Israel war on Gaza updates: Children dying ‘in every possible way’
Here are the updates from Saturday January 6, 2024.
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Here’s what happened today
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- Children in Gaza are “dying in every way possible,” Tanya Haj-Hassan, a doctor with MSF, tells Al Jazeera.
- Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari says that Israeli forces have completed dismantling Hamas’s “military framework” in northern Gaza.
- Israelis attend mass protests in Tel Aviv calling for captives to be released and Netanyahu to go.
- Democratic US Senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley visit a warehouse full of aid supplies rejected by Israeli authorities at the Egypt-Gaza border, including water-testing equipment and medical goods.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits Greece and Turkey, saying Israel does not want regional escalation with Hezbollah but has the right to defend itself.
Israel’s war in Gaza creating conditions for further violence
Military analyst Sean Bell says that the progress of Israeli forces towards eliminating Hamas remains tough to assess and that the brutal conditions created by the war lay the groundwork for continued violence in the future.
“The harsh reality is that the Israelis have claimed between 8,000-9,000 Hamas fighters have been either killed or captured, but they also admit that the Hamas fighters probably number about 30,000 total, so they’ve actually tackled less than a third of them. And although while they have largely dominated above ground, there is the whole subterranean world of the tunnel network,” Bell told Al Jazeera, noting that Israeli forces seem to have made limited progress in the tunnels.
“If you look at the situation on the ground, you look at the faces of the young children who have survived but their parents have been killed…..that is a petri dish, a breeding ground, for the next generation of fighters,” he added.
New Israeli attacks kill, wound Palestinians in central, south Gaza
Wafa has reported new Israeli air attacks on Khan Younis in south Gaza and on the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.
In Khan Younis, the agency reports that Israeli aircraft bombed a house with a large number of displaced Palestinians, killing at least 10 and wounding dozens of others.
A school run by the UN’s Palestinian relief agency in al-Magazhi was also hit by an Israeli attack, leading to several deaths, including at least one woman, according to Wafa.
WATCH: Could infighting threaten Israel’s government?
Israel’s far-right coalition government is at work, not just in Gaza but with itself
Ministers are fighting about a possible inquiry into the army’s pre-October 7 role and proposals to expel all Palestinians from Gaza.
So, how fragile is Israel’s government?
Watch Inside Story to learn more:
Israel’s control over northern Gaza remains unclear
Hamas fighters continue to engage Israeli military forces in northern Gaza, an area where Israel says it has successfully dismantled the group’s military network and collected millions of documents.
“We do want to note that just today, when the Israeli army made this announcement, Hamas’s Qassam Brigades also released video of fierce clashes in the Tuffah neighbourhood of northern Gaza, so kind of contradicting there what the Israeli military is saying,” Al Jazeera correspondent Hamdah Salhut reported from occupied East Jerusalem.
Orthodox Christmas in Bethlehem a ‘muted affair’
Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from the occupied West Bank, says that Manger Square, which takes its name from the place Jesus is said to have been born, is deserted.
“It’s quite sad really, because on a normal Christmas night, whether it be December 25 or January 6 for Orthodox Christians, Manger Square would be packed,” he said.
“There would be a lot of singing and chanting but there is none of that this year. It’s a particularly muted affair because there is no mood really among Palestinians to celebrate Christmas.”
Christians in the occupied West Bank, like all Palestinians, have been experiencing an uptick in violence from Israeli forces since the outbreak of the war in Gaza on October 7.
“As Palestinians, including as Christians, we live under an Israeli colonial apartheid regime that seeks to ethnically cleanse us, be us Christians, Muslims, or any Palestinian,” lawyer and human rights advocate Cathrine Abuamsha, who is Christian, told Al Jazeera.
“What we have been seeing here after the Israeli genocidal war in the Gaza Strip is even more intense… because they’re trying to push us down, they’re trying to deny any kind of resistance,” she added.
Blinken arrives in Jordan
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in the Jordanian capital of Amman as part of a weeklong trip to the region amid escalating tensions.
