Israel war on Gaza updates: Condemnation after Israel kills 2 journalists
Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, among media workers killed after car targeted near Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
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- Two more journalists have been killed after their vehicle was targeted in an Israeli air strike, including the son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh.
- At least seven Palestinians were killed in an Israeli drone attack on Jenin in the occupied West Bank; a four-year-old girl was killed by Israeli border police near occupied East Jerusalem.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and EU policy chief Josep Borrell visit the Middle East amid efforts to ease tensions following last week’s assassination of a Hamas leader in Beirut.
- At least 22,835 people have been killed – including 9,600 children – in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. About 1,139 people were killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
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Here’s what happened today
We will be closing this live page soon. Here’s a recap of the day’s main developments:
- Israeli forces kill Hamza Dahdouh – the son of Al Jazeera’s Wael Dahdouh – and fellow journalist Mustafa Thuraya in an air raid in southern Gaza.
- Al Jazeera condemns the attack, calling on the international community to hold Israel accountable and “demand an end to the targeting and killing of journalists”.
- Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi says Israel will be fighting in Gaza all year.
- Israeli officers shoot and kill a Palestinian toddler during what they said was a car-ramming attack in the occupied West Bank. The toddler was not in the vehicle involved in the incident.
- An Israeli air attack kills at least seven Palestinians in Jenin after an explosive device kills an Israeli officer in the occupied West Bank city.
- US Secretary of State Blinken visits Jordan and Qatar and stresses that displaced Palestinians must be able to return to their homes in Gaza.
- Save the Children says more than 10 children lose limbs in Gaza every day.
WATCH: Orthodox Christians attend Christmas mass in Bethlehem
‘Israel can count on our staunch solidarity’: Germany
The German Foreign Office has reiterated Berlin’s support for Israel but said more must be done to protect civilians in Gaza.
“Israel needs to find a way to combat Hamas without causing harm to so many innocent people. This requires a less intense operational approach. The way Israel fights the war directly affects its own security,” the office said in posts on social media.
#Israel can count on our staunch solidarity in the fight against blind terrorism. Rockets from Gaza continue to fly towards Israel. People continue worry about the fate of the hostages – they must all be released immediately. @ABaerbock in Israel. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/2XCXbCnS0u
— GermanForeignOffice (@GermanyDiplo) January 7, 2024
Doctor taken from home, detained in Israel’s Ramallah raid
Local sources told Al Jazeera’s Sanad verification unit that a blindfolded man shown in a video being forced into the back of an Israeli military vehicle by soldiers is Aysar Nasr al-Barghouti, a local doctor.
He was taken after his home in the Batan al-Hawa neighbourhood of Ramallah was stormed.
It’s unclear why the Israeli forces have taken al-Barghouti.
‘Biden looks heartless or clueless’
Renowned US political scientist Stephen Walt says Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza made him look no better than his predecessor Donald Trump.
“Why #Gaza is such a problem for #Biden: in 2020 a big advantage for Biden was the perception that he was a fundamentally decent person whereas #Trump was clearly incompetent and cruel. But now Biden looks heartless or clueless (or both) and many see him as no better than Trump,” Walt wrote in a social media post.
Why #Gaza is such a problem for #Biden: in 2020 a big advantage for Biden was the perception that he was a fundamentally decent person whereas #Trump was clearly incompetent and cruel. But now Biden looks heartless or clueless (or both) and many see him as no better than Trump.
— Stephen Walt (@stephenWalt) January 7, 2024
Children with amputated limbs will need lifetime support: Save the Children
The NGO has found that 10 children a day in Gaza have lost limbs since the start of the war, a number that the organisation’s head of conflict and humanitarian policy says is likely to be an underestimate.
“All the statistics when it comes to the suffering of children in Gaza are disproportionate due to the incredibly large number of children who live in Gaza – over 1 million,” said James Deneslow, [as well as] the incredible density of the population and, of course, the incredible intensity of the military operations and the conflict of the last three months”.
Deneslow pointed out that the children’s suffering will not end upon their release from hospital.
“When children lose limbs, it’s not the same as when adults lose limbs,” he said. “Crucially, their bones continue to grow, so the amount of operations and surgical interventions that children who have lost arms and legs will… stay with them for many, many years. And there’s a huge amount of pain management as well, which of course, Gaza’s healthcare system currently is not able to offer.”
“There will be the need for vast amounts of prosthetics and all the support that comes with rehabilitation and support to children who have suffered these injuries for years to come.”
Al Jazeera’s Wael Dahdouh returns to reporting hours after death of son Hamza
Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh has been reporting live from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, providing updates to viewers across the Arab world on the latest developments in the enclave, as Israel’s bombardment continues.
On Monday morning, Wael’s son Hamza, who also worked with Al Jazeera, was one of two journalists killed in an Israeli strike on the car they were travelling in.
Members of Wael’s family – including his wife Amna, another son, 15-year-old Mahmoud, his seven-year-old daughter Sham, and one-year-old grandchild Adam – were killed in an Israeli attack on the house they were staying in in October.
