Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 418

The health ministry in Gaza has said that at least 44,330 people have been killed in more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas, AFP reports.

The toll includes 48 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 104,933 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the fighting broke out on October 7, 2023.

There are 50,000 pregnant women in the Gaza Strip, with 4,000 Palestinian babies expected to be delivered this month, Al Jazeera reports according to UN data.

“Approximately 15,000 of them are likely to be on the verge of famine,” the UN Population Fund said.

This is while about 1.9 million people, or 90 per cent of the besieged territory remain forcibly displaced with little to no access to basic necessities, including food and clean water.

Some 415,000 people are staying in UN schools-turned-shelters, dozens of which have been hit by the Israeli military.

The Yemeni Houthis will keep up their attacks on Israel, their leader has said two days into a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, AFP reports.

“The operations from the Yemeni front to support the Palestinian people with missiles and drones towards the Israeli enemy are continuing,” Abdulmalik Al-Houthi said on the group’s Al-Masirah TV station.

The UN special rapporteur on Palestine has rejected France’s immunity claims regarding the arrest warrants issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court (ICC), arguing such immunity has “no” legal validity, Anadolu reports.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Wednesday that certain leaders could have immunity under the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the ICC.

Asked by Anadolu in an interview whether this claim has any legal validity, Francesca Albanese said: “No, because it’s been already resolved by the court in the case of Omar al-Bashir in the past, and no one (argued).”

“The argument of the state immunity cannot be made. The court has already said it,” Albanese said.

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Kazem Abu Khalaf, the spokesperson for the UN’s children’s relief fund, says that 2,500 children in the Gaza Strip need urgent medical evacuation, Al Jazeera reports.

“30 per cent of children in the Gaza Strip suffer from severe malnutrition,” he said in a press statement.

Meanwhile, 95pc of the schools that house displaced people in the Gaza Strip have been “completely destroyed”, Khalaf said.

He added: “The situation in the northern Gaza Strip is extremely difficult, and tragic, and is getting worse.”

Islamic Relief says the ceasefire in Lebanon “must allow people in Lebanon impacted by the violence to recover, get relief at last, and facilitate the return of displaced communities to their homes and businesses”, Al Jazeera reports.

“While there is a sense of hope in Lebanon following news of the ceasefire, there is still doubt over whether the parties to the conflict will or can honour it,” the organisation said in a statement.

“Islamic Relief remains committed to providing humanitarian assistance to those in need in Lebanon and continues to work with people impacted by the devastating violence,” Islamic Relief said, adding it hopes for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Lebanon’s military has deployed troops and tanks across the country’s south as a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict largely held for a second day, AFP reports.

A Lebanese army source said its forces were “conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints” south of the Litani River without advancing into areas where Israeli forces were still present.

In the border village of Qlaaya, residents threw rice and flowers to celebrate the arrival of Lebanese soldiers.

“We only want the Lebanese army,” chanted the residents of the Christian-majority village, as they clapped and cheered for the troops and waved the Lebanese red, white and green flag.

Outgoing European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has called on all EU member states to respect decisions by the International Criminal Court, including the arrest warrant against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Reuters.

“We cannot undermine the International Criminal Court. It is the only way of having global justice,” Borrell, whose term as the EU’s top diplomat ends this month, told reporters in Brussels.

“They’re not political. It’s a legal body formed by respected people who are the best among the profession of judges.”

Israel’s military has said that an arrival of suspects, was detected in several areas in southern Lebanon, and called it a violation of a ceasefire with Hezbollah, Reuters reports.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has named a temporary successor who would take over from him should he die or leave his post, addressing concerns of a possible power vacuum following his departure, Reuters reports.

In a statement, Abbas said the chairman of the Palestinian National Council should serve as interim president for no more than 90 days, during which presidential elections should be held.

The announcement clears up uncertainty over what should happen when he dies, but Fattouh was not named as his deputy, meaning there was still no visibility on who might replace Abbas in the long term.

Israel’s Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, a member of the inner security cabinet, told a group of foreign reporters this week that the Israeli army would take over the West Bank if someone from Hamas tried to become president.

An Israeli tank targeted the outskirts of the town of Kfar Shouba with two shells, Al Jazeera reports, citing Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA).

A day after a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah went into effect, two Lebanese citizens were wounded in Markaba after Israeli fire, Al Jazeera reports citing Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA).

Al Jazeera’s correspondent on the ground has corroborated this information, saying the attack resulted in the injuries.

The wounded were transferred to a hospital and are being treated, NNA says.

Israeli military strikes have killed at least 17 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, medics say, as forces stepped up bombardments on central areas and pushed tanks deeper in the north and south of the enclave, Reuters reports.

Six people were killed in two separate air strikes on a house and near the hospital of Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, while four others were killed when an Israeli strike hit a motorcycle in Khan Younis in the south.

