Israel-Hamas war updates: Netanyahu vows to keep fighting, ignores new plan for ceasefire
Tensions are reaching boiling point in the Middle East after an Israeli air strike killed a senior Iranian military officer in Syria, as Benjamin Netanyahu vows to destroy Hamas. Warning: Graphic
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Iran has vowed Israel will pay for a deadly air strike on Damascus which killed a senior officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi vowed Israel “will certainly pay for this crime” while officials have posted on social media it is only a matter of time before Iran strikes back.
The incident rachets up the tension in the Middle East where Iran-aligned groups have escalated attacks since Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, triggering the war.
It has been reported by the semi-official Iranian Tasnim news agency that Brigadier General Razi Mousavi was killed in a strike on the suburb of Sayeda Zeinab.
Three munitions reportedly hit the compound where Mousavi was located.
It has been alleged Mousavi was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Iran and Syria, and was believed by Israel involved in Tehran supplying weapons to terror proxies in the area, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group.
It comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is determined to keep fighting, refusing to acknowledge a new ceasefire plan developed by Egypt and Qatar.
“We are expanding the fight in the coming days and this will be a long battle and it isn’t close to finished,” he said to members of his Likud party.
He also wrote in an oped-ed published in the Wall Street Journal that: “Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarised, and Palestinian society must be deradicalised”.
These are the three prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbours in Gaza,” Mr Netanyahu said.
He said demilitarisation “will require establishing a temporary security zone on the perimeter” of the territory.
“For the foreseeable future Israel will have to retain overriding security responsibility over Gaza,” he said.
News of the proposal came as Israeli air strikes continued to rain on Gaza and a new barrage of Hamas rockets triggered air raid sirens in the Israeli city of Ashkelon.
The war erupted when Hamas militants broke through Gaza’s militarised border and attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, killing about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, and seizing 250 hostages, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel vowed to crush Hamas and launched a retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, including extensive aerial bombardment, that has killed at least 20,424 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run Palestinian territory’s health ministry.
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IRAQ, US TENSION FLARES UP AMID STRIKES
US air strikes targeting a pro-Iranian group in Iraq claimed at least one life, drawing an angry response from Baghdad as regional tensions spike amid the Israel-Hamas war.
The United States has repeatedly targeted sites used by Iran and its proxy forces in Iraq and Syria in response to dozens of attacks on American and allied forces in the region since the October 7 outbreak of the war.
Iraq said the latest US strikes killed one member of the security forces and wounded 18 other people, including civilians.
In a statement, it warned that such attacks “infringe upon Iraq’s sovereignty and are deemed unacceptable under any circumstances or justification”.
“Iraqi military sites were targeted by the American side justifying the act as a response,” the Iraqi government said, adding it “resulted in the martyrdom of one service member and the injury of 18 others, including civilians”.
“This constitutes a clear hostile act.
“It runs counter to the pursuit of enduring mutual interests in establishing security and stability, and it opposes the declared intention of the American side to enhance relations with Iraq.”
An official in Iraq’s interior ministry said a strike had targeted a Hashed al-Shaabi site in Hilla, the capital of Babylon province.
One person was killed and 20 others wounded, the official said, giving a higher injured toll than the government.
Four others were wounded in a second strike in Wassit province. The casualty toll was confirmed by security sources in both Babylon and Wassit provinces.
It comes after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said American forces had carried out strikes on three sites used by pro-Iran groups in Iraq in response to a series of attacks on US personnel.
“US military forces conducted necessary and proportionate strikes on three facilities used by Kataeb Hezbollah and affiliated groups in Iraq,” Austin said in a statement.
The Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades, forms part of the Hashed al-Shaabi, a coalition of former paramilitary forces that are now integrated into Iraq’s regular armed forces.
The group was designated a “terrorist organisation” by the US State Department in 2009.
“These precision strikes are a response to a series of attacks against US personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias, including an attack by Iran-affiliated Kataeb Hezbollah and affiliated groups on Arbil Air Base” on Monday, Mr Austin said.
That attack wounded three US military personnel, one critically, US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said.
‘ACUTE HUNGER’: WHO
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said desperation is growing in Gaza as it led missions to barely functioning hospitals, saying starving people stripped an aid truck of supplies.
The UN health agency and its partners delivered aid, including fuel, to the devastated Al-Shifa hospital, once Gaza’s biggest and most advanced medical facility.
Participants in the mission witnessed was “rising desperation due to acute hunger,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Partners demand immediate scale-up of food and water to ensure population health and stability.”
