Gaza City is in ruins after fighting between Israel and Hamas
Huge parts of the city center in war-ravaged Gaza City were badly damaged after fighting between Israel and Hamas, and many streets are no longer recognizable.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address on Friday that the Iran-backed militant group and political party must respond to the killing of a Hamas official or face further operations by the Israeli military.
He said Hezbollah “cannot remain silent about a breach of this seriousness,” referring to the Beirut airstrike that killed Saleh al-Arouri on Tuesday. While Nasrallah, Lebanese state media and others blamed Israel for the attack, no party has yet claimed responsibility.
Arouri, who had a $5 million U.S. information bounty on his head, was believed by Israeli and U.S. national security officials to have been involved in the financing and training of Hamas militants who were killed on January 7. October carried out the terrorist attack on Israel in which 1,200 people were killed. They were mostly civilians, and around 240 other people were dragged back to the Gaza Strip and held hostage.
Israel's air, ground and sea assault on Gaza has killed more than 22,400 people, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the territory's health ministry.
In a statement attributed to Hezbollah earlier this week, the group vowed not to let Arouri's death go unpunished, calling it a “dangerous development in the course of the war between the enemy and the Axis of Resistance.”
Nasrallah said that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Hezbollah has carried out about 670 operations along the Israel-Lebanon border. He said the group's operations had “destroyed a large number of Israeli vehicles and tanks” and killed “a large number of Israeli troops.” He did not give a specific number. According to the Israeli military, at least nine of its soldiers have died in the fighting on the country's northern border.
Developments:
∎ The Israeli military said it struck more than 100 targets across the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing an unspecified number of “activists” and destroying several “operations command centers and military sites.”
∎ The Palestinian Red Crescent, an independent humanitarian aid group, said on X that his headquarters In the southern Gaza Strip, the town of Khan Younis was hit by an Israeli airstrike. The group also said Israeli forces fired on one of its ambulances in the central Gaza Strip. The crew in the vehicle reportedly survived.
∎ At least six people were killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike on a house in Rafah overnight, according to the Associated Press. In Rafah, the southernmost area of Gaza, over a million Palestinians have gathered after fleeing their homes. About 85% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced by the war.
∎ France announced a joint operation with Jordan to airdrop 7.7 tons of medical aid to a field hospital in Gaza. “The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains critical,” the French president said said Emmanuel Macron Friday on X, formerly Twitter. “In a difficult environment, France and Jordan have provided assistance to the people and those who help them.”
The United Nations aid chief called on Friday for the international community to use its influence to end the war, describing “death and despair” that has unfolded in Gaza since Oct. 7.
“Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people witness daily threats to their existence – while the world watches,” Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said in a statement.
Griffiths said that people in Gaza are suffering from the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded; Families sleep outdoors as temperatures drop; Areas previously declared safe are bombed; and a health crisis is underway.
Tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, were killed or injured, he said.
“We have seen that violence cannot resolve differences, but only inflames passions and creates new generations of danger and insecurity,” Griffiths said.
A record number of unauthorized Israeli settler outposts have appeared in areas of the occupied West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to a new report from Israeli monitoring group Peace Now.
Nine outposts and 18 roads have been constructed by settlers since October 7, a record for any three-month period since settlement began in the 1990s, the Peace Now report said. The report also said settlers set up roadblocks that restricted Palestinians' freedom of movement.
According to the report, settlements in parts of the West Bank are fully under Israeli control under agreements dating back to the 1990s. Israel says the area is disputed and the fate of the settlements must be negotiated. The international community considers settlements illegal because the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its civilian population to occupied territory.
More than half a million Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas the Palestinians are seeking for a future state.
New outposts include tents or simple structures, but many similar outposts have been expanded into more permanent settlements over the years.
“They insist on establishing outposts on private Palestinian land, demarcating open areas and restricting Palestinian movement in the West Bank,” Peace Now said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to the Middle East as tensions rise in the region and the war between Israel and Hamas threatens to expand.
According to a statement from Matthew Miller, a US State Department spokesman, Blinken will travel to Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, Greece, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
At his meetings, Blinken will emphasize the “importance of protecting civilian lives” in Gaza and the West Bank, ensure that Palestinians “are not forcibly removed from Gaza” and safely release the hostages who remain captive, Miller said.
The top US diplomat will also discuss “urgent mechanisms to curb violence, calm rhetoric and reduce regional tensions,” including deterring attacks by Houthi rebels on ships in the Red Sea and avoiding escalation in Lebanon.
Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union's top diplomat, is expected in Lebanon on Friday to meet with leaders to avert a wider conflict. Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to President Biden, also met with Israeli officials on Thursday in an effort to contain the conflict on Israel's northern border, where Israel and Hezbollah militants have been delivering airstrikes and targeted attacks for months. Israel has evacuated thousands of residents from their homes near the country's border with Lebanon.
