Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 449

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador, says he does not know why Israel continues to pound Gaza and target its medical facilities, saying Israel’s operation in Gaza has “exhausted itself”.

“It achieved the military objectives that it had, and that was to degrade Hamas, to render Hamas incapacitated to the point of not being able to govern,” he told Al Jazeera. “That has been achieved.”

Pinkas said that if Netanyahu wants to, as he has said before, “eradicate, obliterate and annihilate Hamas”, the Israeli army would need to occupy and “take care of” the entire Gaza Strip.

“That’s something Israel is hesitant and reluctant to do,” he said, “From Israel’s point of view, … the military objectives were never aligned with coherent political objectives.”

“So when there’s no political objective, you’re left with sporadic, so-called intelligence-driven operations that, with all due respect, yield very little utility,” he said.

The Gaza interior ministry says the Israeli military has “assassinated” the head of the Remal police station in Gaza City in the northern part of the enclave, Al Jazeera reports.

Colonel Talat Joda was killed in an air strike while performing his duties in serving the citizens, the ministry said in a statement. “The occupation’s deliberate targeting of police personnel aims to spread chaos in Palestinian society and deepen human suffering of citizens,” it said.

The ministry called on the international community to pressure Israel to stop its targeting of civil servants in Gaza in light of the “catastrophic conditions” experienced by Palestinians.

“The seven Palestinians who were killed in al-Wafaa Hospital are obviously patients because the hospital treats the elderly,” Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reports.

“After the war started, it started admitting people who have chronic diseases and functioned as a rehabilitation centre,” she adds.

Khoudary reports that Israeli forces have been systematically targeting different hospitals across the Gaza Strip. “We’re talking about, according to the Ministry of Health, at least 33 hospitals going out of service in the past 14 months.”

The Government Media Office in the Gaza Strip has said that more heavy rain is expected over the besieged enclave later in the day and is forecast to worsen by Tuesday, Al Jazeera reports.

This exacerbates the suffering of more than two million people in Gaza, many of whom are bereft of adequate shelter. The office stated that 110,000 out of 135,000 tents in Gaza are out of service after having “completely deteriorated”.

More rain and strong winds would especially endanger Palestinians forced to shelter near coastal areas, with some waves expected to rise as high as 2 metres, it added.

The health ministry in Gaza has said that 30 people had been killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll of the conflict to 45,514, AFP reports.

The ministry also said in a statement that at least 108,189 people had been wounded in more than 14 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas, triggered by the group’s October 7, 2023 attack.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has demanded an investigation into the killing of 21-year-old Palestinian journalism student Shatha Sabbagh, Al Jazeera reports.

“The union demands the formation of an independent investigation committee with the participation of a representative of the union to determine the truth, hold the killers accountable, and prevent them from escaping punishment,” the group said in a statement.

Sabbagh was killed while reporting from the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank during armed clashes between Palestinian Authority forces and fighters from the camp.

“Another baby that froze to death earlier this morning. This increases the death toll in Gaza due to hypothermia to five Palestinian newborns,” Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reports from Deir el Balah, Gaza.

“According to the father of Juma al-Batran, who was only 30 days old, the family evacuated from Beit Lahiya to the central Gaza Strip eight months ago and did not have a tent.

“They only had a couple of blankets and wood, and that’s how the father protected his family. He said he was unable to give warmth to his child. He was unable to bring blankets and winter clothes, and he was unable to feed his children,” she said.

Juma has a twin brother who is currently in the ICU. “It was heartbreaking to see Juma’s father carrying him today, his hands and legs blue because he was literally freezing.”

The area where they were sheltering is very close to the sea and very windy. There are no tarps or tents, and Juma’s father was unable to give his children basic necessities.

“Not only are Palestinian babies and children dying from air attacks and artillery, but also from malnutrition and hypothermia,” Khoudary says.

An Israeli government report set to be submitted to the UN this week says that hostages, including children, freed last year from Gaza endured physical and sexual abuse during their captivity, AFP reports.

The report from the Israeli health ministry, which it said was based on testimonies from released captives, details incidents of individuals being burned, beaten and deliberately starved by their Hamas captors.

The findings will be presented this week to Alice Jill Edwards, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, the ministry said in a statement.

The report said that some of the hostages, including children, had been “sexually assaulted or forced to undress, including at gunpoint”.

Women hostages described being “tied to beds while their captors stared at them,” while men also reported severe abuse, the report said.

“There’s been footage of Israeli soldiers inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital, collecting all the files, papers and information of people admitted to the hospital,” Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reports from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

We also saw them taking the generators of the hospital to an unknown location, she said.

“We have been trying to find out if the Israeli forces have left the hospital, but all we know is that the hospital is empty of other people and also out of service.

Kamal Adwan was one of the last hospitals still operating in northern Gaza and surgeries were conducted there. There was a serious lack of medical supplies, but volunteer doctors were making miracles out of very low equipment.

“This is not the first time the Israeli forces are doing this to a hospital in Gaza. We saw Al-Shifa Hospital, where the exact scenario happened including the fact that the director of the hospital was arrested. This also happened in Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza in the past few months.

“Israeli forces are also targeting al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, which is the only hospital in Gaza City,” Khoudary said.

Israeli forces arrested a Palestinian in the town of Tuqu southeast of Bethlehem after another raid, according to the Wafa news agency.

A 38-year-old was arrested in the occupied territories after homes were searched and ransacked in the town.

Multiple towns and villages were stormed by Israeli forces in the Ramallah and al-Bireh governorate. Local sources sited by the official agency said in addition to Silwad, places like Shuqba, Rantis and Kafr Aqab were also hit, with many homes raided.

