Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir spoke out against more aid deliveries for besieged northern Gaza despite the catastrophic humanitarian situation, Al Jazeera reports.
“As long as we have hostages in the Gaza Strip, we must not make any concessions, not even to the civilian population,” he told the Israeli news portal Arutz Sheva.
Ben-Gvir was the only one in the cabinet to vote against the further aid demanded by the United States. The United Nations and aid organisations are warning of an immediate outbreak of famine in the northern Strip.
The Lebanese government is reviewing a US truce proposal in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, Lebanese officials told AFP, more than a month since cross-border clashes escalated into a full-blown conflict.
A top government official in Beirut, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said US Ambassador Lisa Johnson discussed a 13-point proposal that includes a 60-day truce with senior Lebanese officials, during which Lebanon will redeploy troops at the border.
The official added that Israel has yet to respond to the plan.
Al Jazeera’s Tariq Abu Azzoum reports that the central areas of the Gaza Strip are relatively quiet as the Israeli army is focused on the enclave’s besieged north.
“There has been an intensification of strikes on Beit Lahiya and Jabalia in the north, where witnesses say the skyline is completely covered with dust and smoke rising from destroyed buildings amid fighting between Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces,” Azzoum reports
He adds that the humanitarian situation has catastrophically deteriorated in the north. “The humanitarian response there has been quite strained.”
“Organisations such as Doctors Without Borders are saying that people are dying and only a fraction of the required aid has reached the area,” Azzoum adds.
Hamas’s armed wing says its fighters have attacked Israeli soldiers in northern Gaza and killed three near besieged Beit Lahiya, Al Jazeera reports.
“Qassam fighters managed to kill three Zionist soldiers at point-blank range in the vicinity of Abbas Kilani roundabout, north of Beit Lahiya city,” the armed group said in a statement on Telegram.
Foreign ministers of the European Union will discuss proposals to ban imports from illegal Israeli settlements and suspend political dialogue with Israel, Al Jazeera reports.
The bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell announced on X that he is proposing the measures because of the many violations of international law committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon.
The EU has imposed many sanctions — from visa bans and “terrorist” designations to import restrictions and sanctions — in other cases of violations of international law, but “until now Israel has been spared from any meaningful consequences”.
“This has to change. This is why I have proposed an import ban on illegal settlement products, based on the recent advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, similar to the existing import ban on products from occupied Ukrainian territories — because even-handedness is the lynchpin of Europe’s credibility.”
The European Union’s foreign policy chief condemned the Israeli killing of 15 Lebanese paramedics in Baalbek, Al Jazeera reports.
“Attacks on healthcare workers and facilities are a grave violation of international humanitarian law. The protection of medical personnel in conflict zones is non-negotiable,” Josep Borrell said.
The strike may have been a “reckless” accident or deliberate, but it still violates fundamental human rights either way, he added.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a statement to welcome the adoption of a resolution by the United Nations General Assembly to recognise “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”, Al Jazeera reports.
The ministry pointed out that 170 countries voted in favour of the resolution including states “that have evolved their positions to support this fundamental right”.
Only Israel, the United States and four others voted against it, while nine countries including Palau and Tonga abstained.
The resolution is welcome “at a time when the Palestinian people are facing genocide and ongoing violations of all their rights, including the right to self-determination”, the ministry said, adding that it gives hope to Palestinians that the world is ready to “confront genocide, colonial settlement expansion, and settler terrorism”.
Syrian state-run media has said Israel struck the upscale Mazzeh district of Damascus, the second such attack in as many days to hit the neighbourhood home to embassies, security headquarters and United Nations offices, AFP reports.
“Israeli aggression targets Mazzeh area in Damascus,” the official Sana news agency said, after reporting a deadly Israeli strike on the district a day earlier.
The Lebanese armed group says it fired rockets at a group of Israeli soldiers in the Misgav Am settlement and the Yiftah barracks in northern Israel, Al Jazeera reports.
Hezbollah’s statement on Telegram also said another group of Israeli soldiers was attacked with rockets on the eastern outskirts of the Lebanese town of Markaba.
Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reassess National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s role due to his alleged political interference in police operations, Anadolu reports according to Israel’s Haaretz daily.
Baharav-Miara said, “The combination of the alleged improper interventions in police operations and the dependency of police officers on the minister for their promotions undermines the assurance that the police will act in loyalty to the public rather than the politicians.”
She noted in a letter sent to Netanyahu, following a petition to the High Court of Justice against Ben-Gvir’s position, that incidents presented in the petition as well as incidents that precede it “create a rare, severe and ongoing pattern of law violations, breaches of duty and harm to fundamental governance principles, alongside the politicisation of police work.”
The Lebanese government released a statement following the meeting between Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Iran’s Ali Larijani, an adviser to the country’s supreme leader, Al Jazeera reports.
During their meeting, Mikati stressed “what is required is to support the position of the Lebanese state in terms of implementing international Resolution 1701”.
It’s also important to support national unity and not to take positions favouring one group at the expense of the other. He stressed the Lebanese government prioritises halting Israeli aggression and reaching a ceasefire.
Aid access in Gaza is at a low point with deliveries to parts of the besieged north of the enclave all but impossible, a UN humanitarian official said, Reuters reports.
The remarks run counter to a US assessment earlier this week that Israel is not currently impeding humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip, avoiding restrictions on US military aid. Israel has said it has worked hard to assist the humanitarian needs in Gaza.
“From our perspective, on all indicators you can possibly think of in a humanitarian response, all of them are going in the wrong direction,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in response to a question at a Geneva press briefing about whether humanitarian access had improved.
