Israeli attacks have continued across the Gaza Strip with little let-up, as the death toll in the enclave rose above the latest milestone of 22,000.
The total number of Palestinians killed in Gaza since October 7 now stands at 22,185, while at least 57,000 have been injured, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health announced on Tuesday. Meanwhile, air and ground attacks continued across the Strip, including in the south, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have been directed to seek safety.
Some two-thirds of those killed amid Israel’s bombardment of Gaza are women and children, according to the ministry. Israel launched its campaign following Hamas’s raid into southern Israel, which killed around 1,140 and saw around 240 taken hostage.
Overall, 207 Palestinians have been killed in 15 Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Tuesday. It also reported that 338 people were wounded.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Khan Younis in the south, said there was “intense bombardment” in the central and southern regions last night and in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
A view of a street filled with debris of destroyed buildings in Deir el-Balah, Gaza [Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency]
“There were reports of massive explosions in these two areas, in Khan Younis and refugee camps in the central part,” he said. The intensity of the bombing and the fact that many roads and much infrastructure were destroyed prevented ambulances from going to the targeted sites and taking people to hospitals.
Israeli forces hit a home in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah, and the majority of the dead were women and children, local Palestinian outlet Wafa News Agency said.
In the Nuseirat refugee camp, also in central Gaza, at least one girl was killed and several others injured after an Israeli drone opened fire on the market.
Meanwhile, in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, four people were reported killed in an Israeli bombing.
More than one million Palestinians have been displaced from northern Gaza since October 13, when the Israeli military ordered people to evacuate to the south with 24 hours of notice.
Attack on Israeli forces
In central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp, Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said it had clashed with Israeli forces in the eastern part of the camp, while also targeting an Israeli Merkava tank.
The al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, says that its fighters fought an armed battle with Israeli soldiers in the Bureij refugee camp that resulted in injuries among the soldiers.
The armed wing also announced that it targeted the Israeli military with mortar shells in the al-Mahatta area in Khan Younis.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said it killed Hamas members who were planting mines along Gaza’s coastline and in nearby buildings.
The Israeli army said it also killed three Hamas members in an air attack after seeing them enter a building south of Gaza City in the north.
Lost ‘carte blanche’
With at least 22,000 Palestinians massacred in Gaza, Israel has lost its “carte blanche” from Western allies, said Adel Abdel Ghafar, a senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.
“As scenes of carnage, displaced populations, dead children and starvation fill our screens, the tide is really shifting,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that massive pro-Palestinian rallies across Europe and the United States have exerted pressure on politicians, with some European countries like Belgium changing their tone on Gaza and calling for a ceasefire, something Israel has firmly rejected.
“It’s also very interesting to keep an eye on US politics given that this is an election year and [US President Joe] Biden’s ratings are down,” said Abdel Ghafar. “This will factor into his calculus in this New Year.”
The Israeli Supreme Court has struck down a controversial law that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government has been pushing for months – but caused uproar and prompted thousands of people to take to the streets in defiant protest.
That decision is being seen as a blow to the coalition government which promised to enact sweeping changes that would curb judicial powers but has suffered deep divisions since being sworn in, late in 2022.
Those fissures appear to have only deepened, with the top court’s ruling made as Israel wages a devastating war on Gaza that has already killed more than 22,000 people in the besieged enclave, more than a third of them children.
So what is the controversy about – and what is next for Israel and Netanyahu?
Protesters gather for an 11th straight week of protests against the government’s controversial judicial overhaul bill in Tel Aviv on March 18, 2023 [Jack Guez/ AFP]
What was the law about?
The law was the only one from a package of judicial overhauls by Netanyahu’s government that aimed to limit the Supreme Court’s powers concerning the executive.
Since Israel does not have a constitution, it relies on a set of Basic Laws and the legislation in question was an amendment to an existing provision that allowed the Supreme Court to overrule laws that, in its view, did not pass a “reasonableness” test.
The new law eliminated the top court’s ability to block laws using that test. Other laws that are part of the planned judicial overhaul would give the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, more power to appoint Supreme Court judges.
Before being passed in July, and even after that, the law saw swift and intense opposition in Israel, with thousands of people in Israel and abroad demonstrating for several weeks on end. Thousands of army reservists also threatened to quit.
