Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 424

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced in a statement that the body of a hostage has been recovered from the Gaza Strip, AFP reports.

“In a special operation, the body of hostage Itay Svirsky, who was kidnapped on October 7 (2023) from kibbutz Beeri and murdered in captivity by Hamas terrorists in June 2024, was brought back,” Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office.

The Prisoners’ Affairs Commission (PAC) and the Palestine Prisoner’s Society (PPS) have reported that a Palestinian detainee has died in Israeli detention, Al Jazeera reports.

In a joint news release, the prisoner organisations said that Mohammad Walkid Hussein Ali, 45, was a resident of the Nur Shams refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank and had previously spent about 20 years in Israeli prisons and detention centres. Ali was detained again by Israeli forces last week.

According to the latest figures from Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, there are currently 10,200 people, including 270 children and 94 women, in Israeli prisons and detention centres.

The total includes 3,443 Palestinians placed under “administrative detention”, which allows Palestinians to be detained without charge or trial.

Doctors Without Borders has said that Israeli forces raided and opened fire inside the Turkish hospital in Tubas in the occupied West Bank, Anadolu reports.

MSF International said on X that Israeli forces detained staff, intimidated patients and caused damage to the emergency room.

“During this hour-long raid, five medical staff were detained and one person was wounded. Medical staff on site were threatened at gunpoint and subjected to aggressive questioning. Patients were told to stay still or they would be shot and killed,” the medical charity said.

“This violent incursion is unacceptable and shocking,” argued Karine Robert, MSF deputy head of mission for Palestine.

The Israeli army says it is continuing to target Hezbollah activities that violate the terms of the ceasefire, Al Jazeera reports.

Its spokesperson said the Israeli air force attacked a launch pad that was identified in the Majdal Zoun area in southern Lebanon, adding that the army destroyed “combat equipment” in the areas of Khiam, Sawwaneh and Aitaroun, also in southern Lebanon.

Israeli settlers have wounded a Palestinian and set buildings on fire while raiding two villages in the occupied West Bank after a nearby settlement outpost was evicted by Israeli forces.

“Israeli civilians entered the village of Beit Furik” east of the Palestinian city of Nablus, the Israeli army said, adding that they “set property on fire, and hurled stones”.

Local authorities told AFP that the attacks took place early in the morning.

The army said that the settlers reacted after Israeli forces “acted against illegal construction by Israeli civilians adjacent to the town of Beit Furik” on Tuesday night, triggering clashes during which the settlers injured two policemen with stones.

Nahi Hanani, deputy head of the Beit Furik council, told AFP that dozens of settlers attacked the village “setting fire to a truck in front of one house and another vehicle”, early today.

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The Israeli military has alleged that six hostages whose bodies were retrieved in August were killed by Hamas “close” to the time of an Israeli strike in the same area of Gaza that was carried out in February, Reuters reports.

The Israeli court has approved the government’s decision to extend the closure of Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah for 60 more days, the news outlet reported.

On September 22, Israeli forces stormed the office and banned Al Jazeera for 45 days under a military order.

They then confiscated all equipment and documents in the office, prevented employees from using their cars and stopped the channel’s broadcast.

The ban has been extended several times since then.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the ceasefire in Lebanon was “holding” despite a series of accusations by Hezbollah that Israel had violated the terms of the deal, Al Jazeera reports.

“The ceasefire is holding, and we’re using the mechanism that was established when any concerns have arisen about any alleged or purported violations,” Blinken told journalists on the sidelines of a Nato meeting in Brussels.

Amjad al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organisations Network, says the humanitarian situation in Gaza is worsening as winter approaches with only a trickle of aid coming in, Al Jazeera reports.

“The winter makes things very complicated for tens of thousands of families, many of whom are living in approximately 100,000 tents all over the Gaza Strip,” he told Al Jazeera.

“I cannot even describe these tents as real tents. They are pieces of plastic and cloth which cover small spaces, under which live the elderly, children and the sick,” he said. “At times, we have 10 to 15 people staying inside.”

Al-Shawa said thousands of tents have already been flooded and damaged. and many families spent the night in the cold, with nothing to protect their hunger-weakened bodies.

“We still warn of more catastrophes in the Gaza Strip, the repercussions will be unprecedented, especially for the children. We cannot provide them with anything. As NGOs and aid centres, our warehouses are empty of aid.”

The health ministry in Gaza has said that at least 44,532 people have been killed in nearly 14 months of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants, AFP reports.

The toll includes 30 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 105,538 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since fighting broke out on October 7, 2023.

The director of hospitals at the Gaza Ministry of Health has given Al Jazeera Arabic an update warning that more than 100 patients in the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital are at risk of death.