AL-SHIFA HOSPITAL ON ITS KNEES
At Al-Shifa, Tedros warned that “relentless hostilities and massive numbers of wounded people have brought its capacities to its knees”.
He voiced hope that a delivery of 19,200 litres of generator fuel would help revive vital services at the hospital, which can currently only provide “the most basic of first aid”.
But, he stressed, “more will be needed”.
The facility, which has suffered significant damage and seen its oxygen plant destroyed, is also providing refuge to around 50,000 displaced people, according to hospital authorities.
Sean Casey, a WHO Emergency Medical Teams co-ordinator who was on the mission, described overflowing surgery wards and being unable to evaluate al-Shifa’s operating theatres, “because there are people inside and they are not opening the door”.
At the same time, “everyone we speak to is hungry,” Casey said in a video shot inside Al-Shifa, with crowds of displaced people, mainly children, milling in the background.
“There’s the risk of famine.”
Illustrating the desperate situation, people grabbed food aid off one of the trucks en route for the hospital.
“Amid dire food shortages, the search for food is forcing people into horrible states of hunger and leading some — out of desperation — to take supplies from delivery trucks,” Tedros said.
“I can only imagine the torment that would drive people to such lengths.”
The WHO chief warned that the dire situation at Al-Shifa was “a microcosm of the nightmare playing out across Gaza, where drastic shortages of medicines, food, power, water and - above all - safety imperil the population”.
The joint mission also visited the Patient Friends Hospital, which provides maternity, trauma and emergency care, but lacks surgeons, intensive care staff, antibiotics and basic medications.
Meanwhile, at the Al-Sahaba and Al-Helou maternity hospitals, which assist with up to 35 births a day, they found shortages of fuel, food, water, oxygen, antibiotics and anaesthesia.
“Hospitals should be places for care and recovery, not danger and unrelenting suffering,” Tedros said.
He reiterated his call for a ceasefire, and stressed the need for “sustained humanitarian access”.
ISRAEL POUNDS GAZA OVER CHRISTMAS
It comes as Israel pounded Gaza over Christmas, exacerbating the dire conditions for civilians with no end in sight to the war Hamas says has killed more than 20,000 people in the Palestinian territory.
The Gaza health ministry said an Israeli air strike killed at least 70 people on Christmas Eve at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp.
The army said it was “reviewing the incident”, adding it was “committed to international law including taking feasible steps to minimise harm to civilians”.
Ten members of one family were killed in an Israeli strike on their house in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza, the health ministry said.
In a separate attack, the ministry said 18 people were killed in an overnight strike on Khan Yunis.
There was no respite on Christmas Day, with the army saying it continued its ground, air and sea operations and struck several Hamas targets, including commanders.
NETANYAHU SAYS ISRAEL WILL EXPAND OFFENSIVE
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has visited the Gaza Strip and vowed to step up the army’s assault, his party said.
“I just came back from Gaza... we’re not stopping, we’re continuing to fight and we’re intensifying the fighting in the coming days,” he told members of his Likud party according to a statement.
“It’s going to be a long war that’s not close to ending.”
The statement comes despite international efforts to halt the fighting, and Egypt’s offer to broker a ceasefire.
BETHLEHEM CANCELS CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS
Bethlehem has cancelled its annual Christmas celebrations out of respect for the ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip, nearly three months into the war between Israel and Hamas.
Bethlehem – or Beit Lechem, located in what is now the Israeli-occupied West Bank – is typically flooded with pilgrims and other celebrants in late December.
This year, however, the festivities are pared back to a nativity scene at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church of an infant Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh, surrounded by rubble, NPR reported.
Meanwhile, the Church of the Nativity – which dates back to the sixth century – included razor wire and tarp-wrapped figures in its nativity scene.
The church is practically empty as the usual 6,000 daily visitors that descend on Bethlehem at Christmastide has trickled down to less than 1,000 in one month, the Washington Post reported.
The mournful mood was the joint decision of multiple Palestinian Christian leaders, who came together last month to cancel the public celebrations in light of the war in Gaza.
As a result, the usual parade of 28 Boy Scout troops accompanying the Latin Patriarch’s procession into the city will be reduced to one, silent troop holding Bible verses on peace and possibly photographs of Gazan children, the Washington Post added.
The scaled-down holiday comes just one year after Christmas returned to Bethlehem in full-swing in 2022, following two years of curtailed festivities due to Covid.
Christian leaders in Bethlehem have vocally condemned Hamas’ surprise terror attack on Israel on October 7, which killed about 1,200 people and saw at least 240 others taken hostage.