In Nuseirat, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, Israeli planes carried out several air strikes destroying a multi-floor building and hitting roads outside mosques. At least seven people were killed in some of those strikes, health officials said.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reports that they were killed when the Israeli army bombed a residential building in the northern area of Nuseirat, in the central part of the Gaza Strip.

A child has been killed in Israeli shelling of his family home in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, Al Jazeera reports citing Wafa.

Another Palestinian was also killed in Israeli shelling in the Jabalia refugee camp.

“This started in the early hours of this morning across the Gaza Strip.n We can confidently say that the entire Gaza Strip has been bombed equally since the early hours of this morning,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reports from Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip.

“We can still clearly hear the sound of the fighter jets flying at a very, very low level across the central area of Gaza and Deir el-Balah city,” he said.

Reports were received from the northern part of the Strip, particularly from Jabalia and the city of Beit Lahiya. These fighter jets carried out deadly attacks that destroyed the remaining residential buildings in Jabalia refugee camp, Jabalia town as well as the northern part of Beit Lahiya Project area and Beit Lahiya city.

“This is just pushing people into further internal displacement and causing massive civilian casualties.

“In the Nuseirat refugee camp, particularly in the northern area of the camp, very close to the Netzarim junction, the Israeli military on the ground is conducting a policy to expand the junction. In doing so, it carries out these attacks to destroy remaining residential buildings.

“These buildings are residential homes and residential towers that the Israeli military claims are being used as observation points by Palestinian fighters. But from what we’ve heard from witnesses, there were massive numbers of civilians inside these residential buildings,” Mahmoud said.

Israeli authorities denied 82 of 91 attempts by the UN to deliver aid to northern Gaza between early October and November 25.

As well as Israel denying 82 requests to deliver aid, Israel impeded nine other attempts to bring humanitarian supplies to the north of the territory, which has been under Israeli military siege and constant bombardment for more than 50 days.

“The conditions for survival are diminishing for the 65,000-75,000 people estimated to remain there,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said in a post on social media.

The posts shared by Israeli soldiers on social media constitute proof that they are committing war crimes, according to a Palestinian journalist.

Younis Tirawi told Anadolu that the posts constitute important evidence of war crimes and that documenting these crimes has a great meaning.

Emphasising the importance of documenting the images of crimes shared by Israeli soldiers on their social media accounts, Tirawi said that no one can deny what has been happening in Gaza as it has all happened in front of the world’s eyes.

Read more here.

Israeli special forces have infiltrated the Jabal an-Nasr area in the Nur Shams refugee camp, east of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank, and arrested four men after besieging their homes, Al Jazeera reports.

The Al Quds Brigades Tulkarem Battalion said its fighters opened fire on Israeli forces in Jabal an-Nasr, while also detonating an explosive device on an Israeli military vehicle, achieving “confirmed casualties”.

The Gaza health ministry has said an air strike killed nine people in the territory’s north as Israel kept up its bombardment on the day a ceasefire took hold in Lebanon, AFP reports.

The ministry said the strike hit a shelter for displaced people in Al-Tabi’een School in Gaza City’s Daraj district.

Hamas condemned the “criminal military operation in northern Gaza”.

The Israeli army claimed it had “eliminated” in Gaza City a suspect in a May 2002 bombing which wounded 10 civilians in the Israeli city of Beersheba. The military said it had also struck dozens of Hamas targets in the “combat zone” in the northern towns of Jabalia and Beit Lahia.

It said “troops operated to eliminate terrorists in aerial strikes and close-quarters encounters” at the former Al-Harthani School in Beit Lahia. “During the operation, Hamas terrorists fired anti-tank missiles from the Indonesian Hospital at the troops,” the army claimed.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi has said that Tehran reserves the right to react to Israeli airstrikes last month on Iran but is also taking account of other developments in the region, Reuters reports.

Araqchi told reporters during a trip to Lisbon that Iran welcomed Tuesday’s ceasefire agreement in Lebanon and hoped it will be permanent. The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect yesterday under an agreement brokered by the United States and France.

Asked whether the ceasefire could lead to an easing of tensions between Israel and Iran, he said: “It depends on the behaviour of Israel.

“Of course, we reserve the right to react to the recent Israeli aggression, but we do consider all developments in the region,” he said.

Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said in an interview published on Sunday that Tehran was preparing to respond to Israel.

Lebanese group Hezbollah has said it had achieved “victory” over Israel and that its fighters were at the ready, in its first statement since a truce between the two sides took effect, AFP reports.

“Victory from God almighty was the ally of the righteous cause,” the statement from the group said.

Hezbollah fighters “will remain in total readiness to deal with the Israeli enemy’s ambitions and its attacks”, the statement added, without directly mentioning the truce or its terms.

The Hezbollah statement said Israeli forces failed in their “attempts… to occupy and set up in any of the towns”, to prevent Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks or to “establish a military and security buffer zone as the enemy had hoped”.

It said Hezbollah fighters targeted Israel “until the last day of the aggression”.