US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says while Washington is “wary about making predictions or promises” about the possibility of a ceasefire in Gaza, adding the current negotiations are “close”, Al Jazeera reports.
“With enough pushing from the outside mediators and a commitment from Israel and Hamas, we can get it done,” Sullivan told ABC News.
“Netanyahu made clear at this moment that Israel is ready to do this deal. So the final piece of the puzzle, from my perspective, is for Hamas, ultimately, to come forward with a commitment on the release of hostages in that first phase in the multi-phase deal,” he said.
Sullivan explained that if they can get that done, “we can have a ceasefire, we can get hostages home, and we can get a surge of humanitarian assistance in Gaza”. He added that the current obstacles to the deal were the names of captives and prisoners that would be released in the first phase.
A new report has revealed that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, enforces unjust policies against Palestinian content, deleting posts or restricting visibility under claims of policy violations while turning a blind eye to hate speech and incitement against Palestinians, Al Jazeera reports.
The report published by 7amleh — The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media — includes testimonies from Palestinian influencers, journalists and media outlets who have faced Meta’s discriminatory practices.
It exposes Meta’s “silencing Palestinian content and suppressing the Palestinian narrative, particularly during the ongoing genocide in Gaza”, the report’s authors say.
More than 15 million inciting posts in Hebrew against Palestinians were documented across social media platforms since October 2023, as recorded by 7amleh’s AI-powered language model.=
A threatened Israeli ban on all UNRWA operations in Gaza and the West Bank would not impact the legal status of Palestinian refugees, the agency says.
“UNRWA as a structure in the life of Palestine refugees is irreplaceable,” agency spokesperson Tamara Alrifai told Al Jazeera.
“Having said that if UNRWA were forced to shut down its schools, health centres, and all its services tomorrow, Palestine Refugees remain Palestine Refugees. This is a legal status.”
The Israeli military is blowing up or demolishing several residential buildings in southern Lebanon, as its forces continue to occupy border villages, Al Jazeera reports.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency has said explosions were heard in the city of Tyre, as well as the village of Harfa, the town of al-Jebbayn and the village of Chihine. The Israeli military also targeted buildings in the town of Naqoura for the third day, it reported.
The Israeli military has issued forced evacuation orders to several neighbourhoods in central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp, Al Jazeera reports.
Avichay Adraee, an Israeli army spokesman, published a map of the zones that must be cleared, claiming that rockets were fired at Israel from this area and the Israeli forces had to respond.
“For your own safety, move immediately to the humanitarian zone,” he said.
There are no safe zones in the Gaza Strip, according to local and international organisations.
Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 45,097 Palestinians and wounded 107,244 since October 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry has said, Reuters reports.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says an international medical team urgently needed at Kamal Adwan Hospital has not been allowed to deploy as Israel continues its siege in northern Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.
Hanan Balkhy, WHO regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, also condemned the repeated attacks on the medical facility. “The fear endured by the hospital’s staff and patients in recent days is indescribable — and unacceptable,” she wrote on X.
The representative for the UN health agency said the hospital was without surgical or maternal care capacity.
WHO was instead able to deliver supplies to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Balkhy said.
A woman from Gaza is among 15 Palestinians arrested by Israeli forces across the West Bank, according to prisoners’ groups quoted by the Wafa news agency.
The Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and the Prisoner’s Society said that the woman from Gaza was in the West Bank for medical treatment, according to Wafa.
The report said the arrests were made in the governorates of Hebron, Jericho, Tulkarem, Ramallah, Qalqilya and Jerusalem.
Dalia Ghazi Ibaid and Sally Ghazi Ibaid, twin sisters who received prestigious scholarships to undertake engineering PhDs at Canada’s University of Waterloo, were killed in an Israeli air attack on Gaza in December, the university said, Al Jazeera reports.
The spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres has said Israel is continuing to refuse the delivery of aid to the northern Gaza Strip, amid an ongoing Israeli siege and intense bombardment, Al Jazeera reports.
Stephane Dujarric said during a news conference that the majority of UN-led aid missions to northern Gaza trying to reach the besieged areas in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoon and parts of Jabalia had been rejected.