“We condemn the brutal attacks of Hamas on October 7th that caused the loss of life of nearly 1,400 Israelis and citizens of other nations, and we call for the immediate release of all civilians held hostage,” a group of Bethlehem clerics wrote in a letter to US President Joe Biden last month.
Hamas’ atrocities, however, did not justify what the group called the “collective violence” against civilians in Gaza, who have now been under siege from Israel’s military for almost three months, the letter read.
“It’s impossible to celebrate when so many — on both sides — have lost so much,” Rami Asakrieh, a Franciscan friar and pastor of St. Catherine’s Church, told the Washington Post.
“We cancelled the festivities as a sign of solidarity with the victims of the war,” Asakrieh, who signed the letter to Biden, explained.
In his annual Christmas speech, Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nanania slammed Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” the Washington Post said.
The head of the local chamber of commerce, Samir Hazboun, also criticised what he called the “moral failure of the West” to curtail the killing of Gazan civilians, the outlet continued.
“If Jesus were born today, he would be born in Gaza amid the rubble,” the Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, said while standing over his church’s rubble-strewn nativity.
“Who can sing ‘Joy to the World’ today?” he lamented, adding that the story of Jesus’ birth in a stable after his parents – Mary, and her husband Joseph, a Jewish man living under Roman rule – are unable to find lodging is “a story we Palestinians can understand.”
While the usual religious and festive activities have been scaled far back, traditional mass will still be read to mark the major Christian holiday, Asakrieh told the Washington Post.
“We need the Christmas message more than ever,” he insisted. “We need the peace and love. We need the light.”
POPE FRANCIS SAYS HEARTS ARE IN BETHLEHEM
Pope Francis has used his Christmas Eve midnight mass in St Peter’s Basilica to tell 6500 people in the crowd that Jesus’ birth is being rejected by war.
The pope, who has repeatedly called for a ceasefire, stressed that the birth of Jesus offered a stark contrast to the “power of the world” and the desire for “might, fame, and glory.”
He said that God is instead marked by “closeness, compassion and tenderness” and does not “burst on the scene with limitless power” but instead “descends to the narrow confines of our lives.”
“Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world,” the 87-year-old pontiff said.
Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world. #Christmas
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) December 24, 2023
ISRAEL PAYING ‘HEAVY PRICE’
The toll of Israeli soldiers killed in fighting with Hamas mounted.
“This is a difficult morning, after a very difficult day of fighting in Gaza,” he said on Sunday local time after the army announced 14 soldiers had been killed in the Palestinian territory since last Friday.
“The war is exacting a very heavy price … but we have no choice but to keep fighting,” he added in a statement.
“We are continuing with full force until the end, until victory, until we achieve all of our goals: the destruction of Hamas, the return of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will never again constitute a threat to the State of Israel.
“Let it be clear: This will be a long war … (until) Hamas is eliminated and we restore security in both the north and the south.”
Fourteen Israeli soldiers were killed in combat in Gaza over the weekend, the Israeli military said on Sunday local time, in some of the bloodiest days of battle since the ground offensive began and a sign that Hamas is still putting up a fight despite weeks of brutal war.
SPAIN WILL NOT JOIN US-LED RED SEA COALITION
Spain says it will not join a US-led coalition to protect Red Sea shipping from attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is in the process of putting together a coalition and needs the support of the radical left party Sumar, which opposes US foreign policy.
The Houthis welcomed Spain’s stance with Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein al-Ezzi saying, “We highly appreciate Spain’s refusal to be drawn into American and British lies on the issue of maritime navigation.”
On Thursday, the Pentagon said 20 countries have joined the US-led coalition to protect the key shipping lane.
UNRWA SAYS IT’S HARD TO WISH A ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS’
In a tweet on Sunday, the United Nations Relief Agency said that it is “hard to wish those celebrating ‘Merry Christmas’, with ongoing loss, grief and destruction” across Gaza as the strip faces intense Israeli bombardment.
“Our teams are doing the impossible to help people in need. We mourn the loss of more UNRWA colleagues killed in #Gaza, now 142, the majority with their families,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said.
In this somber moment, it's hard to wish those celebrating “Merry Christmasâ€, with ongoing loss, grief & destruction
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) December 24, 2023
Our teams are doing the impossible to help people in need. We mourn the loss of more @UNRWA colleagues killed in #Gaza, now 142, the majority with their families pic.twitter.com/MC2WMBk2jM
- With AFP
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Originally published as Israel-Hamas war updates: Netanyahu vows to keep fighting, ignores new plan for ceasefire
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