Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 455

The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) says a court in Brazil has taken “decisive action” on a criminal complaint it filed against an Israeli soldier who is vacationing in the Latin American country, Al Jazeera reports.

It said the Federal Court of the Federal District ordered the police to investigate and take action against Yuval Vagdani, whom it accuses of committing war crimes in Gaza.

The HRF’s complaint against Vagdani accuses him of participating in “massive demolitions of civilian homes in Gaza during a systematic campaign of destruction”.

The HRF, in a follow-up statement, said it had received reports that Israel was attempting to smuggle Vagdani out of Brazil.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is withholding $60m in funding from the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), more than a year after the group called for a ceasefire in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports citing according to the Verge, a US news site.

The money was allocated to the CJA under an EPA grant programme funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, and the alliance is the only group out of 11 selected organisations that is yet to receive any funding.

Now, with the incoming Trump administration promising to rescind any unspent funds allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act, the CJA is at risk of losing the money altogether, the Verge reported.

“What this would do is further strip away funds that our communities have been counting on,” CJA Executive Director KD Chavez told the Verge, noting that the funding would go to projects for local cleanups and air quality monitoring.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has confirmed that indirect negotiations with Hamas have resumed in Qatar for the release of hostages seized in the October 2023 attacks, AFP reports.

The minister told relatives of one of the hostages, woman soldier Liri Albag, that “efforts are underway to free the hostages, notably the Israeli delegation which left yesterday (Friday) for negotiations in Qatar”, his office said.

The Gaza health ministry has said in a statement on Telegram that the Indonesia Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip “no longer provides any services to patients or the wounded”, Al Jazeera reports.

It said the North Gaza governorate has three public hospitals, Kamal Adwan, Beit Hanoon and the Indonesian Hospital, all of which have been taken out of service by Israel’s offensive.

The armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, has released a video of an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since its October 2023 attack, AFP reports.

In the undated, three-and-half-minute video recording that AFP has not been able to verify, 19-year-old soldier Liri Albag called in Hebrew for the Israeli government to secure her release.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a campaign group for relatives of those abducted, said Albag’s family has not authorised the publication of the video.

The conscript was 18 when she was captured by Palestinian militants at the Nahal Oz base on the Gaza border.

World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has posted on X that the body has received “no updates on the safety and well-being” of the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Al Jazeera reports.

Israel is reportedly considering significant reductions of the already minimal amounts of humanitarian aid it allows into the Gaza Strip as US President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, Al Jazeera reports according to Israeli media.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported current aid levels may be reduced in the coming weeks following Trump’s inauguration on January 20.

An unnamed Israeli “political source” told the network: “We doubt the amount of aid currently allowed into Gaza will remain the same under Trump’s administration. If such a decision is made to reduce aid, it will be coordinated with the new US administration.”

Continuing aid deliveries would help Hamas maintain its hold over Gaza, the source added.

The health ministry in Gaza has said that 59 people were killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll of the conflict to 45,717, AFP reports.

The ministry also said in a statement that at least 108,856 people had been wounded in nearly 15 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas, triggered by the group’s October 7, 2023 attack.

Husam Zumlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, has posted a video of Palestine’s UN envoy Riyad Mansour speaking at yesterday’s UN Security Council meeting, Al Jazeera reports.

In the clip, Mansour quotes the late Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, who died in an Israeli attack on al-Awda Hospital in November 2023. “We did what we could. Whoever stays until the end will tell the story.”

As bombs fall and misinformation spreads, Palestinians are turning to social media as a last resort to document the grim reality of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

Their posts challenge official Israeli narratives and bring the world closer to the grisly human cost of the nearly 15-month assault. Through platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, Palestinians are bypassing traditional media, largely absent because of Israeli restrictions.

“We are trying to tell the story of our people — what we see, their suffering — and show this to the whole world. We continue to film the ongoing atrocities despite all the technical challenges,” said Hani Abu Rizq, a Palestinian influencer.

In what the group calls a “historic” move, a Brazilian court has directed police to investigate an Israeli soldier accused of war crimes in Gaza, following a complaint by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), the group has announced, Anadolu reports.

“This individual actively contributed to the destruction of homes and livelihoods,” said HRF lawyer Maira Pinheiro, citing video and photographic evidence linking the suspect to the acts, according to the group.

“This is a historic moment,” said Dyab Abou Jahjah, the group’s chair. “It sets a powerful precedent for holding war criminals accountable.”

Read more here.

A survivor of an attack in central Gaza in the early morning hours described the scenes of devastation from the tent encampment that was bombed by Israel’s military near Deir el-Balah.

“We were sleeping inside our tents in the cold and about 3am we were shocked by a loud explosion and fire everywhere,” Momen al-Khaldi told Al Jazeera.

“There were more than 15 tents over there housing people, mostly children, women and old people. Most of the sick people were the victims of this aggression that happened without prior warning.”

He said the Israelis now don’t give warnings before their attacks.

“The Israelis want to kill more of us every day. Enough is enough. We have nothing in this life except a torn tent and the Israelis are killing us inside these tents. We want this war to come to an end.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called on the US government to “take immediate action” after Israel seized Dr Hussam Abu Safia from Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, Al Jazeera reports.

“The Biden administration, which is a full partner in Israel’s genocide, must act to secure the release of Dr Hussam Abu Safia and to end the far-right Israeli government’s systematic assault on hospitals and medical personnel in Gaza,” CAIR said in a statement.

