Israel-Hamas war updates: Fierce battles rage in southern and northern Gaza

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We will soon be closing this live page. Here’s a recap of the day’s developments:

• Nearly 300 people have been killed and more than 550 wounded in 24 hours, according to Gaza’s health ministry, as Israel strikes more than 250 Hamas-related targets.
• “Food, water and fuel” are being used as “weapons of war in Gaza”, says UNRWA’s commissioner general.
• “The potential for a miscalculation that could trigger a wider conflict is increasing,” says the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon.
• The UN General Assembly is likely to vote on Tuesday on a draft resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, diplomatic sources say.
• Qatar’s prime minister tells the Doha Forum that the Gaza war risks radicalising a generation in the Middle East and the window is narrowing for a new truce.
• Jordan’s foreign minister accuses Israel of trying to “empty Gaza of Palestinians” in a campaign that amounts to “genocide”.

The war in Gaza dominated the agenda at the Doha Forum this year.

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Israeli forces fired live ammunition and tear gas as they stormed the Sateh Marhaba neighbourhood of the city of el-Bireh in the occupied West Bank.

According to the Wafa news agency, Israeli forces entered several buildings in the area but there were no immediate reports of arrests or casualties.

Israeli forces also stormed the village of Shuqba, to the west of Ramallah, according to videos obtained by Al Jazeera and validated by its verification unit, the Sanad news agency.

The official account of Israel’s prime minister has posted photographs of Sara Netanyahu meeting with Israeli soldier Ori Megidish.

In the post on X, Netanyahu said that Megidish’s release “in a daring military operation was a ray of light to the entire people of Israel in dark days”.

Megidish was rescued by an Israeli army operation at the end of October.

Palestinian activists and grassroots organisations have called for a global strike on Monday to demand an immediate ceasefire as Israel continues its aggression on Gaza.

“We expect the entire globe to join the strike, which comes in the context of a broad international movement involving influential figures. This movement stands against the open genocide in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing and the colonial settlement in the West Bank,” said a statement released by a coalition of groups.

Read the full story here.

The 193-member United Nations General Assembly is likely to vote on Tuesday on a draft resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

The Reuters news agency cited diplomats as saying the move comes after the US vetoed a UNSC demand for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Friday.

The General Assembly in October adopted a resolution – 121 votes in favour, 14 against and 44 abstentions – calling for “an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities”.

Sana Saeed looks at what US media coverage has gotten wrong about Gaza, Sheikh Jarrah and occupied Palestine, and offers her own media critique.

The bombed-out ruins of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital have at least 30,000 people taking refuge after Israeli forces raided the medical facility last month.

“Our life has become a living hell, there’s no electricity, no water, no flour, no bread, no medicine for the children who are all sick,” said Mohammed Daloul, 38, who fled there with his wife and three children.

In Rafah, in southern Gaza, one displaced woman said she has been stuck for 18 days despite having an Egyptian passport.

“Whenever I want to go somewhere, we hear bombing and shelling and feel scared and go back,” said Noura al-Sayed Hassan. “I’ve been searching for bread for my daughter for over a week now.”

Fierce bombardment and ground assaults have killed nearly 300 Palestinians in the past 24 hours in Gaza as Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exchanged threats.

Israeli raids continued across the beleaguered territory on Sunday including in northern Gaza, where entire neighbourhoods have been flattened by air strikes and where ground troops operating for more than six weeks continue to face heavy resistance from Hamas soldiers.

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Syria’s army says its air defence shot down Israeli missiles fired at the surroundings of the capital Damascus from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Other missiles not intercepted caused some damage, it said in a statement without elaborating.

Israel hit the airports in Damascus and Aleppo in October twice after it started its war on Gaza, putting them out of service.

Israeli air raids have repeatedly targeted the two airports in the past, causing flights to be grounded and inflicting human casualties and material damage.

Much of Gaza faces severe shortages of everything now. Abdulsalam al-Majdalawi says he came every day for nearly two weeks to a UN distribution centre, hoping to get food for his family of seven.

“Every day, we spend five or six hours here and return home [empty handed],” he said. “Thank God today they drew our name.”

Israel has faced rising international outrage and calls for a permanent ceasefire after the killing of 18,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women. About 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced with UN agencies saying there is no safe place to flee.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Security Council is “paralysed by geostrategic divisions” that are blocking solutions to the war.

The body’s “authority and credibility were severely undermined” by its delayed response to the conflict, he said, two days after the US blocked a resolution calling for a ceasefire.

Rights groups are criticising an Israeli move to displace Palestinians into a tiny and barren area.

Another wave of Palestinians were forced from their homes in Gaza, this time to a small slice of land in the south designated by Israel as a “safe zone”.

But conditions in al-Mawasi are bleak and for those living in its makeshift camps, bitterly cold.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, says more than a dozen Israeli special forces commandos were killed and wounded when a home they took over in Gaza City was blown up.

“We demolished a house in the Shujayea neighbourhood containing more than 13 Zionist soldiers who were attempting to locate a tunnel,” it said in a statement. “One of our fighters managed to emerge from the tunnel, killing two Israeli soldiers before completely detonating the house, causing casualties among the force.”

Islamic Jihad is the smaller of the two main Palestinian armed groups in Gaza but has been described as extremely efficient and highly organised militarily. It was founded in 1981 by Palestinian students in Egypt with the aim of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and other areas.

The World Health Organization chief says it will be all but impossible to improve the “catastrophic” health situation in Gaza even as the board passed an emergency WHO motion to secure more medical access.

“I must be frank with you: These tasks are almost impossible in the current circumstances,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

Still, he commended countries for finding common ground, saying it is the first time any UN motion has been agreed by consensus since the war on Gaza began.

Tedros told the 34-member board in Geneva that medical needs in Gaza have surged and the risk of disease has grown, yet the health system has been reduced to one-third of its pre-conflict capacity.

The senator from the state of Vermont says the US should do “everything possible” to ensure children in Gaza have access to food, water and medical supplies.

In a post on X, he said Washington should not have vetoed the UN Security Council resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire and the release of all Israeli captives.

Violence has escalated at Lebanon’s border with Israel as Hezbollah launched explosive drones and missiles at Israeli positions, while Israeli air strikes rocked several towns and villages in south Lebanon.

An Israeli air attack on the town of Aitaroun destroyed five homes and damaged many more, Ali Hijazi, a local official, said.

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The main hospital in Khan Younis, Nasser Hospital, has been overrun with dead and wounded.

No floor space was left in the emergency room as people carried in more wounded wrapped in blankets and carpets. Mohamed Abu Shihab wailed and swore revenge for his son he said was killed by an Israeli sniper.

At one Khan Younis home destroyed by bombing, relatives of the dead combed the debris in a daze. They dragged the body of a middle-aged man in a yellow T-shirt from under the concrete.

“We prayed the nighttime prayer and went to sleep, then woke up to find the house on top of us. ‘Who’s alive?'” said resident Ahmed Abdel Wahab.

The Israeli army has expanded its attacks in central and southern Gaza.

Nearly two months into the conflict, the United States has used some of its strongest language to date, warning Israel to protect civilians.

But just how long can the war go on? And what would a victory look like?