Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 459

As the sun sets, Israeli attacks show no sign of stopping, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports.

“In the past few hours, we have been hearing sporadic shelling coming from the eastern areas of Deir el-Balah, just a few kilometres from where we are,” he reports.

Azzoum adds, “Elsewhere in Gaza, we have reports coming from Khan Younis that Israeli drones struck a motorbike there and one civilian was confirmed killed.”

In northern Gaza, where most of the Israeli attacks happen, Israeli forces are bulldozing structures in the vicinity of Indonesian Hospital, building sand barriers and burning down residential houses, Azzoum reports.

Israel killed approximately 490 Palestinians in the first nine days of 2025, Azzoum states.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has congratulated Lebanon for electing army chief Joseph Aoun as president, Al Jazeera reports.

“I hope that this choice will contribute towards stability, a better future for Lebanon and its people and to good neighbourly relations,” Saar wrote in a social media post.

Lebanon’s former army chief Joseph Aoun, whose election has ended more than two years of presidential vacuum, has taken an early dig at Hezbollah, saying that he will defend the “state’s right to exclusively carry weapons”, Al Jazeera reports.

“I promise to call for discussing a comprehensive defence strategy, as part of a national security strategy, on the diplomatic, economic and military levels to enable the Lebanese state — I repeat the Lebanese state — to remove the Israeli occupation and deter its aggression,” Aoun said.

Hezbollah has long argued that its weapons arsenal and military wing are necessary to protect Lebanon from Israel. Throughout its history, the Lebanese army has largely avoided direct clashes with Israel despite its repeated invasions and attacks against the country.

The Palestinian civil defence agency says the Israeli military has attacked the Erbakan school in northern Gaza, killing three people, including a woman and a child, while 25 others have been injured, Al Jazeera reports.

Poland’s president has urged the government not to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he attend the Auschwitz liberation anniversary event later this month, AFP reports quoting his office.

Polish President Andrzej Duda was quoted as saying “Every person from Israel, every official from that country, should be able to take part in this unique event”, his aide Malgorzata Paprocka said on X.

Duda had sent a letter to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “to ensure that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is able to participate in the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, should he express such a wish”.

Tusk has not yet commented on the president’s position.

An air strike targeting a residential home in Deir el-Balah killed four people and wounded several others, Al Jazeera reports.

Resident Khalil al-Dibji said everyone nearby was “screaming and crying” when the Israeli attack took place.

“The place was full with dust and I could no longer see anything clearly,” he told Al Jazeera. “I started looking for my children. My eldest daughter was fine and I was able to save the two younger boys. My other daughter was rescued from under the rubble.”

Al-Dibji said he thought his wife had been killed because of the amount of debris piled on top of her, but she managed to survive. “My question is why [do] the Israelis kill civilians? We are civilians and there is no resistance here.”

Israel’s liaison to the Palestinians, Cogat, claims that over the past three days, it has facilitated the transfer of 6,750 litres of fuel, 10,000 litres of water, dozens of food crates and nearly 300 boxes of medical supplies, Al Jazeera reports.

It said in a statement that on Monday, in collaboration with the World Health Organisation, supplies were delivered to al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, including 291 boxes of medical equipment along with food supplies, and that water supplies totalling 10,000 litres and food crates were transferred to the Indonesian Hospital.

Raed Haniya, a medical worker at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, says medical teams in Gaza face impossible choices amid Israel’s ongoing attacks in the enclave, Al Jazeera reports.

“During heavy bombardments that result in a flood of casualties, we’re forced to prioritise patients based on the severity of their conditions,” he told Sanad, Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency.

Haniya noted doctors often had to play the dual role of caregivers and emotional supporters. “We find ourselves consoling patients who have lost their entire families, helping them cope with their devastating losses while managing their physical wounds,” he said.

Moreover, he said seeing mutilated and burned children in the hospitals took a heavy psychological toll. “You can’t help but imagine that it could be your own child in their place,” he added.

Hisham Mhanna, a communications officer with the International Committee of the Red Cross, says more Palestinians will die from preventable deaths as Gaza’s fuel supply runs dry and hospitals shut down because of a lack of electricity.

