Israel-Hamas war: Hospitals facing ‘totally catastrophic’ situation
Heavy aerial bombardments focus on the Maghazi and Jabalia refugee camps as Israel orders the withdrawal of thousands of reservists from the Gaza ground invasion.
- Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila tells Al Jazeera only nine hospitals continue to operate in Gaza, without enough medical supplies or electricity.
- Iran deploys a warship to the Red Sea after the US Navy attacks and kills Houthis trying to commandeer a commercial vessel.
- Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila tells Al Jazeera only nine hospitals continue to operate in Gaza, without enough medical supplies or electricity.
- Iran deploys a warship to the Red Sea after the US Navy attacks and kills Houthis trying to commandeer a commercial vessel.
- Battles rage in central and southern Gaza after Israel announces it is pulling some troops from the ground invasion.
- At least 21,978 people have been killed and 57,697 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The revised death toll from the October 7 attack in Israel stands at 1,139.
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Here’s what happened today
We will soon be closing this live page. Here’s a recap of the developments on the first day of 2024:
- Israel announced that it will withdraw some troops from Gaza in a possible sign of a change in war tactics.
- Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said the situation in Gaza is “totally catastrophic”, with overwhelmed hospitals experiencing shortages in medical supplies.
- The Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose to 21,978.
- Israeli bombing escalated in central and southern Gaza as the Israeli military continued to expand its ground offensive.
- A 23-year-old Palestinian prisoner from Nablus died in an Israeli jail, raising concerns about the mistreatment of Palestinian detainees.
- Hezbollah said four of its fighters were killed amid intensifying clashes with Israel at Lebanon’s southern border.
- Several Israeli officials suggested that Israel would directly control Gaza after the war.
- The US said it rejects “enduring displacement” of Palestinians and reiterated support for the two-state solution.
Israel’s Supreme Court rules against judicial overhaul
It’s not yet known how Netanyahu and his coalition will proceed with the judicial overhaul review after the reforms were struck down by Israel’s Supreme Court.
Let’s just backtrack for a little and remember what the coalition was trying to do in the first place. They were trying to pass a series of bills that would essentially cancel the only check and balance on Israel’s government.
Part of that was cancelling the “reasonableness clause”.
The Supreme Court used this clause for the last four decades to see if laws were what the average person would rule as “reasonable”.
Now, critics of the judicial overhaul say that Netanyahu was trying to destroy Israeli democracy and turn it into a dictatorship.
There were widespread protests from the minute these bills had entered into the Israeli government in January until early October, when the war started.
There have been extreme criticisms of the moves that the government was trying to make and the Supreme Court [now] seeing this as a huge victory in their eight to seven decision.
US says Palestinian Authority should govern Gaza after war
Washington has renewed its call for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to return to Gaza after the conflict, appearing to contradict top Israeli officials who say Israel should directly control the territory.
“Gaza and the West Bank must be reunited under a single governance structure, under a revitalized Palestinian Authority,” a State Department spokesperson told Al Jazeera in an email.
“Palestinians’ voices and aspirations must be at the center of post-crisis governance in Gaza, unified with the West Bank under the PA,” the spokesperson said.
Despite disagreements over Gaza’s future, the Biden administration has shown unwavering support for Israel, including pledging more than $10bn in military aid to the US ally.
WATCH: Israeli air strikes hit two villages in Lebanon
Israeli air strikes have hit two villages across the border in Lebanon. It is the latest in nearly three months of cross-border attacks.
Watch our full report here:
Israeli Military Police investigating death of Palestinian detainee in Gaza
The detainee was allegedly killed by an Israeli soldier who was guarding him, the Times of Israel reported.
He had been arrested on Sunday night and was then taken for an interrogation before being handed over to a soldier to guard.
The Israeli military, according to the Times of Israel, says the soldier later opened fire and killed him.
Hezbollah says fourth fighter killed
The Lebanese group had said earlier that it lost three members amid an exchange of fire with Israel. It identified the fourth fighter as Abdul Jalil Ali Hamza.
Hezbollah had launched two attacks against Israel and the Israeli military said it attacked the group’s positions in Lebanon.
Hamas decries death of Palestinian prisoner
Hamas has described the death of 23-year-old Palestinian prisoner Abdul Rahman al-Bahsh in an Israeli jail as an “assassination”.
“This crime comes amid reports of summary executions, barbaric torture and inhumane conditions that our heroic prisoners are facing,” Hamas official Zaher Jabarin said in a statement, citing testimonies from newly released detainees.
Jabarin also slammed the “silence” of international agencies and rights groups towards the mistreatment Palestinians are facing in Israeli custody.
US says it rejects ‘enduring displacement’ of Palestinians in Gaza
The US has reiterated its opposition to the forcible transfer of Palestinians in Gaza amid open calls by Israeli officials to reduce the territory’s population.
“The United States remains firmly opposed to any forced or enduring displacement of Palestinians from Gaza,” a US State Department spokesperson told Al Jazeera in an email.
“The only way to ensure a lasting, sustainable peace – and for that matter, Israel’s security – is to advance the realization of a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution.”
