Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 452

The UN refugee agency for Palestinians has said that thousands are in need of safety and humanitarian aid as the besieged Gaza Strip is hit by severe storms.

“Heavy rains flooded shelters in Gaza’s Deir al-Balah doubling the misery for displaced people living tents,” UNRWA said in a post on X.

The Israeli military kept up the pressure on northern Gaza, striking in a suburb of Gaza City, medics said, and told residents in a central part of the enclave to evacuate from an area where militants were firing rockets, Reuters reports.

Air strikes in Shejaia, a suburb of Gaza City, killed at least eight Palestinians, according to local emergency services. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military and it was not immediately clear who was killed in the attack.

In al-Buriej, in central Gaza, the Israeli military said it struck a militant operating in an area from which rockets had been fired into Israel the previous day. Its Arabic spokesman had ordered people to leave the area before the strike.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa said two people had been killed in that strike and 15 more in an airstrike in Jabalia. There was no immediate confirmation from Gaza health officials.

Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place is safe in Gaza and that evacuations worsen the humanitarian conditions of the population.

Al Jazeera reported that at least 15 Palestinians, including children, were killed and 20 others wounded in an Israeli attack on a home in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

The dead and injured were moved to al-Ahli Arab Hospital, said rescuer Mohammed, who provided only his first name. “They were pulled out from beneath the rubble of the targeted house,” he said.

A relative of some of the victims said first responders are still searching for any survivors.

“The house has turned into a pile of debris,” said Jibri Abu Warda, adding the Israeli attack occurred at about 1am (11pm GMT on Tuesday).

“It was a massacre with body parts of children and women scattered everywhere. They were sleeping when the house was bombed,” Warda said. “No one knows why they targeted the house. They were all civilians.”

Al-Aqsa TV channel reports two Palestinians have been killed and others injured in an Israeli attack on a residential apartment block on Mushtaha Street in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood, according to Al Jazeera.

Earlier, Palestinian media reported an Israeli quadcopter drone and artillery were bombing continuously in the Shujayea and Sha’af neighbourhoods.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says a new UN report detailing Israeli attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system is further proof of “genocide” in the besieged Palestinian territory, Al Jazeera reports.

“Every day, new evidence of the ongoing genocide in Gaza by the far-right Israeli government comes to light,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad in a statement.

“It is time the world community, and the genocide-complicit Biden administration takes concrete action to stop Israel’s slaughter, forced starvation, mass destruction, and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”

The New Year arrives in Gaza, not with joy or hope, but with the boom of fighter jets, drones, and eardrum-shattering explosion sounds, Tareq Abu Azzoum of Al Jazeera reports from Deir el-Balah, Gaza.

“At least 17 Palestinians have been killed in attacks on Jabalia and Bureij refugee camps, and Palestinian families in specific blocks in the Bureij refugee camp have been met with new evacuation orders,” the reporter said.

These attacks follow the launch of rockets from that area towards Israeli communities, the reporter adds.

“Right now, these families are trying to leave these densely populated neighbourhoods, taking whatever is left of their belongings — and the streets there that used to be full of children’s laughter are now echoing with terrified cries and the sound of footsteps looking for shelter,” the reporter said.

“It’s not just Israeli bombs and the forced displacement that are overwhelming Palestinians, but also the severe cold weather — Many of them are in tents, lacking warm winter clothing, and they are trying to cope with it all by resorting to primitive means of heating,” the reporter concluded.

Israel’s army has knocked down a Palestinian home in al-Walaja village, northwest of Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports, citing the Wafa news agency.

Khader al-Araj, head of al-Walaja Village Council, said Israeli troops escorted a bulldozer into the village, which tore down a house belonging to a woman named Nisreen Khaled Abu Rizeq.

Five people have been displaced, the report adds, while Al-Araj said Israeli forces had also previously demolished Abu Rizeq’s house on July 15 of this year.

Daniel Meron, Israel’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, has described a damning UN human rights agency report on attacks on Gaza’s hospitals as made up, Al Jazeera reports.

The 23-page UN report said: “The destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, and the extent of killing of patients, staff, and other civilians in these attacks, is a direct consequence of the disregard of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

Meron said on X that Israel operates in accordance with international law, would never target innocent civilians, and accused Hamas of using Gaza hospitals for what he called “terror activity”.

Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 45,553 Palestinians and wounded 108,379 since October 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said in a statement, Reuters reports.

The Palestinian relief agency UNRWA has reiterated its call for a ceasefire in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict which began on Oct, 2023.

In a post on X, UNRWA said, “Ever since the war in Gaza started in 2023, we have been calling for a ceasefire.”

“Throughout 2024, we continued this call,” it said adding, “It’s now 2025, the war goes on, unabated.”

Gaza’s civil defence agency said that an overnight Israeli air strike targeting a house in Jabalia, in the territory’s north, killed at least 15 people, AFP reports.

“Fifteen people were martyred and more than 20 were injured in this massacre after midnight in a house where displaced people were living in the town of Jabalia,” civil defence agency’s spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP. The Israeli military, when contacted, said it was looking into the reported strike.

Bassal said that those living in the house were members of the Badra, Abu Warda, and Taroush families who had sought refuge there.