The UN attempted to reach these besieged areas 40 times, of which 38 attempts were denied and two were obstructed.
Dujarric urged Israel to meet the “essential needs” of civilians in the north and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.
A Palestinian girl holds glasses in her hands as she stands amidst the damage at a tent camp sheltering displaced people, following an Israeli strike, in Al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Dec 18, 2024. — Reuters
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called the potential ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas a “serious error”, Al Jazeera reports, citing Israeli media.
“Hamas is at its lowest point since the beginning of the war, and this is not the time to give it a lifeline,” Smotrich told the Haredi radio station Kol Barama, according to the Ynet News site.
The minister said without providing details that the deal would not serve the interests of Israel or return the captives “because in the end it’s a partial deal”. Yet, Smotrich did not threaten to pull out from the governing coalition should a deal be reached.
The United States, joined by Arab mediators, sought to conclude an agreement between Israel and Hamas to halt the 14-month-old conflict in the Gaza Strip where medics said Israeli strikes killed at least 16 Palestinians overnight, Reuters reports.
On Tuesday, sources close to the talks in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, said an agreement could be signed in coming days on a ceasefire and release of hostages held in Gaza in return for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Medics said an Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 people in a house in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, where army forces have operated since October, while six were killed in separate airstrikes in Gaza City, Nuseirat camp in central areas, and Rafah near the border with Egypt.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military spokesman.
A Palestinian official close to the negotiations said mediators had narrowed gaps on most of the agreement’s clauses but he said Israel had introduced conditions which Hamas rejected. He would not elaborate.
CIA Director William Burns was due in Doha for talks with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on bridging remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas, other knowledgeable sources said. The CIA declined to comment.
Professor Hassan Barari of international affairs at Qatar University has said that while several previous attempts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza have failed, this time around the result might be different.
“We have two US administrations involved in the process at the same time. We have the Biden’s administration, who is seeking forward legacy, and then we have Trump, who is really involved in the details of the negotiation,” Barari told Al Jazeera.
“And the fact that Iran is in no position to play any meaningful role, I think they realise that the balance of power has shifted into Israel, and probably this time, they need to cut a deal while meeting the demand, the minimum demand of the Palestinians,” he said.
Barari added that the Palestinian demands include the gradual pullout of Israeli troops from certain parts of Gaza and an end to the conflict.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has said it provided over 6.7 million medical consultations since Israel’s offensive in Gaza began last October.
“UNRWA provides lifesaving healthcare, food, shelter, learning for children, and mental health support,” it said on X.
Since the conflict began, UNRWA said it provided “over 6.7 million medical consultations” and “psychosocial support to around 730,000 displaced people, including over half a million children”.
“This agency is [a] lifeline for more than 2 million people impacted due to this brutal war,” the UNRWA highlighted.
Georgios Petropoulos, who heads OCHA in Gaza, has described witnessing the aftermath of an Israeli attack that “vaporised” the bodies of victims, Al Jazeera reports.
In remarks reported by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, Petropoulos said the site of the attack in al-Mawasi looked like Nagasaki, the Japanese city where US forces dropped an atomic bomb in 1945.
“They counted the bodies, but there are people who simply vaporised,” Petropoulos said. “Ten or twenty people who were known to be in the tents have simply vanished. “I was at the hospital after the bombing, it looked like a slaughterhouse, blood everywhere.”
Haaretz did not specify the exact attack that Petropoulos was referring to. But the article noted there have been at least eight attacks on al-Mawasi, a sandy area that Israel has designated as a “safe zone”, that killed scores in November, and another on December 4 that destroyed 21 tents and killed at least 23 people.
Al Jazeera Arabic reports that an Israeli attack has sparked a fire in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
The facility in besieged northern Gaza has come under repeated attack by Israeli forces in recent weeks.
Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital’s director, says there are some 50 wounded people at the facility, including several people needing intensive care.
Earlier in the week, Abu Safia said Israeli snipers had opened fire on the ICU.
“It’s the only department that provides ICU services in the northern Gaza Strip. Fortunately, this gunshot did not hit anyone but there have been a number of other gunshots through the windows facing Kamal Adwan Hospital,” he said.
Some 172 countries voted in favour of the resolution, which affirmed the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, while eight countries opposed it, Al Jazeera reports.
