the “toxic mix of disease, hunger and lack of hygiene and sanitation” that people in Gaza are facing. The territory was “already experiencing soaring rates of infectious disease outbreaks”, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned. He also said the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City – northern Gaza’s last functioning hospital until earlier this week – was a “shell” of its former self due to lack of fuel, staff and supplies, and bodies had been placed in rows in its courtyard “as they couldn’t be given safe and dignified burials”.
The political leaders of Hamas have begun talks with the group’s military wing about how to govern Gaza and the West Bank after the war with Israel ends, according to a report. “We want the war to end,” Husam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau in Qatar, told the Wall Street Journal, amid sharpening divisions with Hamas’s military faction.
Amnesty International has called for an urgent investigation into what it called Israel’s “enforced disappearance” of Palestinian detainees from Gaza, after reports of deaths in military detention centres. The Israeli army said it was investigating the deaths.
Updated