“Jordan is a vital partner in helping to prevent the conflict in the region from spreading, and we are grateful for their leadership in facilitating aid to civilians in Gaza,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a social media post on Saturday.
.@SecBlinken has landed in Amman. Jordan is a vital partner in helping to prevent the conflict in the region from spreading, and we are grateful for their leadership in facilitating aid to civilians in Gaza.
— Matthew Miller (@StateDeptSpox) January 6, 2024
Turkey says 15 suspects to be jailed ahead of espionage trial
Turkey’s justice minister has said that 15 people suspected of alleged ties to Israeli intelligence will be held in prison ahead of their trial.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said in a social media post that 26 suspects – out of 34 arrested on suspicion of espionage links – were referred to the court on charges of “political or military espionage”.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported that Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, had recruited people in Turkey for operations allegedly targeting “Palestinian nationals and their families”, citing a prosecution document.
Hezbollah warns residents of Israeli double-tap strikes
The Lebanese group says in a statement via Telegram that residents of south Lebanon should stay away from areas that have been recently hit by Israeli strikes.
“In its air attacks on our areas,” the statement says, “the Israeli enemy intends to repeat the raid on the same targeted places in close periods of time, hardly exceeding a few minutes, with the aim of confirming killing and bloodshed”.
New Israeli air attack on Deir el-Balah
Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza reports that several people were killed and wounded in an Israeli army air attack on a home in the central Gaza Strip.
The dead and wounded were transported to Al-Aqsa Hospital, a video shot by our team shows.
The exact casualty numbers were not immediately clear. We will bring you more updates as information comes in.
Thousands gather at ‘Hostages Square’ in Tel Aviv in protest
US senators say ‘arbitrary’ Israeli inspections slowing aid delivery
Two US senators have said that the delivery of much-needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza is being stymied by an arbitrary Israeli inspection regime.
Democratic Senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley visited the border between Egypt and Gaza on Saturday, where a warehouse is full of vital supplies rejected by Israeli authorities, including water testing equipment and medical goods.
“The warehouse was a testament to the arbitrariness” of the process, Van Hollen said.
“What struck me yesterday was the miles of backed-up trucks. We couldn’t count, but there were hundreds,” Merkley told a group of reporters in Cairo.
Palestinians injured in Israeli raid near Tulkarem
The Wafa news agency reports that four people were injured in the occupied West Bank town of Zeita, near Tulkarem.
The injuries were caused by live ammunition and shrapnel during fighting that out between Israeli soldiers and local Palestinian youth.
“Medical sources reported that two individuals with shrapnel injuries to the face and leg were transported to nearby Attil Governmental Hospital, while two others with injuries from live ammunition to the leg were transferred to Thabit Thabit Governmental Hospital in Tulkarm for medical treatment,” Wafa reports.
Blinken says Gaza conflict needs to be contained
Middle Eastern nations need to use their influence over regional actors to ensure the Gaza conflict is contained and to prevent “an endless cycle of violence”, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said.
Blinken spoke late in the day after meeting the leaders of Turkey and Greece at the start of a week-long trip.
Blinken, who will also visit Arab states, Israel and the occupied West Bank, said if efforts to settle the crisis failed, the outcome would be “lives of insecurity and conflict for people in the region”.
‘War on Gaza has not gone so well for Israel’: Analyst
Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of Gulf State Analytics in Washington, DC, says that Israeli military and leadership are eager to send a message to the public about winning “this war on Gaza and to try and boost morale among Israelis”.
“The truth, however, is that this three-month war on Gaza has not gone so well for Israel,” he told Al Jazeera. “There’s been a rather high Israeli death count and the resistance in Gaza remains rather strong.”
“This idea that Israel is going to quickly decapitate Hamas – well, that hasn’t played out the way the Israelis wanted it to. The stopwatch is running out in terms of how much longer Israel can continue to wage this high-intensity military campaign in Gaza,” he said.
