Talks to reach a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas are 90 per cent complete, but key issues remain that need to be bridged, a senior Palestinian official involved in the talks told the BBC.
The Palestinian official shared details of the discussions being held in Doha which include the potential creation of a buffer zone several kilometres wide along the length of Israel’s border with Gaza.
Israel would retain a military presence within this area. With these issues resolved, a three-stage ceasefire could be agreed within days, the official said.
The deal would include an exchange of 20 Palestinian prisoners for every female soldier released in the first of three stages of the ceasefire. These are not thought to include the senior Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, whose release Israel is expected to veto.
Israeli hostages would be released in stages, as it is believed that Hamas still need to locate some of the missing hostages. Of 96 hostages still held in Gaza, 62 are assumed by Israel to still be alive.
Gazan civilians would be able to return to the north, under a system with Egyptian/Qatari oversight, and there would be around 500 trucks per day bringing aid into the strip, the official said.
Israeli forces have relentlessly targeted the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, marking an escalation in attacks against medical facilities, Wafareports.
The hospital, which serves as a vital lifeline for thousands in the region, has suffered direct bombing, artillery shelling, and sniper fire, causing significant damage and risking the lives of both patients and medical staff.
According to medical sources, the Israeli forces have been bombing the hospital with shells and artillery, while snipers have targeted various hospital departments.
The attacks have led to severe damage to hospital infrastructure, and communication with the medical team inside has been severed. In response, medical staff have huddled together in a small, protected area of the hospital, seeking shelter from the continuous barrage of explosions and gunfire.
Israeli occupation forces have destroyed approximately 70 per cent of the homes and buildings in Jabalia refugee camp, located in the northern Gaza Strip, during their ongoing military offensive, Wafareports citing a report published by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The report described the camp, which was once one of the most densely populated places in the world, as now resembling a “ghost town.” Prior to the Israeli assault, Jabalia was home to tens of thousands of refugees, but the recent destruction has left the area unrecognisable.
According to Haaretz, Israeli forces began their offensive in Jabalia on October 5, 2024, as part of the broader military campaign that has devastated Gaza. This is the third time Israeli forces have attacked the camp, with previous raids occurring in December 2023 and May 2024.
Save the Children International Humanitarian Director Rachel Cummings, who is in Gaza, has said that the situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate daily, especially for children, Al Jazeera reports.
“What we do as a humanitarian organisation is to provide immediate alleviation of suffering, but we know that what we’re doing is really a drop in the ocean in terms of meeting the needs of all the children in Gaza,” she said.
“Winter’s upon us and it’s very bitterly cold. What we hear from children and their families is that they’re so ill-equipped. It’s difficult for families to live with any dignity in this context,” she told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah, adding that there is open sewage in the street, and access to food and clean water remains extremely difficult.
She said the reports are very concerning for children in northern Gaza, where an Israeli siege has been ongoing for more than 70 days.
“We need an immediate ceasefire, we need the world to stop the bombing of children in Gaza, and we need safe passage and access to humanitarian assistance,” she added.
Palestinians inspect the damage at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip on December 22. — Reuters
A child is among the Palestinians detained by Israeli forces across the occupied territory since yesterday evening, according to prisoners’ groups, Al Jazeera reports.
The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said the arrests were made in the occupied governorates of Nablus, Ramallah, Tubas and Tulkarem.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes overnight and killed at least 28 Palestinians, including at one family’s home and at a school building the military said was used by Hamas, AFP reports.
Civil agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said in a statement that at least 13 people were killed in an air strike on a house in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah belonging to the Abu Samra family.
Bassal said that eight people including four children were killed in the attack on the school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the bombardment.
Bassal said an overnight strike killed three people in Rafah, in the south.
And a drone strike hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people, Bassal said.
Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 17 Palestinians, eight of them at a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City, medics said, as the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of a hospital in the north, Reuters reports.
Palestinian medics said eight people, including children, were killed in the Musa Bin Nusayr School that sheltered displaced families in Gaza City.
The Israeli military said in a statement the strike targeted Hamas fighters operating from a command centre embedded inside the school. It said Hamas militants used the place to plan and execute attacks against Israeli forces.