Detractors say the law removes a crucial checks and balances component of Israeli democracy needed in a country with a fragile legal system. Many Israelis also said the amendment weakens the independence of the judiciary at a time when the country is being run by its most far-right and most religiously conservative coalition yet.
Western allies, including the United States and the United Kingdom, cautioned Netanyahu and advised his government to “uphold democracy” as demonstrations raged across the two countries.
Although it saw great opposition from inside the Knesset as well, the bill passed with a vote of 64 to 0 after opposition lawmakers boycotted and left the session.
What did the Supreme Court say?
In a vote on Monday, 12 of 15 Supreme Court judges ruled for the first time that the court had the power to strike down Basic Laws.
Eight judges further voted to nullify this specific “reasonableness” amendment. It is the first time the court will nullify a Basic Law or an amendment to one.
In a case summary, the Supreme Court said the government’s passing of the law “completely revoked the possibility of carrying out judicial review of the reasonableness of decisions made by the government, the prime minister, and the ministers,” and added that letting the law stand could cause “unprecedented and severe harm” to Israel’s democracy.
Netanyahu’s government has always claimed the law is needed to create balance in government branches and to diversify the bench which it sees as putting minority interests before national ones.
But some see the push for the law as an attempt by Netanyahu to avoid sentencing in a drawn-out corruption trial in which he faces charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Those proceedings were suspended following the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, but resumed early in December. Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing.
What’s next?
Netanyahu’s Minister of Justice Yariv Levin, who has shepherded the controversial laws, including the one that the court has struck down, hit out at the judges, insisting that the ruling would not “stay our hand”.
Levin also said that the decision by the court to publish its ruling while Israel’s war on Gaza was continuing is “the opposite of the unity required these days for the success of our fighters on the front.” Likud, Netanyahu’s party, said the decision was “unfortunate”.
Yet, if the government decides to ignore the Supreme Court ruling, it could end up destabilising the wartime coalition that is leading Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant has opposed the amendment – and was even temporarily fired over it. On Monday, former defense minister Benny Gantz also called for the Supreme Court ruling to be respected – effectively publicly rejecting Levin’s criticism of the judges.
ערב ה-7.10 החברה הישראלית הגיעה למקומות קיצוניים, לפילוג ולשיח שנאה שהיה אסור להגיע אליהם.
את פסק הדין חובה לכבד, ואת הלקח מההתנהלות בשנה האחרונה חובה להפנים – אחים אנחנו, לכולנו גורל משותף.
אלו לא ימים לניגוחים פוליטיים, אין היום מנצחים ומפסידים. היום יש לנו רק מטרה אחת משותפת…
“The verdict must be respected, and the lesson from the conduct of the last year must be internalised – we are brothers, we all have a common destiny,” he wrote on X. “These are not days for political arguments, there are no winners and losers today. Today we have only one common goal – to win the war, together.”
The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group, which was moved to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea following the Oct. 7 invasion of Israel by Hamas-led terrorists, will be heading back to its home in Norfolk, Virginia, US military officials said on Monday.
The strike group includes the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, eight squadrons of attack and support aircraft, Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy, and missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney and USS Roosevelt.
US 6th Fleet officials said in the coming days, the fleet will redeploy to its home port as scheduled, where it will prepare for future deployments.
The Department of Defense will continue to evaluate force posture globally and retain an extensive presence in the Middle East and Mediterranean, officials added.
Ships that will remain in the area include the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, additional cruisers and destroyers in both the Middle East and Mediterranean and the recent arrival of the Wasp-class amphibious ship USS Bataan and Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship USS Carter Hall in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
The Bataan and Carter Hall will join the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS Mesa Verde and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), which were reaggregated in the region as an Amphibious Ready Group (ARG).
Ships from the Gerald R Ford. Carrier Strike Group sail in formation in the Mediterranean Sea on Dec. 31, 2023. MC2 Nolan Pennington
The ARG, officials said, consists of three ships and about 2,000 Marines.
The Ford was deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean so it could be within striking distance of Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.
The carrier remained in the Mediterranean while its accompanying ships sailed into the Red Sea and repeatedly intercepted incoming ballistic missiles and attack drones fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Military presence will remain in the region as Houthi rebels continue to conduct attacks.
