LAST UPDATE | 27 Dec 2023
THE ISRAELI BOMBARDMENT, siege and ground invasion of Gaza has killed more than 21,000 Palestinians, the Gaza health ministry has said, marking yet another grim milestone in the conflict that began in October.
The Gaza war “goes beyond a catastrophe and a genocide,” Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas charged in an interview on Egyptian television.
The Palestinian Authority chief argued the war “is much uglier than what happened” during the 1948 Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’, that led to Israel’s creation when 760,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes.
“Netanyahu’s plan is to get rid of the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority,” Abbas said.
Concerns over a spiralling humanitarian crisis inside the besieged territory have amplified calls for an end to the hostilities, while incidents linked to Iran-backed groups acting in solidarity with Palestine have fanned fears of a wider regional conflict.
Yesterday, the United States reported shooting down a barrage of drones and missiles over the Red Sea fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Meanwhile the Israeli army’s chief said earlier today that the war in Gaza would go on for “many more months”.
Israel’s leaders have repeatedly vowed to keep up their offensive until Hamas is destroyed, and army chief Herzi Halevi signalled there would be no quick end to the war.
“This war’s objectives are essential and not simple to achieve,” Halevi said last night.
“Therefore, the war will continue for many more months.”
The conflict erupted when Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October and killed about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
During the attack – the deadliest in Israel’s history – Hamas also took around 250 hostages, of whom 129 remain inside Gaza, Israel says.
Israel retaliated with a relentless bombardment and a siege followed by a ground invasion.
The campaign has killed at least 21,110 people, according to the latest toll issued by Gaza’s health ministry, which added that more than 55,000 people had been wounded.
Since the siege went into effect, Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been suffering severe shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine, with only limited aid entering the territory. An estimated 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN.
In the southern city of Rafah, where many displaced people have sought refuge, hundreds turned up at the Abdul Salam Yassin water company yesterday carrying baskets, pulling handcarts and even pushing a wheelchair stacked with bottles to queue for clean water.
“This was my father’s cart,” said Rafah resident Amir al-Zahhar. “He was martyred during the war. He used it to transport and sell fish, and now we are using it to transport fresh water.”
Elsewhere in the city, people split logs and stacked kindling as the lack of fuel forced them to burn wood for cooking and to keep warm.
One woman took advantage of the sunshine yesterday to wash her family’s clothes by hand, telling AFP: “I’ve pleaded with people for water. I have absolutely nothing. I’ve borrowed everything, even the blankets, from others.”
The UN Security Council, in a resolution last week, called for the “safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale”.
It requested the appointment of a UN humanitarian coordinator to oversee and verify third-country aid to Gaza, and yesterday Sigrid Kaag, the outgoing Dutch finance minister, was named to the post.
The resolution, which did not call for an immediate end to the fighting, effectively leaves Israel with operational oversight of aid deliveries.
Israel returned the bodies of 80 Palestinians killed in Gaza after taking them from morgues and graves to check there were no hostages among them, sources in the territory’s health ministry said.
The bodies, which had been transported to Israel, were returned through the Red Cross to Hamas authorities who buried them in a mass grave in Gaza, the sources said.
An AFP photographer saw a digger lowering the blue body bags into a trench in Rafah, in the far south of the territory.
Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said yesterday that troops were “fighting in the southern Gaza Strip in the area of Khan Yunis, and we have expanded the combat to the area known as the central camps”.
Three more Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza yesterday, bringing the total to 161 since its ground invasion began on 27 October, the military said.
The UN Human Rights Office said it was “gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by Israeli forces”, particularly after the military ordered residents to move to the central and southern regions.
France, a staunch Israeli ally, also said it was concerned by Israel’s vow to intensify and prolong the fighting.
Violence has also flared across the occupied West Bank since the war began.
An Israeli operation in a refugee camp in the north of the West Bank left six people dead early this morning, according to the Palestinian ministry of health.
More than 300 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the war erupted, according to the ministry.
The impacts of the war have also reverberated throughout the region, with armed groups backed by Israel’s arch-foe Iran escalating activity.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also said today that there was “no difference” between Benjamin Netanyahu and Adolf Hitler as he stepped up his attacks on the Israeli leader.
“There is no difference between the actions of Netanyahu and Hitler,” he said during a ceremony in the capital Ankara.
“He (Netanyahu) is richer than Hitler. All kind of support comes from the West and the United States,” Erdogan added.
The Turkish leader has lashed out repeatedly at Israel for the scale of death and destruction caused by its retaliation for the 7 October attacks.
He has branded Israel a “terrorist state”, Netanyahu “the butcher of Gaza” while calling Hamas “a liberation group”.
US military forces shot down more than a dozen attack drones and several missiles fired by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels at shipping in the Red Sea, the Pentagon said, reporting no damage or injuries.
The Houthis had claimed a missile strike on a vessel in the Red Sea and a drone attack towards Israel, their latest such actions in solidarity with Gaza.
Israel’s military said one of its fighter jets had intercepted “in the Red Sea area a hostile aerial target that was on its way to Israeli territory”.
Egyptian broadcaster Al-Qahera News reported that a flying object was struck about two kilometres from the seaside town of Dahab. The town lies around 125 kilometres south of Eilat on the southern tip of Israel, the closest target for Yemen’s rebels.
In Iraq, the US military launched strikes on pro-Iran groups it has blamed for numerous attacks on US and allied forces during the Israel-Hamas war.
The strike claimed at least one life, Iraqi authorities said.
An anti-tank missile fired by Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement wounded nine soldiers, Israel’s military said, while Hezbollah announced the death of two of its fighters.
The incidents come after an Israeli strike in Syria killed Razi Moussavi, a senior commander in the Quds Force – the foreign arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The IRGC warned Israel today that it or its allied groups would take “direct” action to avenge the killing of senior commander Razi Moussavi.
The general was killed on Monday near the Syrian capital Damascus, according to state media.
The Israeli army, which has launched hundreds of strikes on Iran-linked targets in war-torn Syria in recent years, said that it does not comment on foreign media reports.
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