Wael himself was injured in an attack that killed his cameraman, Samer Abudaqa, but has refused to stop reporting.
مراسل #الجزيرة وائل الدحدوح يعود إلى تغطية الحرب الإسرائيلية على قطاع #غزة بعد استشهاد نجله الصحفي حمزة الدحدوح في قصف إسرائيلي صباحا ويرصد آخر التطورات في خان يونس جنوبي القطاع#حرب_غزة #الأخبار pic.twitter.com/OKiTxy4oFO
— قناة الجزيرة (@AJArabic) January 7, 2024
[Translation: Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh returns to covering the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip after the death of his son, journalist Hamza Dahdouh, in an Israeli strike this morning, and provides the latest developments in Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip.]
Israeli statement on killing journalists ‘doesn’t add up’
The Israeli army issued a statement responding to journalists who asked for comment all day from the Israeli army on why these journalists were targeted and killed inside of Gaza.
It says: “An Israeli military aircraft identified and struck a terrorist operative who was operating an aircraft that posed a threat to troops. We are aware of the reports that during the strike, two other suspects who were in the same vehicle as the terrorists were also hit.”
Just pay attention to this wording. They’re calling the journalists in the car “suspects”. We do know that third person in the car who was seriously injured was Hazem Rajab, a content creator and a journalist. If you go to his page, you can see that he operates a drone for photography purposes. And if the Israeli military is releasing this statement, they are also calling these journalists, all three of them, suspects.
It’s interesting that the Israeli military took several hours to respond to questions from journalists, just releasing this statement before midnight local time. But the Israeli military is going to have a lot of other questions to answer… because what they’re saying and what happened on the ground is not adding up.
‘Total dissonance’ in Blinken’s ‘sorry’ for Hamza Dahdouh: Analyst
Blinken had said he was “deeply sorry” about the “unimaginable loss” of Wael Dahdouh, whose son was killed in an Israeli attack.
“The total dissonance of being sorry about an outcome that you have actively enabled at every stage,” Middle East expert Khaled Elgindy wrote in a social media post addressing Blinken’s comments.
Gaza authorities call for Egypt to open crossing for wounded Palestinians
The Gaza government’s media office said there were 6,000 wounded Palestinians in Gaza waiting to be approved to cross into Egypt through Rafah.
“Only 10 to 20 wounded are allowed to be transferred daily, and this small number exacerbates the suffering of the wounded, whose numbers are increasing on a daily basis,” the office said.
The office also called on the international community to “intervene immediately” to stop Israel’s war on Gaza.
WATCH: Son of Al Jazeera journalist among dead in attack
No US pressure on Israel beyond ‘doublespeak’ statements: Analyst
Blinken has been emphasising the protection of civilians in Gaza but as the US remains Israel’s top military and diplomatic backer, Hafsa Halawa says Washington’s statements are not effective.
“Nothing in the US’s policy actions – beyond certain doublespeak that we see or tweets that are written by the teams of everybody from the secretary of state to the president of the United States and other members of the government – seems to signal that there is any material pressure on Israel,” Halawa told Al Jazeera’s Inside Story.
“At the end of the day, nothing that we’ve seen since October 7 from anyone in this administration signals that the US is anything but supportive of this war.”
Watch the full episode here:
‘Clear Hezbollah is losing patience’
Chris Gunness, former spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), says that the message to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “has got to be not only that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza must not happen, but the underlying causes of this conflict must be addressed if we’re going to see regional tensions simmer down”.
“It’s clear that Hezbollah is losing patience with what is happening to Palestinians,” he told Al Jazeera. “So we need to see the underlying causes of this conflict resolved. Only that is going to take away the heat out of these growing regional tensions.”
Israeli forces raid Ramallah
Israeli military personnel and vehicles have been spotted in the occupied West Bank city, which serves as the base of the Palestinian Authority.
The target of their operation in the city is unclear.
‘We must persevere,’ Hamza Dahdouh said in recent interview
Palestinian-American academic Noura Erakat posted a video of a recent virtual conversation she had with the slain Palestinian journalist.
In it, Hamza opens up about the dangers of being a journalist in Gaza and the injury his father Wael Dahdouh sustained in an attack that killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa last month.
“Our message is that we must persevere,” Hamza said.
A clip of our convo with Hamza Dahdouh, the son of Wael Dahdouh, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike today. This is the third attack on Wael and his family. 109 journalists killed in 92 days. #Gaza #Genocide #ProtectJournalists #FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/J3feegdg8E
— Noura Erakat (@4noura) January 7, 2024
Gaza displacement crisis explained
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that civilians in Gaza must be able to return to their homes as Israeli officials continue to call for a reduction in the territory’s population.
According to the United Nations, 1.9 million people – more than 80 percent of all residents – have been displaced in Gaza.
The majority of them are staying at facilities for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and some are sheltering with host communities.