Israel, the US, Micronesia, Argentina, Paraguay, and Papua New Guinea voted “no”.
CIA Director Bill Burns is set to meet the Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Doha today in an effort to bridge the remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas, a source with knowledge of the talks tells Reuters.
The two will discuss progress towards a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, the source added.
The CIA declined to comment on the reported meeting.
Iran’s supreme leader has said that Israel and the United States were “completely wrong” to imagine the Axis of Resistance had collapsed with the ouster of Syria’s longtime strongman.
“With the developments in Syria and the crimes the Zionist regime is committing and the crimes that America is committing, and the help that some others are giving to them, they thought that the resistance was over,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised speech.
“They are completely wrong.”
Since the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Iran has sought to distance itself from the ousted leader, instead emphasising the history of friendship between the two countries. Khamenei has also insisted that Assad’s overthrow will not weaken Iran.
“The Zionist regime imagines it can encircle and eradicate the Hezbollah forces through Syria, but the one who will be eradicated is Israel,” Khamenei said yesterday.
A handout picture provided by the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Dec 17, 2024 shows the Iranian supreme leader greeting Iranians ahead of a speech in Tehran. — Khamenei.ir via AFP
Hamas has said talks in Qatar aimed at a truce and hostage-prisoner exchange in Gaza were “serious and positive”, a day after an Israeli delegation flew in to meet with mediators, AFP reports.
“Hamas affirms that, in light of the serious and positive discussions taking place today in Doha under the auspices of our Qatari and Egyptian brothers, reaching an agreement for a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange is possible if the occupation ceases to impose new conditions,” the Palestinian group said in a statement.
A source close to Hamas said “everything indicates that we are getting closer to an agreement, I expect before (US president-elect Donald) Trump’s inauguration” on January 20.
A source with knowledge of the negotiations said they were “focused on reaching a two- or three-stage exchange deal, starting with a humanitarian phase with the release of living Israeli civilian prisoners in exchange for Palestinian prisoners”.
That exchange would “take place at the same time as the gradual ceasefire for a period of two to four weeks, which will be extended for four weeks and so on […] in parallel with the Israeli withdrawal,” the source added.
Huge Israeli airstrikes have killed extended families in homes in two parts of the northern Gaza Strip, Gaza medics said, with Israel’s military claiming it had taken out a Hamas weapons storage facility.
According to Reuters, in the south of the enclave, residents said Israeli tanks were pushing towards a humanitarian zone on the Mediterranean coast, forcing displaced families to take flight again.
Medics said at least 10 people were confirmed killed in an airstrike on a house in the Daraj suburb of Gaza City that destroyed the building and damaged nearby houses.
A Palestinian man carries the shrouded body of a child ahead of a funeral at Al-Ahli Arab hospital, also known as the Baptist hospital, in Gaza City on Dec 17, 2024. — AFP
Further north, in the town of Beit Lahiya, which has been under Israeli siege since early October, at least 15 people were believed to be dead or missing under the rubble of a house hit by an airstrike around dawn, said medics. Rescuers were unable to reach the site to confirm the toll.
In Rafah near the border with Egypt, Israeli tanks pushed deeper towards the western area of Mawasi — previously designated by Israel as a humanitarian area — forcing dozens of families to flee northwards towards Khan Younis, residents said.
Hours later, residents said the army blew up several houses in the area and set several tents ablaze.
Palestinian families have sued the US State Department over Washington’s support for Israel’s military amid its offensive in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands and caused a humanitarian crisis, a court filing showed, according to Reuters.
The lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia alleged that the State Department under Secretary of State Antony Blinken has deliberately circumvented a US human rights law to continue funding and supporting Israeli military units accused of atrocities in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“The State Department’s calculated failure to apply the Leahy Law is particularly shocking in the face of the unprecedented escalation of Israeli gross violations of human rights since the Gaza War erupted on October 7, 2023,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit was filed by five Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and the United States. The lead plaintiff was a Gaza teacher who has been displaced seven times in the current war and lost 20 family members, the lawsuit says.
The State Department declined to comment and referred reporters to the Justice Department, which had no immediate comment.
