Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 456

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestine, hailed a decision by a court in Brazil to order a probe against a visiting Israeli soldier, saying legal actions against Israelis suspected of crimes in Gaza are “necessary and overdue”, Al Jazeera reports.

The remarks on X came in response to the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) announcing that a Brazilian court had acted on a complaint it filed against Israeli solider Yuval Vagdani and ordered the country’s police to launch an investigation.

Israeli media later reported that Vagdani had fled the South American country.

“Apartheid Israel will go to great lengths to shield its soldiers since a conviction abroad for crimes against Palestinians is a precedent it cannot afford,” Albanese wrote on X. “Yet, justice is unstoppable,” she said.

Al Quds Today is reporting that Israeli forces have launched several attacks on northern Gaza City, killing at least four people and wounding many more.

The four were killed in an attack on a house near the Sheikh Radwan pool, north of the city, the Palestinian media outlet reported according to Al Jazeera.

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) ban on Al Jazeera is part of a broader attempt to silence criticism of its security operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, activists and analysts say.

According to Al Jazeera, the ban came almost a month after the PA launched a crackdown on a coalition of armed groups that call themselves the Jenin Brigades.

The groups are affiliated with Palestinian factions such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and even Fatah, the party that controls the PA.

Since early December, the PA has besieged the Jenin camp and cut off water and electricity to most of its residents in an ostensible attempt to restore “law and order” across the West Bank.

However, its indiscriminate tactics in Jenin coincide with a wider attack on free speech, activists and human rights groups told s.

A Hamas official said the initial swap of the 34 hostages would include all the women, children, elderly people and sick captives still held in Gaza, adding they needed a “week of calm” to determine their condition, AFP reports.

“Hamas has agreed to release the 34 prisoners, whether alive or dead,” the official said. “However, the group needs a week of calm to communicate with the captors and identify those who are alive and those who are dead.”

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Hamas has not provided a list of hostage names “up to this moment”, Reuters reports.

Hamas has approved a list of 34 hostages presented by Israel to be exchanged in a possible ceasefire deal, a group official told Reuters.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, also reiterated that any deal is contingent upon reaching an agreement on an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire.

Al Jazeera reports that the top US Middle East adviser, Brett McGurk, has joined the latest round of indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel in Doha, Qatar.

The two sides are meeting with mediators, one of them the United States, on the feasibility of an end to hostilities in the Gaza Strip and the exchange of Israeli captives still held there for Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel.

A report from US outlet Axios says that McGurk, the top adviser on the Middle East in the administration of US President Joe Biden, has joined those talks in Doha.

Axios cited two anonymous sources in its report, one a US official.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent on the ground reports that two people have been killed and others wounded in an Israeli drone attack on the town of Abasan, east of the city of Khan Younis.

A Palestinian writer, poet and journalist has been killed in an Israeli air strike in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, according to his family, taking the total number of journalists killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict since October 7, 2023 to 220, Al Jazeera reports.

Mohammad Hijazi was among nearly 90 Palestinians killed in Israeli bombardment across the besieged territory in the last 24 hours, according to a Gaza Health Ministry statement today.

Hundreds of people have been killed in the Jabalia camp since Israel imposed a military siege of northern Gaza on October 5 and intensified bombardment, forcing thousands to flee. Israel has prevented even aid groups from supplying basic food items to the area.

“I don’t know if I will write to you again. I keep what I have written and am writing. Maybe it will come to light one day. I refuse a cheap death. I curse the murderer,” Hijazi wrote on Facebook in August of last year.

It was not immediately clear whether Hijazi was working for a specific media organisation when he died.

Read more here.

The Israeli military has said it struck more than 100 “terror targets” in the Gaza Strip over the past two days, while rescuers in the Palestinian territory reported dozens of people killed in Israeli strikes, AFP reports.

Several of the strikes targeted sites from which fighters had been firing projectiles into Israel in recent days, the military said.

“The IAF (air force) struck over 100 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip and eliminated dozens of Hamas terrorists” in the past two days, a military statement said.