That US position puts the Biden administration on a collision course with its allies in Israel, as Israeli officials continue to reject the establishment of a Palestinian state, suggesting that Israel would directly control Gaza after the war.
Washington has been expediting weapons transfers to Israel and US officials have said that they are not drawing any red lines for Israel in its military operation.
Biden is ‘in’ on Israel’s ethnic cleansing plans: Analyst
Trita Parsi, the executive vice president at the Quincy Institute, a think tank that promotes diplomacy, has accused US officials of backing Israel’s plans to ethnically cleanse and re-annex the Gaza strip.
“Wonder why Biden doesn’t condemn this, mindful of his justified opposition to Russia annexing Ukrainian territory?” Parsi wrote in a social media post.
“BECAUSE BIDEN IS IN ON IT.”
One by one, Israeli officials speak openly about their plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza and re-annex it.
Wonder why Biden doesn't condemn this, mindful of his justified opposition to Russia annexing Ukrainian territory?
BECAUSE BIDEN IS IN ON IT. https://t.co/wr9AiTyhvC
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) January 1, 2024
Palestinians facing difficult conditions in Israeli jails
Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim highlighted that seven Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli jails since October 7, which she called “a very high number”.
Abdul Rahman al-Bahsh, a 23-year-old who was from Nablus in the occupied West Bank, had earlier on Monday been announced as the latest Palestinian prisoner to die.
Ibrahim said that while the circumstances of the man’s death remain unclear, prisoners who were freed in an exchange deal in November have described difficult conditions in Israeli jails.
“We’ve only heard from released prisoners difficult testimonies about the conditions in Israeli jails when it comes to physical and mental torture,” Ibrahim said.
“We’ve been seeing children who came out during the swap deals saying that their hands have been beaten, there’s not enough food, there’s medical negligence.”
Israeli rights group says evidence of violence against Palestinian prisoners increasing
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel said that “many disturbing question marks are accumulating” after seven Palestinian prisoners died in Israeli prisons since October 7.
Quoted by the Israeli Ynet website, the organisation said that there “is a lot of evidence of cases of violence and cruel and humiliating treatment by prison guards”.
The rights group called for an investigation into the causes of the prisoners’ deaths.
More from Kenneth Roth
Roth drew a contrast between the preparations to return Israeli civilians to the Gaza border area and the continued displacement of two million Palestinians within the territory with no end in sight for the violence.
He highlighted Israeli far-right Finance Minister Smotritch’s remarks calling for Palestinians to leave Gaza.
“This idea of massive ethnic cleansing – the war crime of forced displacement – is still very much an idea within the Netanyahu government,” Roth told Al Jazeera.
Israel’s top court great for Israelis, ‘not so great’ for Palestinians: Professor
Kenneth Roth, a visiting professor at Princeton University who previously led Human Rights Watch, has welcomed the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to strike down key parts of Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plans.
But he added that while Israel’s court system provides much-needed checks and balances over the government, it has not been effective in protecting the rights of Palestinians.
“Important as the Israeli Supreme Court is for preserving democracy within the Green Line, within recognised Israel, it has not been so great in the occupied territories,” Roth told Al Jazeera.
“The settlements have flourished, and the court has systematically ducked facing the obvious question: Are these legal or not?”
He added that settlements are “blatantly illegal” under international law. “So the court has been great for Israelis, not so great for the occupied Palestinians.”
Rights groups slam death of Palestinian prisoner as ‘assassination’
We reported earlier that a Palestinian prisoner at Megiddo prison in Israel had died. The Palestinian Prisoners Society and the PA Commission for Detainees have now identified him as Abdul Rahman al-Bahsh from Nablus in the occupied West Bank.
The 23-year-old has been detained since May 31, 2022, and had been sentenced to 35 months in prison, the two prisoners’ rights bodies said.
“He is the first imprisoned martyr of 2024, and the seventh since October 7 that we have been able to verify,” they said in a statement.
Al-Bahsh is also the fourth detainee to die in Megiddo – proof, they said, that “there is nothing stopping Israel from carrying out more assassinations against detainees in its prisons, in addition to the systematic torture and abuse, which aims to kill them directly”.
WATCH: Palestinian health minister breaks down the crisis facing Gaza’s hospitals
‘It’s not voluntary’: Activist condemns Israel’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ plans
Rasha Mubarak, a Palestinian-American organiser, has condemned Israel’s plans to reduce Gaza’s population, stressing that Israeli officials’ calls for “voluntary migration” out of the territory is a push for ethnic cleansing.
“It’s not really voluntary when you’re bombing homes and starving the entire population,” Mubarak told Al Jazeera. “People are either being murdered by the state-sanctioned violence and the bombing or also being starved.”
The Biden administration has not denounced Israeli officials’ statements urging the forcible removal of Palestinians from Gaza. Mubarak said Washington is not only silent about the ethnic cleansing push, but it is also contributing to it with military aid and diplomatic support for Israel.
“They have played an immense part in this genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,” she said.