Also in Gaza City, medics said four Palestinians were killed when an airstrike hit a car.
At least five other Palestinians were killed in two separate airstrikes in Rafah and Khan Younis south of the enclave.
In the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, where the army has operated since October, Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said the army ordered staff to evacuate the hospital and move patients and injured people toward another hospital in the area.
Abu Safiya said the mission was “next to impossible” because staff did not have ambulances to move the patients.
This picture shows the aftermath of an Israeli strike that targeted the Musa bin Nusayr School in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza City on December 22. — AFP
Al Jazeera Arabic reports that its correspondents in Gaza have lost touch with journalists inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital as Israel’s attacks on the facility continue.
The European Islamophobia Report of 2023 says Israel’s war on Gaza has “functioned as a geopolitical catalyst of anti-Muslim racism in Europe”, with an increase in hate crimes and a rise in Islamophobic rhetoric and actions by European governments, Al Jazeera reports.
The report, which monitors 34 countries in Europe, said there has been a spike in the number of physical and verbal assaults on Muslims in the wake of the war, including in countries like Norway, Spain and Greece.
Several European governments have also framed pro-Palestine solidarity as terrorism, it said, with countries like Germany, France, and Denmark enforcing restrictive measures, such as banning demonstrations and imposing fines on pro-Palestinian symbols.
Six people were killed and others injured in an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza, the civil emergency service said, Reuters reports.
Al Jazeera Arabic reports that eight people have been killed in an Israeli air raid on a school where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described reports of Israel’s attacks on the facility as “deeply worrisome”, Al Jazeera reports.
“The hospital has been in the midst of fighting for too long and the lives of patients are at risk,” the head of the World Health Organization said in a post on X.
Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, has released a video message describing what he says is an unprecedented attack on the facility.
According to Al Jazeera, here’s what he said:
“The Israeli military has targeted the Kamal Adwan Hospital with different types of weapons without prior warning. We are being directly attacked, the ICU unit, along with the maternity and nursing departments, are coming under fire.
“The bombing is being conducted with tank fire and quadcopters, directly targeting us while we are present inside the hospital departments. We don’t know why we are being targeted at this hour.
“We have been informed that the hospital will be evacuated in the next few hours. This is catastrophic because we are the only hospital providing services here in the north.
“Evacuating the hospital means, evacuating 66 patients and all of the hospital facilities and the medical staff. We had asked the world to intervene immediately and protect the healthcare system from this brutal attack.
“For more than an hour, the shelling continues. We hold the world accountable.”
Al Jazeera Arabic reports that Israeli forces have stormed a number of villages and towns across the occupied West Bank.
They include the city of Tulkarem; villages of Tal and Sarra, west of Nablus; the town of Beita, south of Nablus; and the town of Abu Dis, east of occupied Jerusalem.
The Israeli army is ordering civilians near Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza to leave the area via loudspeakers, using threats and intimidating language that the area would be blown up, Al Jazeera reports.
The army has also planted more explosive devices in the vicinity of the hospital, Al Jazeera correspondents on the ground report.
Hamas and two other Palestinian groups have said that a Gaza ceasefire deal with Israel is “closer than ever”, provided Israel does not impose new conditions, AFP reports.
“The possibility of reaching an agreement (for a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange deal) is closer than ever, provided the enemy stops imposing new conditions,” Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said in a rare joint statement issued after talks in Cairo.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency has reported that the army will dispose of “unexploded ordinance left behind by the Israeli aggression” this afternoon.
The detonations will take place in the areas of Sultan Yacoub in the western Bekaa Valley, Ghandourieh in Bint Jbeil and Qleileh in Tyre, both in southern Lebanon.
Irish President Michael D. Higgins has said Gaza has “now become a crucible of suffering for children and their families — 45,000 dead, 17,000 of whom are children, and perhaps 11,000 under the rubble”, Al Jazeera reports.
Higgins, whose term will expire in 2025, made special mention of the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and other war zones around the world in his final Christmas address yesterday evening.
He condemned global silence on the killing of civilians, saying: “The silence of many influential figures in the face of gross human rights violations against civilians grants impunity to those who blatantly impose collective punishments on civilians, including starvation, which, as I speak, particularly affects women and children.”