Israel has been driving hundreds of thousands of people south as it forces them to evacuate under the threat of violence.
The southernmost governorate of Rafah is now home to the largest concentration of IDPs with nearly 800,000 people, according to UN figures.
“The war, Israeli forces’ evacuation orders and the constant search for safer places meant that people are displaced multiple times,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says in a fact sheet.
Israel considers 2024 ‘year of fighting’: Expert
Esmat Mansour, a researcher on Israeli affairs, says that according to Israeli estimates, the war will take at least nine months to a year to conclude, and that will only happen after the army “combs through the Gaza Strip and rids it of rockets and tunnels”.
“They will also aim to find the captives and reach the Hamas leadership. All of this makes 2024 a year of fighting and puts Israel in a continuous state of emergency,” Mansour told Al Jazeera.
“This means that the existing situation – the state of emergency, the emergency government, and all that those entail – will continue, and it is also possible that the captives may not return during this year,” he added.
“And this is why Israel is pushing for a deal with Hamas without a halt to the fighting. Israel wants the fighting to continue because it is looking for a clear victory in the form of changing the entire situation in the Gaza Strip, and this requires a lot of time.”
US Muslim group calls on Biden to condemn targeting of journalists in Gaza
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said US President Joe Biden should speak out against Israeli war crimes and the killing of journalists.
“Yet all we hear from administration officials are denials of the obvious genocide taking place and actions in support of that genocide, forced starvation and ethnic cleansing,” CAIR Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement.
“The majority of Americans reject the Biden administration’s hypocritical and inhumane stance on the unfolding genocide in Gaza. It is time for President Biden to align his statements and actions with the will of the American people and call for an immediate ceasefire and a just and lasting peace.”
“Each day we call on the Biden administration to speak out against Israel’s war crimes in #Gaza – this time the latest targeted killings of journalists – yet all we hear from administration officials are denials of the obvious #genocide taking place…"https://t.co/yyOdJzyzEd
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) January 7, 2024
Hackers display anti-Hezbollah messages at Beirut airport
Screens normally displaying departure and arrival times instead displayed messages attacking Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to the Associated Press.
“Hassan Nasrallah, you will no longer have supporters if you curse Lebanon with a war for which you will bear responsibility and consequences,” the message read.
The messages were displayed alongside logos from a Christian group known as Soldiers of God and another group calling itself The One Who Spoke. However, the former denied its involvement.
US senator blames ‘political decisions’ by Israel for inadequate Gaza aid
United States Senator Chris Van Hollen, who visited the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, says the “unnecessarily cumbersome” screening process, which is “the result of political decisions by the Netanyahu coalition” is delaying the delivery of assistance to Gaza.
For example, he said water filtration systems were turned back by Israeli inspectors at the border, with the crossing operating eight hours a day instead of 24-7 to meet the needs of Palestinians. “When one item on a truck is rejected, the entire truck is rejected,” Van Hollen told CBS News.
He also said the process to ensure the delivery of aid inside Gaza without it being targeted by Israel is not working.
“According to all the international NGOs that we talked about – who have operated in conflict zones around the world – they’ve never seen a worse process for ensuring the safe delivery of humanitarian assistance,” Van Hollen said.
The democratic senator warned that people in Gaza are starving and on the verge of disease outbreaks.
Al-Quds Brigades says it fired rockets at Israeli towns
The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has said it fired rockets at the Israeli towns of Sderot and Nirim outside Gaza.
Separately, Haaretz reported siren sounds in Sderot and other border towns.
Israeli military admits damage to air control base in Hezbollah attack
Hezbollah attacked the Mount Meron base, near the Israeli border with Lebanon, with rockets and anti-tank missiles on Saturday.
A video released by the Lebanese group shows damage to the base’s radar domes, although the Israeli military has said that backup systems mean its air defences are still functioning.
Israel will be fighting in Gaza all year, military chief says
Herzi Halevi hints at a long-term conflict in Gaza, saying that 2024 will be a “challenging year”.
“We will be fighting in Gaza all year – that’s for sure,” Halevi said during a visit to the occupied West Bank.
He added that the Israeli military is inflicting a “heavy price” on Hezbollah amid the Lebanese group’s attacks on northern Israel.
PRCS still treating the injured despite fuel and electricity shortages
Volunteers with the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) are using torches to treat Palestinians injured by Israeli strikes, as Israel continues to cut power to Gaza and prevent large amounts of fuel from entering the besieged enclave.
In a video posted on X, PRCS volunteers are seen treating an injured man in darkness as another volunteer holds up a torch at a medical point in Jabalia, northern Gaza.
Despite the power outage, our volunteers continue to work in the PRCS medical point in #Jabalia, northern #Gaza to save the lives of patients and the injured, amid a shortage of medical supplies and medications.
📷Filmed by PRCS volunteer: Yusuf Khader, 6/1/2024… pic.twitter.com/ipM5n6kv7F— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) January 7, 2024