The carrier remained in the Mediterranean while its accompanying ships sailed into the Red Sea and repeatedly intercepted incoming ballistic missiles and attack drones fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen. MC3 Maxwell OrloskyThe carrier remained in the Mediterranean while its accompanying ships sailed into the Red Sea and repeatedly intercepted incoming ballistic missiles and attack drones fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen. @USNavyEurope
On Saturday, the US military shot down two anti-ship ballistic missiles fired toward a Maersk container ship in the Red Sea after the ship was hit by a missile.
Two Navy destroyers responded to the call for help, and the Denmark-owned vessel was reportedly seaworthy, and no injuries were noted, according to US Central Command.
US forces on two helicopters responded to the distress call and were also fired upon before they sank three of the Houthi vessels and killed the crews. The fourth boat fled the area.
The strike group includes the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, eight squadrons of attack and support aircraft, Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy, and missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney and USS Roosevelt. MC3 Maxwell Orlosky
No damage to US personnel or equipment was reported.
The attacks on commercial ships have led to some companies suspending voyages through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Gulf of Aden to the southern Red Sea and then the Suez Canal.
Israel has come under pressure from its principal ally, the United States, to move to a more low-intensity war.
The Israeli military has announced that it will withdraw thousands of its soldiers from the besieged Gaza Strip in the first significant pullback of troops since the war there began in October.
Israel has come under increasing pressure from its principal ally, the United States, to move to a more low-intensity war that has fewer civilian casualties.
But in the southern city of Khan Younis, fierce fighting has continued as Israel reaffirms its pledge to press on with the war until its goals have been achieved, including destroying the Palestinian group Hamas, which killed around 1,140 people in attacks on southern Israel on October 7, according to Israeli officials.
In a statement, the military said on Monday that five brigades, or several thousand troops, were being taken out of the enclave for training and rest.
Army spokesperson Daniel Hagari did not say whether the decision meant the war was entering into a new phase during a briefing on Sunday that first announced the troop withdrawal.
“The objectives of the war require prolonged fighting, and we are preparing accordingly,” he said.
Palestinians inspect the damage to a destroyed house following Israeli air strikes on Khan Younis, in the Southern Gaza Strip [Mohammed Dahman/AP Photo]
New stage?
Shlomo Brom, a retired brigadier general previously in charge of strategic planning in the Israeli military, said the troop changes may be due to US pressure and could signal a shift in the way Israel is conducting the war.
“The war is not stopping,” said Brom. “It is the beginning of a different mode of operations”.
Israeli officials have said they would wage the war in three main stages. The first was intense shelling to clear access routes for ground forces and encourage civilians to evacuate. The second was the invasion of the Gaza Strip that began on October 27.
With tanks and troops having now overrun much of the Strip, largely asserting control despite Palestinian gunmen continuing their ambushes from hidden tunnels and bunkers, the military is moving to the third stage, an Israeli official, who could not be named given the sensitivity of the issue, told the Reuters news agency.
“This will take six months at least, and involve intense mopping-up missions against the terrorists. No one is talking about doves of peace being flown from Shujayea,” the official was quoted as saying, referring to a Gaza district ravaged by fighting.
Separately on Monday, the US announced that it would be taking an aircraft carrier strike group back from the eastern Mediterranean and replacing it with an amphibious assault ship and accompanying warships.
Palestinian health authorities say at least 21,978 people have been killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza since October 7.
The Israeli military said last week that at least 172 soldiers had been killed since the ground operation began in late October, including 18 by friendly fire and 11 by weapons or equipment malfunctions.
Cross-border fighting
Since the outbreak of the war, the Israeli military has engaged in cross-border battles with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
On Monday, Hezbollah said on Telegram that three of its fighters had been killed in southern Lebanon. While it gave no detail about how they were killed, the groups said they “were martyred on the road to [liberate] Jerusalem”.
The Israeli military said it hit a series of targets in Lebanon, including “military sites” where Hezbollah was operating.
According to Hezbollah and security sources who have spoken to the Reuters news agency, more than 100 Hezbollah fighters and nearly two dozen civilians, including children and the elderly, have died.
The majority of the court’s judges vote to strike down the law, saying it would severely damage Israel’s democracy.