Israeli military vehicles were recorded during a raid south of Nablus as well.

Multiple videos circulating online, which have been verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad agency, show that the Israeli military has again attacked the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City.

The top floor of the healthcare facility, also known as al-Maamadani, was hit by artillery shelling. The hospital is located in the Zeitoun neighbourhood in northern Gaza that has been repeatedly besieged by Israeli ground and air forces.

Zaher Sahloul, the president of MedGlobal, which employs Abu Safia as its lead physician in Gaza, has released a statement on his arrest, Al Jazeera reports.

Dr Abu Safia “has dedicated his life to protecting the health and lives of children in Gaza, providing care under conditions no medical professional should have to endure,” Sahloul said.

“His arrest is not only unjust — it is a violation of international humanitarian law, which upholds the protection of medical personnel in conflict zones. MedGlobal urgently calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Dr Abu [Safia].”

Zarah Sultana has decried UK arms sales to Israel amid attacks on hospitals, babies freezing to death, and an attack which the WHO director-general “narrowly survived” in Yemen.

“This genocide is fuelled by UK arms sales and Western support,” Sultana said in a post on X.

Al Jazeera Arabic reports that the casualties occurred in an Israeli bomb attack on a house in the Al Nasr neighbourhood of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza.

The bombing came as Palestinian media reported a quadcopter assault on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, as well as attacks from a gunboat on the al-Mawasi area in the south of the Strip.

Earlier in the night, Israeli forces also shelled the Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City and blew up houses in besieged areas north of the enclave.

Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, says he has warned for months that “more than a million Palestinians lack shelter” for winter conditions, Al Jazeera reports.

“Now babies are freezing to death,” Rajagopal added, noting that this is another “achievement” of Israel’s so-called “most moral army in the world”.

Several Palestinian babies have frozen to death in the past few nights in Gaza, including three who died of hypothermia in the so-called “humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi.

“We demand sending UN observers to Gaza hospitals to refute the [Israeli] occupation’s lies and allegations about their use for military purposes,” Hamas said in a statement, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.

“We call on the United Nations and international institutions to intervene urgently to protect the remaining hospitals and medical facilities in northern Gaza.

“The [Israeli] occupation’s systematic destruction of medical facilities places a historical responsibility on the international system for its failure to stop the war of extermination.”

Israeli media outlet Haaretz is reporting that Einav Zangauker, the mother of a captive held in Gaza, accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of sabotaging a deal to secure the release of the captives, Al Jazeera reports.

Zangauker was quoted as saying that “a comprehensive deal could be reached, but Netanyahu refuses to end the war for criminal reasons.”

“While he instructs everyone to remain silent, he is running to torpedo the deal through interviews and press conferences,” she said.

Read more here.

Ismail al-Kahlout, a nurse at Kamal Adwan Hospital who was freed after being detained by Israeli forces, says he was held in “difficult conditions” for more than 12 hours.

“We have seen, after leaving the hospital, a volume of destruction that my words can’t describe. Huge areas were demolished and levelled as if the Israelis want to wipe them off the map,” al-Kahlout told Al Jazeera.

“The Israeli soldiers kept us tied up and blindfolded where we could hear people screaming, but we could not know who exactly was being beaten.”

Read more here.

Israel’s military says it has ended its raid on “a Hamas command centre” in a north Gaza hospital and detained its director, accusing him of being a Hamas operative, AFP reports.

“The IDF (military) and ISA (security agency) completed a targeted operation against a Hamas command centre in the Kamal Adwan Hospital … the forces apprehended over 240 terrorists in the area,” the military said in a statement.

The statement added that the hospital director, Hossam Abu Safiyeh, had been detained for questioning after being suspected of “being a Hamas terrorist operative”.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that Kamal Adwan Hospital was “now empty” following an Israeli military raid which put north Gaza’s last major health facility out of service, AFP reports.

“Kamal Adwan is now empty. Yesterday evening, the remaining 15 critical patients, 50 caregivers and 20 health workers were transferred to Indonesian Hospital, which lacks the necessary equipment and supplies to provide adequate care,” the WHO said, adding that it was “appalled” by the raid and had lost contact with Kamal Adwan’s director.

The commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has warned that children in Gaza are freezing to death due to the cold weather and a severe lack of shelter, Anadolu reports.

“Gaza babies are freezing to death due to cold weather and a lack of shelter,” Philippe Lazzarini wrote in a post on X.

“Blankets, mattresses, and other winter supplies have been stuck in the region for months waiting for approval to get into Gaza,” he said, referring to Israel’s blockade of the enclave.

The UN official reiterated his call for an immediate cease-fire, urging “an immediate flow of much-needed basic supplies, including for winter.”

Two rockets have been fired on West Jerusalem from northern Gaza, Al Jazeera reports according to a statement from the Israeli military.

“Interception attempts were made, the details are under investigation,” it added.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salut reports that the incident is over and that no injuries have been reported.

When asked by The Jerusalem Post if there will always be an Israeli military presence in Gaza, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said: “My working assumption is that in the foreseeable future, only we can ensure our security,” Al Jazeera reports.

According to the newspaper, he also clarified that this does not mean the country will reestablish Jewish settlements in Gaza.

“Although I opposed the disengagement [from Gush Katif, the Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005], the goals set by the cabinet do not include such plans,” he was quoted as saying.

The newspaper added that Saar expressed scepticism on the existence of an external force capable of effectively guaranteeing security in Gaza.