“The entire population is in desperate need of everything, every day, for over 15 months now,” Mhanna told Al Jazeera.

“A trickle of aid must be turned into a safe flow of aid with security guarantees and arrangements for humanitarian workers so they can deliver it to everyone in need – everywhere in the Gaza Strip,” he said.

US and Arab mediators have made some progress in their efforts to reach a ceasefire accord between Israel and Hamas, but not enough to seal a deal, Palestinian sources close to the talks said, according to Reuters.

Qatar, the US and Egypt are making a major push to reach a deal to halt fighting in the 15-month conflict and free the remaining hostages held by Hamas before President Joe Biden leaves office.

A Palestinian official close to the mediation effort said the absence of a deal so far did not mean the talks were going nowhere and this was the most serious attempt so far.

“There are extensive negotiations, mediators and negotiators are talking about every word and every detail. There is a breakthrough when it comes to narrowing old existing gaps but there is no deal yet,” he told Reuters, without giving further details.

At least 15 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces since yesterday evening until this morning, according to the Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, Al Jazeera reports.

The groups said in a statement that the arrests took place across the governorates of Bethlehem, Qalqilya, Hebron, Ramallah and Jerusalem.

“In addition, the occupation carried out field investigations of about 50 citizens in the towns of the Hebron Governorate, who were later released,” the statement said.

“The arrest campaign was accompanied by widespread raids and abuse, attacks and threats against detainees and their families, in addition to acts of vandalism and destruction in citizens’ homes.”

Pope Francis has stepped up his recent criticism of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, calling the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave “very serious and shameful”, Reuters reports.

In a yearly address to diplomats delivered on his behalf by an aide, Francis appeared to reference deaths caused by winter cold in Gaza, where there is almost no electricity.

“We cannot in any way accept the bombing of civilians,” the text said.

“We cannot accept that children are freezing to death because hospitals have been destroyed or a country’s energy network has been hit.”

The health ministry in Gaza said that 70 people were killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll to 46,006, AFP reports.

The ministry also said in a statement that at least 109,378 people had been wounded in more than 15 months of conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Ireland has submitted a declaration to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Anadolu Agency reports.

“Ireland, invoking Article 63 of the Statute of the Court, filed in the Registry of the Court a declaration of intervention in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip,” or South Africa versus Israel, the court said in a statement.

Under Article 63, any state party to a convention that is under judicial consideration has the right to intervene, making the ICJ’s interpretation of that convention binding on them as well.

The White House has rejected successive findings from multiple organisations that Israel’s assault on the besieged Gaza Strip constitutes genocide, just one day after it said one was taking place in Sudan, Anadolu reports.

“There’s no genocide happening from the Israeli side on Palestinians. It’s clear, as the secretary of state articulated, that what we’re seeing in Sudan is genocide. It’s the wanton, systematic, direct, deliberate slaughter, rape, murder, torture of people based on their ethnicity or their faith that is genocide, and that’s what’s going on,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

“That is not what we’re seeing in Gaza, just not. The IDF isn’t waking up every day putting their boots on the floor and saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to go kill some innocent people because they happen to be Palestinian.’ Now that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been too many civilian casualties in this conflict, absolutely too many,” he added in reference to the Israeli military.

Multiple organisations, including a UN special committee that investigated Israeli practices in Gaza and rights group Amnesty International, have concluded otherwise.

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Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces pounded the Palestinian territory, killing at least 12 people including three girls, 15 months into the conflict, AFP reports.

Three girls and their father were killed when an air strike hit their house in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the civil defence agency reported.

Local paramedic Mahmud Awad said he helped transfer the bodies of two girls and their father, Mahmud Abu Kharuf to a hospital.

“Their bodies were found under the rubble of the house that the occupation bombed in the Nuseirat camp,” Awad told AFP. He added that the body of the third girl had been found earlier by residents.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said there are 15 newborns in incubators at the facility’s neonatal intensive care unit, who are all dependent on electricity provided by fuel generators, Al Jazeera reports.