Gaza’s health ministry has warned of a severe shortage of medicines and medical supplies, Al Jazeera reports.

“Stocks of 120 medicines, including 20 cancer treatments, are completely depleted in the ministry’s warehouses,” ministry official Wael al-Sheikh told the official Palestine TV.

He said the ministry’s debt is nearing 3 billion shekels (approximately $800 million), according to a report by the Anadolu news agency.

An eighth baby has died of hypothermia in Gaza as temperatures plummet amid the Israeli onslaught.

“I am the mother of Yousef. I lost him. They didn’t give a single moment to feel happy with my baby,” the infant’s mother told Al Jazeera.

“He died because of the very cold weather. He slept next to me and in the morning I found him frozen and dead. I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“No one can feel my misery. No one in the world can understand our catastrophic situation. Yousef was fine. He was born healthy … I lost Yousef forever.”

An Israeli raid on Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza has killed five Palestinians and injured a number of others, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.

The Al-Aqsa TV channel quoted local sources as saying that a child was seriously injured in the raid and was subsequently transferred to Al-Awda Hospital.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has accused Hezbollah of not meeting the terms of a ceasefire, warning that if the group continued to breach the deal, Israel would “be forced to act”, AFP reports.

Katz said Hezbollah had still not withdrawn “beyond the Litani river” in southern Lebanon. He added, “If this condition is not met, there will be no agreement and Israel will be forced to act on its own to ensure the safe return of residents of the north to their homes. “

In 2024, Israeli forces destroyed 815 mosques and partially damaged another 151, Al Jazeera reports according to a report published by the Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs.

According to the report, 19 cemeteries were also destroyed, with graves desecrated and bodies exhumed, the Wafa news agency reported.

Three churches in Gaza City were also hit and destroyed in the Israeli attacks.

The Gaza health ministry has said that 88 people were killed in Israeli strikes on the territory over the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll of the conflict to 45,805, AFP reports.

The ministry also said in a statement that at least 109,064 people had been wounded in nearly 15 months of the conflict since Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October 7, 2023.

The Israeli prime minister has called for an “urgent security discussion” this evening with Defence Minister Israel Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Al Jazeera reports citing Israeli Army Radio.

The discussion will be held in light of the progress in negotiations regarding the release of the captives in Gaza, the report said.

Meanwhile, Israel Hayom reported that an Israeli executive plane is returning from Qatar following mediated negotiations.

An Israeli soldier who was accused of committing war crimes in Gaza while vacationing in Brazil has fled the South American country, Al Jazeera reports citing Israeli media.

Shortly before Yuval Vagdani fled after being wanted for questioning by the authorities in Brazil, his family said he “is not under arrest”, that they are “interested in him coming to Israel”, and that “those who need to help him are helping him”, broadcaster Kan reported.

Israeli outlet Israel Hayom also reported that the man had fled Brazil, without giving details.

Earlier, the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) accused Vagdani of participating in “massive demolitions of civilian homes in Gaza during a systematic campaign of destruction”. The HRF, in a follow-up statement, said it received information that Israel was attempting to smuggle the soldier out of Brazil.

Two Palestinians, including a journalist, were killed and several others injured as Israeli airstrikes targeted northern Gaza and the southern city of Rafah, Wafa reports.

Local sources reported that writer and journalist Mohammad Hijazi was killed in the strikes on northern Gaza. Civil defense teams later recovered the body of another victim in the Musabah area, north of Rafah, following heavy Israeli bombardment.

Israeli warplanes also bombed an area near the bike market in the Qizan Rashwan region, south of Khan Younis, coinciding with intense shelling across various parts of the province.

Thousands of victims are feared trapped under rubble, inaccessible to emergency and civil defense teams due to Israeli attacks.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has lauded the Biden administration’s $8bn boost in military aid as a “genocide” is underway in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

“The support of the United States over the past 15 months has enabled us to defend ourselves and wage war,” Lapid said in a post on X.

“This is an opportunity to thank President Biden and his administration for their support.”