He said that Israel is targeting Kamal Adwan Hospital to force people inside to flee and that Israeli forces are preventing access to Al-Awda Hospital. Stopping the oxygen supplies of the hospitals would mean stopping entire health services, the update adds.

Israeli forces have severely beaten an elderly man on his own land in the town of Aqraba in the Nablus governorate, according to the mayor of the town, Salah Jaber, Al Jazeera reports.

The Wafa news agency quoted Jaber as saying that the man died later in the National Hospital in the city of Nablus.

The death was confirmed to Wafa by Ahmed Al-Azar, a paramedic, who was involved in the injured man’s transfer to hospital.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed 4,047 people and wounded 16,638 others since October 7, 2023, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad has said in a televised press conference, Reuters reports.

The attacks have killed 316 children and 790 women, Abiad added, adding that Lebanon had registered 67 Israeli attacks on hospitals, that 40 hospitals were directly targeted and that seven hospitals had been forced to close.

Israel says it targets Hezbollah’s fighters and infrastructure.

Families in the repeatedly bombed central parts of the Gaza Strip and other parts continue to face “dire conditions” on a daily basis, according to the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Al Jazeera reports.

The organisation said an immediate ceasefire and “unhindered access to humanitarian aid” are urgently needed as hundreds of thousands struggle to get basic necessities for survival.

The Israeli military has said that its 401st Armoured Brigade troops continue to fight “in the heart of Jabalia” in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, which has been under intense siege for many weeks, Al Jazeera reports.

Israeli soldiers “destroy terrorist infrastructure and eliminate many terrorists” in air strikes and close-quarters combat, the army has claimed, adding that its forces have also found a laboratory for making explosives inside a residence.

Many hundreds of civilians have been killed in Jabalia, as tens of thousands have been forced from their homes and starved on the streets.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed 4,047 people and wounded 16,638 others, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said in a televised address, Al Jazeera reports.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has condemned what it called brutal attacks by “terrorist settler militias” on two towns near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports.

The violent Israeli settlers set fire to property and vehicles in the towns amid intensifying daily assaults on Palestinians.

The settlers have been emboldened to commit these crimes in the occupied territory by the “glaring and unjustifiable failure” of the global community to stop the Israeli killings, the ministry said.

The Israeli military has reportedly advised its soldiers who invaded the Gaza Strip to avoid travelling abroad for fear of arrest in the aftermath of court orders issued by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, Al Jazeera reports.

The army has identified about 30 cases where complaints were filed or even criminal proceedings were initiated against officers and soldiers who participated in the war on Gaza and were warned against travelling abroad, according to Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

At least eight soldiers, who were already abroad in Cyprus, Slovenia and the Netherlands, were told to leave those countries immediately due to risks of arrest.

All soldiers have been reportedly told to delete any documents of their participation in destruction and killings in Gaza from their social media accounts.

According to the report, pro-Palestinian activists have created lists of offending soldiers in order to begin legal proceedings against them in the event they travel abroad.

At least five people, including four children, have been killed in an Israeli drone attack on a food distribution point and a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.

Videos verified by Al Jazeera‘s fact-checking agency Sanad showed the arrival of the children’s bodies to al-Awda Hospital in nearby Jabalia.

The Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian civil affairs claims that 122 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip yesterday, Al Jazeera reports.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) reported that seven tankers of fuel were included, and that 50 trucks entered the northern part of the enclave.

The numbers are far below the figures deemed necessary to support the besieged and displaced population of Gaza. The announcement comes as the US set a deadline for Israel last month to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza — which passed without repercussions.

Last night, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a post on X that “aid is outrageously being blocked” by Israel amid “gigantic humanitarian needs in Gaza”. He emphasised that the crisis is one of political will, and not of logistics, as Israel has been claiming.

Israeli tanks pushed into northern parts of the Khan Younis area in the south of the Gaza Strip and Palestinian medics said Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 20 people across the enclave, Reuters reports.

Residents said tanks advanced one day after the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders, saying there had been rocket launches from the area.

With shells falling near residential areas, families left leave their homes and headed westwards towards the humanitarian-designated area of Al-Mawasi nearby.

Medics said 11 people were killed in three airstrikes on areas in central Gaza, including six children and one medic. Five of the dead had been queuing outside a bakery, they said.

A further nine Palestinians were killed by tank fire in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, medics said.

Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the medics’ reports.

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Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports from Deir el-Balah, central Gaza that the civil defence workers managed to recover 10 bodies this morning from different locations in Rafah.

“They were killed in previous Israeli attacks, but today the rescue workers managed to get access to that area which is a very active military zone.

“It shows a very significant display of resilience by the civil defence workers who continue to put their lives on the line while lacking basic equipment,” he said.