Displaced people ‘killed point-blank’ in Gaza school
- Exclusive video and images obtained by Al Jazeera show bodies piled up inside the Shadia Abu Ghazala School in al-Faluja area, west of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
- Rainfall triggers flooding in parts of Gaza Strip as strong winds damage makeshift tents, adding to the challenges faced by Palestinian families displaced by Israel’s war.
Bernie Sanders rejects additional military aid to Israel
In a letter to Biden, the progressive senator slammed Israel’s “immoral” military approach to Gaza.
Sanders highlighted the human toll of the war, including the mass displacement, mounting death toll and “indiscriminate” bombing that has flattened large parts of Gaza.
“This constitutes not just a humanitarian cataclysm, but a mass atrocity,” the senator wrote.
“And it is being done with bombs and equipment produced and provided by the United States and heavily subsidized by American taxpayers. Tragically, we are complicit in this carnage.”
Biden is seeking more than $10bn in additional military aid to Israel, but Sanders called on him to withdraw that request.
“This money would allow for the continuation of the Netanyahu government’s widespread, indiscriminate bombardment,” Sanders said.
He also called on the Biden administration to back UN efforts to secure “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire”. It is not clear what Sanders means by this call.
The senator, who ran for president in 2016 and 2020, has repeatedly asserted that there can be no ceasefire with Hamas, drawing the ire of many of his former staffers and supporters who have been advocating to end the war.
Netanyahu promises to continue war on Gaza ‘until destruction of Hamas’
The Israeli prime minister pledges to press on with the war on Gaza without giving into “international pressures”.
“Nothing will stop us,” Netanyahu said during a visit to a military base in southern Israel.
“We continue until the end, until victory, until the destruction of Hamas. Let there be no doubt about this,” he said.
His remarks come after the Israeli army said 10 of its soldiers were killed in Gaza and Biden said international support for Israel was declining amid its “indiscriminate bombing” of Palestinian civilians in the enclave.
Israeli authorities demolish four buildings in East Jerusalem
According to Daniel Seidemann, an expert on Israeli settlement in occupied East Jerusalem, the Israeli-run Jerusalem Municipality demolished the buildings in the neighbourhoods of Silwan, Ras al-Amud and Wadi Qadum.
He said among those structures is a two-storey building housing four families. The demolition left 36 people homeless, he said.
Christmas cancelled: US Palestinians feel no holiday joy amid war on Gaza
Huwaida Arraf’s house is usually the most brightly decorated in her Michigan neighbourhood at Christmas time.
But this year, with war raging in Gaza, the Palestinian American human rights lawyer is hanging only one sign in her front yard: “Bethlehem canceled Christmas because Israel is slaughtering Palestinians #GazaGenocide.”
Like many Palestinian Christians, Arraf is not celebrating the holiday this year. As the death toll in Gaza soars past 18,600, she and others Al Jazeera spoke to are struggling to enjoy the holiday season.
“There is really no joy right now — no joy to be had, no joy that can be had,” Arraf, a mother of two who lives in the Detroit area, said.
Gaza mass displacement: 1.9 million people forced to flee homes
Nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s residents have been displaced, according to the UN humanitarian office (OCHA).
Approximately 70 percent of the IDPs are staying at UNRWA shelters, while the rest are in government-run shelters or with host families.
Rafah, the enclave’s southernmost city, is hosting the most IDPs at 530,000, OCHA’s data shows.
Early in the war, Israel issued a directive for more than one million people in northern Gaza to flee south in a move that was widely condemned by rights groups.
Still, the Israeli army continued to bomb areas in southern Gaza where it had told people to go.
As it expands its ground operations in the south, Israel has been issuing more orders for people to leave their neighbourhoods, displacing residents as well as people who had already fled from the north.
Palestinian survivors of Israeli hospital siege speak
Al Jazeera has spoken to several people who were sheltering inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip. Israeli forces raided the hospital today after besieging and shelling it for several days.
“Conditions in the hospital are dire with no water or electricity. Bodies are scattered on the ground,” said one survivor.
An elderly man told Al Jazeera that “the Israeli army used loudspeakers to demand the evacuation of the displaced individuals from the hospital, citing planned demolition operations”.
Earlier, the Gaza Health Ministry said that several Palestinians were shot by Israeli forces after being ordered to leave the hospital.