This week's diplomatic meetings come against a backdrop of rising tensions in the Middle East after Arouri was killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Tuesday. On Thursday, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for two bombings that killed dozens of people at a memorial to a slain general in Iran.
The Pentagon has since admitted that there was an airstrike in Baghdad that killed a senior commander of an Iranian-backed militia. The Iraqi military condemned this attack. And on Thursday, Houthi rebels also sent a drone over the Red Sea, just hours after the United States and a dozen of its allies issued a final warning calling on the rebels to stop attacking merchant ships or face possible military engagement deliver.
Second Biden administration official resigns over war
An Education Department policy adviser appointed by the Biden administration resigned this week over the White House's handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Tariq Habash was at least the second official and the first known official of Palestinian descent to resign from the government in protest at President Joe Biden's handling of the war. State Department veteran Josh Paul resigned in October as the U.S. accelerated arms sales to Israel.
Habash confirmed on X, formerly Twitter, that he resigned on Wednesday.
“I cannot represent a government that systematically dehumanizes Palestinians and enables their ethnic cleansing. The President must call for a permanent ceasefire.” he said.
Habash was among staffers with Muslim and Jewish backgrounds from the Middle East who attended meetings with senior White House officials and other members of the administration that addressed concerns about the U.S. role in the war. Habash described the sessions as briefings from superiors rather than an opportunity for employees to have their voices heard.
The former Biden administration official worked in the Education Department to help overhaul the student loan system and address inequities in higher education.
Cases of malnutrition and signs of deteriorating health have risen sharply among Gaza's 1.1 million children as well as other vulnerable populations, including pregnant women, UNICEF said in a statement on Friday.
According to a UNICEF survey conducted on December 26, about 90% of children under 2 years old consume two or fewer food groups. Most families who took part in the survey said their children ate only cereals or milk, which meets the definition of “severe food poverty,” said UNICEF.
And of pregnant and nursing mothers, of which there are over 155,000 in Gaza, 25% said they had eaten only one type of food the day before, while nearly 65% said two.
The UN agency also said cases of diarrhea in children under 5 rose from 48,000 to 71,000 in a week in mid-December – “a strong indication that the health of children in the Gaza Strip is rapidly deteriorating.”
“Children in Gaza are trapped in a nightmare that is getting worse with each passing day,” Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, said in a statement. “The future of thousands more children in Gaza is at stake. The world cannot stand idly by. The violence and suffering of children must stop.”
Because Gaza's overstretched and understaffed hospitals focus on large numbers of wounded patients, they are “unable to adequately treat disease outbreaks,” according to UNICEF.
Additionally, the lack of clean water makes it nearly impossible for Palestinians to maintain the necessary hygiene standards needed to prevent disease. The World Health Organization said this week that over 180,000 people in Gaza are suffering from upper respiratory tract infections; more than 5,000 cases of chickenpox have been reported; 55,000 people are affected by lice and scabies.
Tamir Adar, a 38-year-old Israeli who was taken hostage on October 7, has died in captivity, according to the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum. A cause of death was not given.
Adar lived in the community of Kibbutz Nir Oz, where 40 people were kidnapped during Hamas' deadly attack on Israeli border communities that left 1,200 people, mostly civilians, dead. According to the Israeli military, of the 250 people taken hostage, about 113 are still being held in Gaza following a week-long ceasefire in November.
Adar's grandmother, 85-year-old Yaffa Adar, was taken hostage in the attack. She was among more than 100 hostages released during the temporary ceasefire.
Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant presented in a statement on Thursday his vision for the next phase of the Gaza war and how the territory would be managed after Israel achieves its stated goal of defeating Hamas.
Gallant said operations in the northern Gaza Strip, where entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, would slow to a less intense, more targeted “combat approach” in which forces focus on raids, destroying tunnel networks, “air and ground activities and special operations.” would. Israel has begun withdrawing troops from the northern Gaza Strip in recent days, signaling a possible reduction in operations.
Meanwhile, fighting in southern Gaza, where most of Gaza's displaced population has sought refuge, will continue “as long as necessary,” Gallant said.
Gallant added that Israel would retain military control in the region after the war, while Palestinian local officials or community leaders would administer the area, with Israel providing “information to direct civilian operations.” The U.S. would be responsible for a task force that would lead a reconstruction effort.
The vision stands in stark contrast to proposals from U.S. officials, including Biden, who has previously said he wants the Palestinian Authority to take control of the region.
Contributors: The Associated Press; Jorge L. Ortiz, John Bacon, Josh Meyer; USA TODAY