“Without fuel, these newborns are at risk of losing their lives,” said Pascale Coissard, MSF’s emergency coordinator.

“The babies in incubators rely on constant electricity for the ventilators that are keeping them alive. They are already in an extremely vulnerable state, and any transfer to other hospitals would directly endanger their lives,” she continued.

“Putting the lives of children at risk like this is unacceptable and is a consequence of Israel’s ongoing blockade and continuous criminal looting of lifesaving supplies.”

MSF said it and other groups have been warning for over a year that the woefully inadequate supply of aid is threatening the lives of people in Gaza. “We have now reached a tipping point where one of the last specialised hospitals in the south of Gaza risks being out of order because of lack of fuel,” it added.

The UN has reported severe Israeli restrictions on aid efforts in Gaza, where civilians are enduring “horrific levels of violence” amid ongoing attacks, Anadolu reports.

“Our colleagues from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report that Palestinian civilians endure horrific levels of violence as hostilities continue across the Gaza Strip,” said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric at a news conference.

Saying the UN and its partners provided aid to more than 2,000 families in southern and central Gaza between Dec 22 and Jan 4, Dujarric said, “We also assisted about 200 families in Gaza governorate itself.”

“Meanwhile, OCHA reports that Israeli authorities continue to deny UN-led efforts to reach north Gaza governorate, where Palestinians have been under siege for more than 90 days,” he said.

Israel’s embassy in Mexico has condemned the “odious” destruction of a wax statue of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a pro-Palestinian activist at a museum in Mexico City, AFP reports.

A video showing the activist destroying the statue at the city’s Wax Museum was uploaded onto a pro-Palestinian account on X on Tuesday, captioned: “This is for Gaza.”

It shows the man placing a Palestinian flag at the foot of the statue and then dousing the statue with red paint, whacking it with a hammer and toppling it to the ground.

“The attack carried out on the statue of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an odious act which sends a dangerous message of violence, intolerance and hate that goes beyond all legitimate criticism,” the Israeli embassy said in a statement.

The embassy added that Israel was fighting “a just struggle (in Gaza) against a terrorist organisation whose cruel actions cost the lives of numerous civilians, including Mexican citizens.”

The Israeli military has bombed the Abu Kharouf family home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing two people, including a young child, Al Jazeera reports citing Quds News Network and the Palestinian Information Centre.

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) accused The New York Times of “an outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth” after the newspaper refused to run an advertisement that described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide”, Al Jazeera reports.

The proposed advertisement read:

“Tell Congress to stop arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza now! As a Quaker organisation, we work for peace. Join us. Tell the President and Congress to stop the killing and starvation in Gaza.”

The AFSC, a peace and social justice Quaker group, said the newspaper justified its decision by saying there are “differing views on the situation” in Gaza and that it “must ensure that all advertising content complies with these widely applied definitions”.

The group said it has now cancelled the planned advertising with the newspaper.

Israel’s far-right finance minister has warned of a new phase in the war on Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

During a live interview on Israel’s Channel 7, Bezalel Smotrich said there will be a “very fundamental change” in the way Israel will “conduct the war in Gaza”.

“We are preparing hell for Hamas,” Smotrich said.

In the same session, he also criticised the ongoing talks for a ceasefire, saying there “should have been no negotiations with Hamas”.

The Israeli military placed new restrictions on media coverage of soldiers on active combat duty amid growing concern at the risk of legal action against reservists travelling abroad over allegations of involvement in war crimes in Gaza, Reuters reports.

Under the new rules, media interviewing soldiers of the rank of colonel and under will not be able to display their full names or faces, similar to the rules that already exist for pilots and members of special forces units, Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson told reporters.

The interviewees must not be linked to a specific combat event they participated in.

“This is our new guideline to protect our soldiers and to make sure they are safe from these types of incident hosted by anti-Israel activists around the world,” Shoshani said.

He said that under existing military rules, soldiers were already not supposed to post videos and other images from war zones on social media “even though that’s never perfect and we have a large army.”