The ministry also said that soldiers continue to detain the hospital’s entire medical staff.
Rights groups accuse Israel of ‘systemic abuse’ in prisons
Several Palestinian prisoners’ rights organisations say that testimonies of freed detainees and their families reveal “assaults against them and retaliatory measures imposed” by Israeli forces and prison authorities after October 7.
The groups are the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, Addameer and Wadi Hilweh Information Center.
A document released by the groups says that Israel currently holds more than 2,870 administrative detainees, a number that represents the highest rate of imprisonment without charge or trial since the first Intifada in 1987.
The groups also said that six detainees died in Israeli prisons, namely Abdulrahman Maree and Thaer Abu Assab, whom they say were tortured during their detention.
The groups put the total number of detainees currently held in Israeli prisons at 7,800 – although they say this does not include those detained from Gaza, since Israeli authorities have not released information on them.
Since October 7:
- 4,000 arrested, the highest rate in Hebron with 1,000 cases
- 150 women arrested, including Palestinian citizens of Israel
- 255 children arrested
- 45 journalists arrested
- 2,100 administrative detention orders have been issued
WATCH: Displaced Palestinians’ tents flooded under heavy rains
A video shared on social media and verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency shows displaced Palestinian families desperately trying to stay dry as heavy rains flooded tent encampments in Gaza.
Large, muddy puddles line the paths between the tents – made of wooden frames and plastic tarps – and residents sweep the water away with brooms.
In another video, a man wades calf-deep in muddy water as he scoops it up with a bucket. He says his family’s tent has been flooded and he doesn’t know where they will sleep.
“I haven’t secured a place for my children. I don’t know. I’ll go to the administration to talk to them to see if they can find a solution for us tonight,” he says.
Biden’s approach to Israel is ‘still old-fashioned’: Analyst
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says Biden’s move towards criticising Netanyahu while maintaining the White House’s staunch support for Israel is flawed.
The US president had hit out at the current Israeli government for saying that it rejects the formation of a Palestinian state – a goal that Washington claims to be working towards.
“The problem with Biden’s approach to Netanyahu and Israel is that he’s still old-fashioned,” Bishara said. “He still thinks that there is actually a peace camp in Israel, that there’s actually an alternative to Netanyahu that will work with the United States on the establishment of a two-state solution,” Bishara said.
“Netanyahu knows better. The absolute majority of parliament that allows for the formation of any future government does not support this situation. It’s not there.”
More exchanges between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah as cross-border tensions rise
The Israeli army says that it attacked fighters and infrastructure of the “Hezbollah terrorist organisation” inside Lebanese territory earlier today.
It also said that it detected incoming fire from Lebanon towards the Yiftah kibbutz in northern Israel. The strikes fell in open areas.
Local media in Lebanon, quoting witnesses and officials, has reported numerous additional Israeli army strikes inside Lebanese territory this afternoon.
For its part, Lebanese group Hezbollah claims to have carried out four strikes on Israeli military positions this afternoon, saying that it inflicted casualties.
Though ongoing since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict, exchanges between Hezbollah and Israeli forces have intensified since the truce in Gaza ended last week.
Jake Sullivan will deliver specific message on trip to Israel: AJ correspondent
The US national security adviser’s visit later this week comes after Biden said the country risks losing international support over its “indiscriminate bombing” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
“The United States will continue to urge Israel to be more precise in the future to try and protect civilian infrastructure,” Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett reported from Washington, DC.
“And as for a ceasefire, the United States continues to support Israel’s desire for there not to be one.”
Hamas condemns US, UK sanctions on its officials
In a statement on Telegram, the group says this move by the Biden administration and the UK government is proof that both are “complicit with Israel in its onslaught against our people and the demonisation of its legitimate resistance”.
The United States and Britain imposed an additional round of sanctions on people in Turkey and elsewhere who are linked to Hamas.
The sanctions target eight officials, the US Department of Treasury said in a statement. The UK government said it sanctioned seven additional people.
“This unjust decision, based on false allegations and incitement by Israel, will not deter Hamas from continuing to defend the legitimate national rights of our Palestinian people,” Hamas said.
Hamas urged both governments to “review their aggressive policies towards our Palestinian people and to stop their shameful bias towards the Israeli side, which is committing the most horrific crimes against our people, our land, and our Islamic and Christian sanctities”.