Israeli officials react to Supreme Court ruling
Israeli officials have reacted to the Supreme Court’s ruling against changes to the judiciary passed by parliament in July, which scrapped the “reasonableness” clause, used by the court to overturn government decisions deemed unconstitutional:
- Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet and an opposition figure who many regard as Netanyahu’s most likely successor, said: “The verdict must be respected. … These are not the days of political controversy, and we have only one common goal: to win the war [in Gaza].”
- Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich dismissed the court decision as “extreme and divisive”.
- Justice Minister Yariv Levine said the decision to issue the ruling in wartime was “the opposite of the spirit of unity needed these days for the success of our fighters on the front line”.
- Netanyahu’s Likud party said the decision was unfortunate and it opposed “the will of the people for unity, especially during wartime”. It did not discuss any possible steps it might take in response.
- Yair Lapid, opposition chairperson and a former prime minister, praised the court, whose decision, he said, “seals a tough year of dispute that tore us apart from the inside and led to the most terrible disaster in our history”.
If you’re just joining us
It’s about 10pm (20:00 GMT) in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. Here are some of the latest developments:
- Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said the situation in Gaza is “totally catastrophic” with overwhelmed hospitals experiencing shortages of medical supplies.
- Israel has accelerated attacks in central and southern Gaza as it pushes to expand its ground offensive.
- Hamas said it carried out dozens of attacks and killed 16 Israeli soldiers in the past few days.
- Hezbollah and Israel traded fire across the Lebanese border. The Iran-allied group announced that three of its fighters have been killed.
- Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said the war presents an “opportunity” to encourage Palestinians to leave Gaza.
Israeli arrested for impersonating soldier in war on Gaza
He fought for weeks alongside elite Israeli troops in Gaza and appeared in a frontline photograph next to the prime minister, but Roi Yifrah now stands accused of impersonating a soldier, the AFP news agency reports.
Yifrah, 35, apparently never served in the Israeli army but managed to make his way to the Gaza Strip, and his lawyer says he fought in the Remal neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Israeli police said Yifrah, a Tel Aviv resident, was arrested on December 17 on charges of impersonating a member of the security forces and stealing weapons.
Police said officers seized weapons from his apartment, car and his mother’s home, including an assault rifle, stun grenades, explosive charges, bullets, military computers and a drone.
US advocate decries Biden’s support for ‘genocide’
As more Israeli officials openly articulate plans for forcibly removing Palestinians from Gaza, Hatem Abudayyeh, chairperson of the US Palestinian Community Network, has hit out at the US president’s continuing support for Israel.
“Genocide Joe Biden is doing exactly what we expect him to do – uphold US imperialism, war, and occupation by supporting Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people,” he told Al Jazeera in a statement.
“He and so many other elected officials in the US have the blood of thousands of Palestinian children on their hands, and that’s why we have been targeting them with our organizing for months and will not let up. No business as usual for those complicit in genocide.”
Palestinian detainee dies in Israeli prison: Rights groups
The Palestinian Prisoners Society and the PA Commission for Detainees have said that a man detained in Megiddo prison has died.
They did not identify him, but said he is the seventh Palestinian to die while being held in an Israeli prison since October 7.
Is Israel signaling a change in tactics in Gaza?
Patrick Bury, a senior lecturer in security at the University of Bath, tells Al Jazeera that Israeli operations in Gaza could be approaching a third phase.
“Potentially, phase three could represent a step change in the tactics and the operational posture of the Israelis” towards using more infantry forces against Hamas, Bury said, “and only close air support for when it really needs it rather than the bombarding of civilians that we’ve seen up to this day.”
“The Israelis will aways know when they plan their operations that they only have a certain amount of time to achieve as much as they can in terms of fighting or degrading their enemies … before international opinion turns against them,” he added.
Hamas carried out dozens of attacks against Israeli forces: Spokesman Abu Obeida
Abu Obeida, spokesman of Hamas’s armed wing the Qassam Brigades, says the group has destroyed 71 Israeli military vehicles fully or partially in the past four days.
“Our fighters have confirmed the killing of 16 Zionist soldiers and injured dozens [of] others, carrying out 42 military missions,” Abu Obeida said in a statement.
He said the attacks included shelling Israeli positions and targeting them with explosive devices as well as clashes from “distance zero” and the booby-trapping of homes and tunnel shafts where the Israeli military was operating.
According to Abu Obeida, Hamas fighters also brought down two Israeli surveillance drones in Gaza as they continued to fire rockets towards Tel Aviv.
US aircraft carrier to be removed from Mediterranean
The White House would say that nothing has changed in terms of its support and backing of Israel. It’s still what the US president would say is ironclad. What we know is that in the initial days following the October 7 attacks by Hamas, the first carrier strike group to enter the region was the USS Gerald Ford and that is what is now returning to the United States.
Since that time, there has been the addition of the USS Eisenhower, which will remain in the region, as well as the addition of the collaborative Red Sea patrols. This is a group of maritime forces that has been put together, organised by the United States – to protect merchant ships in the region – from various navies, including the G7 countries, the EU and NATO countries.
The US feels that it can now pull back some of its own forces in order to allow the Red Sea patrols to really take effect. While the US said that the importance of getting these forces into the region is deterrence, what we’ve seen in all of this is a major escalation.