“Access is at a low point. Chaos, suffering, despair, death, destruction, displacement are at a high point,” he added.
Laerke voiced concern about north Gaza where residents have been ordered to head south as Israeli forces’ more than month-long incursion continues. Israel says its operations there are designed to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping.
A Palestinian boy sits by a UN World Food Program box of food items, in Gaza City on November 14 amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. — AFP
The Gaza health ministry has said that at least 43,764 people have been killed in more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas, AFP reports.
The toll includes 28 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 103,490 people have also been wounded in the Gaza Strip since fighting broke out on October 7, 2023.
A senior Hamas official has said that the group is “ready for a ceasefire” in Gaza and urged US President-elect Donald Trump to “pressure” Israel to “end the aggression”, AFP reports.
“Hamas is ready to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip if a ceasefire proposal is presented and on the condition that it is respected” by Israel, Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim told AFP. “We call on the US administration and Trump to pressure the Israeli government to end the aggression. “
A senior Hamas official said that the group is “ready for a ceasefire” in Gaza and urged US President-elect Donald Trump to “pressure” Israel to “end the aggression”, AFP reports.
“Hamas is ready to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip if a ceasefire proposal is presented and on the condition that it is respected” by Israel, Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim told AFP.
“We call on the US administration and Trump to pressure the Israeli government to end the aggression. “
Israel’s army has released 20 Palestinian prisoners through the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom to Israelis) commercial crossing, and they were taken to the European Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, for treatment, Al Jazeera reports.
Most of the detainees were arrested a month ago from the besieged northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Separately, Palestine’s Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs confirmed a Palestinian from Nablus and another from Gaza died in Israeli captivity.
Dr James Smith, an emergency physician from the UK who worked at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah this year, has spoken to Al Jazeera after our correspondent Hani Mahmoud reporting that kidney patients in Gaza increasingly struggle to receive care.
“If a patient with kidney failure requires dialysis and is unable to access the number of sessions they need a week, they will eventually deteriorate and, without intervention, they will die,” he said.
He said during his time at Al-Aqsa Hospital, “several patients with end-stage kidney failure” were unable to access basic medical treatment and intervention, and “there was nothing that we could do to save their lives.”
“Our Palestinian colleagues are trying their best under beyond-catastrophic conditions. With the resources that are available to them, they are providing care to patients with complex chronic diseases alongside patients with horrific trauma-related injuries,” he said.
Senior Iranian official Ali Larijani and Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri have discussed efforts to reach a ceasefire in Lebanon, Iran’s embassy in Lebanon posted on X, according to Reuters.
The US ambassador to Lebanon submitted a draft truce proposal to Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who is endorsed by Hezbollah to negotiate, two senior Lebanese political sources told Reuters without providing details.
The draft was Washington’s first written proposal to halt fighting between its ally Israel and Hezbollah in at least several weeks, the sources said.
“It is a draft to get observations from the Lebanese side,” one of the sources told Reuters.
When asked about the proposal, a spokesperson for the US Embassy in Beirut said: “Efforts to reach a diplomatic deal are ongoing.”
An Israeli airstrike has flattened a building near one of Beirut’s busiest traffic junctions, shaking the Lebanese capital as Israel kept up its intensified bombardment of areas of the city, Reuters reports.
One of several airstrikes, the attack struck near the Tayouneh junction in an area where the southern suburbs meet other parts of the city, a more central target than most that Israel has hit.
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on a building in Tayouneh neighborhood, near a central park, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Beirut, Lebanon on November 15. — Reuters
Israeli military has said that in coordination with Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence service, its air force struck Alkaman Abed Elslam Khalil Anbar, who it claims was in charge of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) brigade located in Gaza City, Al Jazeera reports.
It says Anbar was responsible for the PIJ’s rocket launches from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli territory and was a “significant figure in the organization’s weapons manufacturing processes”.
The PIJ group has not commented on the Israeli military’s claim.
Kidney patients in Gaza increasingly struggle to get care, with just one crowded medical facility offering dialysis in the central part of the enclave, Al Jazeera reports.
“Before the war, we used to reach the hospital with comfort. Now we cannot even transport my husband on a donkey cart,” said Yousra Saleh, whose 70-year-old husband requires dialysis.
“I have to push his wheelchair all the way to the hospital on rough terrain flooded with sewage and under Israeli bombardment,” she said.
Once at the hospital, treatment is limited.
“Each patient is receiving only half the amount of treatment they need,” said Tareq Abu Azra, a nurse in Al Aqsa Hospital’s kidney ward, describing the care as life or death.
The death toll from yesterday’s Israeli airstrike on a civil defence centre in Douris, in Lebanon’s Baalbek district, has risen to 12, Anadolu reports citing Lebanon’s National News Agency.
“The Civil Defense Center in Baalbek was targeted while more than 20 civil defence personnel were inside,” Bachir Khodr, the governor of Baalbek-Hermel, wrote on X.
The Israeli military has carried out several deadly raids on Lebanon over the past day, including a strike on a civil defence centre in the village of Arabsalim in the Nabatieh district, southern Lebanon.
According to Lebanon’s health ministry, six people have been killed in that attack, including five paramedics, Al Jazeera reports citing Lebanon’s National News Agency.
Israel has ordered residents in Beirut’s southern suburb of Ghobeiry to immediately evacuate as an attack will be carried out “in the near future” on a number of targets, Al Jazeera reports.
The Israeli military spokesman, Avichay Adraee, published a map with his warning showing several buildings highlighted, but with two marked in red, and stated that “these buildings and those adjacent to them” must be evacuated immediately.