“Israeli attacks on medical facilities, its daily slaughter of Palestinian civilians, and its forced starvation of an entire population are clearly part of the overall genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”

More than 15 people were in the bombed house in the Shujayea neighbourhood, Hani Mahmoud of Al Jazeera reports from Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.

“People are trapped under the rubble. Some family members sheltering in the residential home were in the basement, which makes it extremely challenging for the civil defence crews on the ground,” the reporter said.

“First responders are struggling to remove large pieces of concrete and to retrieve bodies,” he added.

“Civil defence members have to use their bare hands or manually operated tools to remove huge pieces of debris. From a video we’ve seen, local residents volunteered to assist in the grim effort,” Mahmoud said.

The Palestinian relief agency UNRWA has said the Israeli action to ban a UN agency in the middle of a conflict is unprecedented in a post on X.

UNRWA Communications Director Juliette Touma is quoted in an interview saying, “It has never happened in the history of the United Nations that a member state decides to ban a UN agency, in the middle of a war from doing its work.”

“The clock is ticking for a possible ban on UNRWA to deliver essential services for millions of Palestine refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” the post said.

Touma is quoted in the post that the UN is not planning to replace UNRWA. “What needs to happen is for the Israeli Parliament to retract the decision”, the post quotes her.

Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard has said that Israel’s detention of Kamal Adwan Hospital director Dr Hussam Abu Safia is emblematic of the “genocidal intent” in Israel’s broader attempts to “annihilate” Gaza’s healthcare sector in a post on X.

“So in a new twist, the IDF now acknowledges detaining Dr Hussam Abu Safiyyah, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, insisting he is investigated for links with Hamas — please join Amnesty in calling for Dr Hussam to be granted access to a lawyer and his family, and for his release,” she said in the post on X.

“Dr Abu Safiya’s unlawful detention is emblematic of the broader attacks on the healthcare sector in Gaza and Israel’s attempts to annihilate it. It is part and parcel of Israel’s genocidal intent and genocidal acts — meant to inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of Palestinians,” the statement said.

The health ministry in Gaza has said that 59 people were killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll of the conflict to 45,717.

The ministry also said in a statement that at least 108,856 people had been wounded in nearly 15 months of conflict since October 7, 2023.

Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, says it destroyed four Israeli Merkava tanks in Gaza, and targeted a fifth in the Strip’s Jabalia area, Al Jazeera reports.

The group also claimed responsibility for firing a rocket towards an Israeli helicopter.

The health ministry in the occupied West Bank said one person was killed and nine injured in an Israeli raid on a refugee camp, with the Israeli military saying it had opened fire at “terrorists”, AFP reports.

An 18-year-old man, Muhammad Medhat Amin Amer, “was killed by bullets from the (Israeli) occupation in the Balata camp” in the territory’s north, the Palestinian health ministry said in a late-night statement, adding that nine people were injured, “four of whom are in critical condition”.

Pakistan has urged the UN Security Council to demand an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to halt the bloodshed and destruction in Gaza, Radio Pakistan reports.

Delivering a statement at the Security Council on the situation in the Middle East including the Palestinian Question, Pakistan’s Alternate Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Asim Iftikhar said the bloodshed in Gaza must end. He asked the international community to finally come together to defend and uphold the universal respect for the UN Charter and international law.

He called on the Security Council to establish safe and secure humanitarian corridors to allow people to access life-saving care and prioritise reconstruction efforts aimed at rebuilding Gaza’s shattered healthcare system.

Asim Iftikhar reiterated Pakistan’s call for Palestine to be granted full membership of the United Nations and termed this step a moral imperative that will ensure the irreversibility of the two-state solution.

The Israeli military blew up several buildings in the Beit Hanoon area of northern Gaza, Al Jazeera Arabic reports, citing local Palestinian sources.

In central Gaza, Israeli forces have fired artillery shells in the vicinity of the Farhoud Roundabout in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Shelling has also been reported north of the nearby Bureij refugee camp.

No casualties have been reported in these incidents so far.

Palestinian officials said Israeli forces raided a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Friday, wounding seven people with gunfire in the latest violence to hit the territory, AFP reports.

Israeli forces raided the Balata camp near the main northern city of Nablus late on Friday triggering clashes, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

“Seven people have been injured by gunfire during clashes in Balata camp, including two in serious condition with chest wounds,” it said in a statement.

When contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it was checking reports of the raid.

The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, gave the same casualty toll. “The occupation forces raided the area of Balata camp .. and deployed snipers on rooftops of nearby buildings,” Wafa reported.

Israel is expected to convey a message to the US that it will not withdraw military forces from Lebanon after the 60-day period agreed in its ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah, the Israeli Broadcasting Authority reported according to Al Jazeera.

Israel will claim that the Lebanese army is not adhering to the terms of the ceasefire agreement, by deploying too slowly to areas in southern Lebanon, and that Hezbollah is trying to reorganise, the broadcaster said.

Israel is also expected to tell the US that it will not allow the residents of Lebanese villages near the Lebanon-Israel border to return to their homes.

Lebanese authorities have for weeks accused Israel of violating the ceasefire deal hundreds of times since it was agreed to in late November and of continuing to carry out attacks on Lebanese territory.