Cafiero said that Israel is trying to shape a narrative about how its war in Gaza has been successful.
Israeli forces storm occupied West Bank towns
Al Jazeera’s correspondent in the occupied West Bank reports an Israeli raid on the town of Yaabad, southwest of Jenin, is under way.
In video verified by Al Jazeera, sounds of gunfire can be heard in the town as clashes broke out there.
Israeli forces are also raiding the city of Nablus.
We will bring you more updates as information comes in.
Iran says ending war in Gaza key to avoiding regional war
Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has responded to remarks from his French counterpart saying that Iran must stop “destabilising activities” in the region.
The Iranian official countered that the surest way to defuse regional tensions is to end the “ongoing genocide in Gaza”, according to Iranian state media.
“An effective step in ending violence in the region would be to stop the crimes of the Zionist regime [Israel] and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as taking action to stop the killing of civilians, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and prevent forced migration,” Amir-Abdollahian said.
Israeli army says Hamas ‘dismantled’ in north Gaza
Army spokesperson Daniel Hagari says that Israeli forces have completed dismantling Hamas’s “military framework” in northern Gaza and killed around 8,000 fighters in that area, according to the Reuters news agency.
“We are now focused on dismantling Hamas in the centre of and south of the [Gaza] Strip,” Hagari said.
Video shows Israeli police cracking down on Jerusalem anti-war protesters
We’ve been reporting on mass protests happening around Israel tonight, where demonstrators are calling for the return of Israeli captives held in Gaza, the ousting of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government and an end to the war in Gaza.
Video verified by Al Jazeera and filmed by Israeli journalist Joshua Leifer shows scenes of a violent crackdown on one such protest in Jerusalem by Israeli police:
NOW: Israeli police violently break up anti-war protest in Jerusalem pic.twitter.com/3QZGtCQbIB
— Joshua Leifer (@joshualeifer) January 6, 2024
Israeli forces have killed 15 in Qalqilya since October 7: Official
Qalqilya, which is already surrounded on three sides by the Israeli separation wall, has been reeling from several deadly military crackdowns, says Murad Shteiwi, director of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Committee in the northern occupied West Bank.
“The only way to enter the city is through the eastern entrance, and that also is often closed to citizens by the military,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Israeli forces closed the northern entrance to the town of Azzun with an iron gate and barbed wire, and erected a military tower in addition to the two previously installed towers on the northern side,” he added.
The army also closed the entrances to the towns of Kafr Laqif, Jinsafut and al-Funduq.
Blinken says US remains against forced displacement of Palestinians
The US secretary of state told Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf that the US remains opposed to efforts to expel Palestinians from Gaza in a phone call on Saturday.
“The Secretary reiterated the United States’ position that there should be no forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement following the call.
The statement says that Blinken also discussed issues such as maritime security in the Red Sea and increased humanitarian assistance for Palestinians.
Palestinian rights group gives update on arrests from Israeli raids
The Palestinian Prisoners Club says in a statement via Telegram that from yesterday evening until today, Israeli forces arrested 22 citizens from the occupied West Bank and four citizens from Gaza.
“The arrest operations were concentrated in the town of Qatana/Jerusalem, which witnessed a massive raid for hours”, the group said, ” while the rest of the arrests were distributed among the governorates of: Hebron, Bethlehem, Jenin, Ramallah and Tulkarem.”
Is said that Israeli army arrests are accompanied by “severe beatings, threats against detainees and their families in addition to widespread sabotage and destruction of citizens’ homes.”
Palestinian officials say seven killed in Israeli attack on Khan Younis
Reuters news service has reported that seven people were killed in an Israeli attack on a home in Khan Younis, citing Palestinian health officials.
The attack targeted the home of the al-Nabris family, and women and children were among those killed, according to the officials
Red Crescent says it received 46 aid trucks
The PRCS says it received the trucks carrying humanitarian aid from its Egyptian counterpart organisation through the Rafah border crossing.
The aid consists of water, food, tents and medical supplies, it said.