Fifteen people have been killed in the northern town of Jabalia in Israel’s New Year’s Day attacks on Gaza and most of the victims were children, Al Jazeera reports citing The Wafa news agency.

It adds that two more Palestinians were killed in the central Bureij refugee camp.

Ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas have “hit an impasse in recent days”, Al Jazeera reports citing the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Citing “Arab mediators”, the WSJ said the two sides were considering a 60-day ceasefire during which up to 30 Israeli captives held in Gaza would have been released.

In exchange, Israel was to set Palestinian prisoners free and allow greater humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, the mediators said. But the talks have now stalled.

“Mediators said Israel insisted that it receive only living hostages in any exchange and refused to approve the release of some of the Palestinian detainees sought by Hamas,” the WSJ said.

Hamas also demanded the ceasefire be a “path to an end to the war”, it added.

The Palestinian Civil Defence has said floodwaters rose to more than 30cm in the affected tents in Gaza, leaving displaced Palestinians exposed to the cold and causing damage to their belongings and mattresses, Al Jazeera reports.

The emergency service says the tents — located in areas including northern Gaza City, southern Khan Younis, as well as in central Deir el-Balah — were rendered unusable because of the flooding.

It says there were hundreds of other tents where the floodwaters were below 30cm.

Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, has said there is “almost zero access” despite over 140 attempts made in two months to reach besieged Palestinians in north Gaza.

In a post on X, Fletcher said: “We need to reach the survivors of this horrific destruction, especially now last hospitals have been taken out.”

Al Jazeera Arabic is reporting that Israeli forces have attacked the home of its correspondent Rami Abu Taima in southern Khan Younis, wounding several members of his family.

Israel’s predawn attacks on northern Jabalia and the central Bureij camp have killed at least 10 people, Al Jazeera Arabic journalists report.

A breakdown of the toll was not immediately available, the report added.

Earlier, Al Jazeera quoted Palestinian media outlets as reporting that at least seven people, most of them children, were killed when Israeli forces bombed the home of the Taroush family in Jabalia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gotten up from his hospital bed to call on unruly coalition partners to fall in line and back his government’s 2025 budget after hardline rebels threatened to pull support for the bill, Reuters reports.

Netanyahu, recovering from prostate surgery, came to the Knesset against the recommendation of his doctors to ensure the passing of legislation aimed at increasing state revenues after the far-right public security minister Itamar Ben Gvir and ultra-Orthodox parties said they might vote against the law or abstain.

The bill, an austerity package of tax hikes and spending cuts, passed narrowly but the opposition was another sign of ever-widening cracks in Netanyahu’s coalition, the furthest right in Israel’s history.

In an initial vote earlier this month, Israeli lawmakers narrowly approved the budget bill despite a rebellion by coalition partners demanding he fire Israel’s attorney general.

“I expect all the members of the coalition, including Minister Ben-Gvir, to stop rattling the coalition and endangering the existence of a right-wing government,” Netanyahu said yesterday.

Israeli attacks on hospitals in Gaza have devastated the Palestinian enclave’s health system and raised serious concerns about Israel’s compliance with international law, the UN Human Rights Office said in a report, according to Reuters.

The 23-page report, documenting various attacks between Oct 12, 2023, and June 30, 2024, concluded that since the Hamas attacks against Israel on Oct 7, 2023, the conduct of hostilities in Gaza had had severe consequences on Palestinians’ access to medical attention.

“The destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, and the extent of killing of patients, staff, and other civilians in these attacks, is a direct consequence of the disregard of international humanitarian and human rights law,” it said.

The report said deliberately directing attacks against hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are, provided they are not military objectives, would be war crimes.

It also warned that a systemic pattern of rights abuses against civilians could constitute crimes against humanity.

Israel has consistently rejected such suggestions. Daniel Meron, Israel’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, described the report’s data as fabricated.

Read the full report here.

The UN refugee agency for Palestinians has predicted more baby deaths in the upcoming days due to the cold and a lack of shelter and winter supplies in the besieged Gaza Strip.

In a post on X, UNRWA said six babies had died in recent days.

The Israeli army has entered the city in the occupied West Bank with armoured vehicles, Al Jazeera reports.

Palestinian news agency Wafa said the vehicles were stationed in the southwestern part of the city.

Earlier, the military also stormed the Artah suburb and the town of Faroun south of Tulkarem.

More than 100 tents housing displaced Palestinians have been flooded in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has found.

About500 families also live along the Gaza shoreline, which is exposed to strong waves and winds.

“Displaced people, already living through the unlivable due to the war, are now battling heavy rainstorms,” UNRWA said on X.

“More and regular humanitarian assistance must come into Gaza to help people stay warm this winter.”

At least six people have been killed in an Israeli raid on Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza. The victims are a couple and their daughters, Al Jazeera reports.

Torrential rains have washed away hundreds of tents sheltering displaced civilians in the conflict-torn Gaza, witnesses have said, TRT World reports.

According to witnesses, rainwater caused the erosion of dirt roads surrounding displacement camps west of the central city of Deir al-Balah and the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah.

The heavy rains and stormy winds have caused the collapse of hundreds of worn-out tents, leaving displaced families without any shelter amid harsh weather conditions, they added.

Many families were forced to spend their night in the open as their tents, personal belongings and possessions were swept away by the heavy rains, the witnesses said.