Israel’s Supreme Court has struck down a highly disputed law passed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government that rolled back some of the high court’s power and sparked nationwide protests.
The law, passed in July, was part of a broader judicial overhaul proposed by Netanyahu and his coalition of religious and nationalist partners.
The legislation brought before the court had removed one, but not all, of the tools the Supreme Court has for quashing government and ministers’ decisions. It took away the court’s ability to void decisions that it deemed “unreasonable”.
Eight of 15 justices ruled in favour of nullifying the law, the court said on Monday.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin, a Netanyahu ally and the architect of the overhaul, lambasted the court’s decision, saying it demonstrated “the opposite of the spirit of unity required these days for the success of our soldiers on the front”.
The ruling “will not discourage us”, Levin said without indicating whether the government would try to revive his plan in the short term. “As the campaigns are continuing on different fronts, we will continue to act with restraint and responsibility.”
Opposition lawmakers praised the ruling. They had argued that Netanyahu’s efforts to remove the standard of reasonability opens the door to corruption and improper appointments of unqualified cronies to important positions.
The Supreme Court, in a summary of its decision, said the majority of judges ruled to strike down the law because it would severely damage Israel’s democracy.
The move was a significant blow to Netanyahu and his hardline allies, who argued the national legislature, not the high court, should have the final word over the legality of legislation and other key decisions. But the justices said the Knesset, or parliament, does not have “omnipotent” power.
Netanyahu and his allies announced their sweeping overhaul plan shortly after taking office a year ago. It calls for curbing the power of judges, from limiting the Supreme Court’s ability to review parliamentary decisions to changing the way judges are appointed.
The government said the changes aim to strengthen democracy by limiting the authority of unelected judges and turning over more powers to elected officials. But opponents see the overhaul as a power grab by Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges, and an assault on a key watchdog.
Before Israel launched its latest assault on the besieged Gaza Strip on October 7, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in weekly protests against the government.
Among the demonstrators were military reservists, including fighter pilots and members of other elite units, who said they would stop reporting for duty if the overhaul was passed. The reservists make up the backbone of the military.
Under the Israeli system, the prime minister governs through a majority coalition in parliament – in effect giving him control over the executive and legislative branches of government.
As a result, the Supreme Court plays a critical oversight role. Critics said that by seeking to weaken the judiciary, Netanyahu and his allies are trying to erode the country’s checks and balances and consolidate power over the third, independent branch of government.
Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip — As we bid farewell to 2023 and welcome 2024, the tragic scenes of ongoing war persist in Gaza.
Who could have anticipated such widespread devastation, loss of life, pain and tears? Who could have foreseen the displacement, expulsion, intimidation and suffering? Who could have predicted the hunger, thirst, poverty and drought?
Since the beginning of the war on October 7, all the horrors and nightmares seem to have converged on our lives in the Gaza Strip.
Every day, while reporting from Al-Aqsa Hospital alongside my brother who accompanies me, we’ve struggled to find fitting names for this war amid the countless harrowing stories we encounter.
Yet, no single descriptor seems adequate. An unprecedented war? A shameless war? A war against infants, hospitals and places of worship? Amid the daily horrors, we agree on one term: genocide.
As we welcome the New Year, like many Palestinians in Gaza, I find myself without a home, displaced with my family to the south, along with hundreds of thousands, grappling with the constant threat of yet more forced displacement.
The author’s Gaza City apartment before the war [Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera]
At the war’s onset, my apartment and the building I lived in suffered severe damage from a nearby bombing. I moved to my parents’ home, which was then damaged by a bombing in its vicinity. We then sought refuge in my husband’s family’s home, only to receive evacuation orders from the Israeli army to move to the south.
Enduring times of bombing, terror and relentless efforts to secure life’s essentials, our singular dream became survival and a return to our homes in the north.
I clung to the hope that my damaged house stood standing and resilient, merely requiring repair and reconstruction for me to inhabit it again.
Yet, a few days ago, on December 21, Israel declared the complete demolition of the Palestine Mosque Square, where my small house had been. Upon seeing the images, it was time to accept the painful truth: our entire residential building had been reduced to rubble.
It was a heart-wrenching moment. One cannot grieve over mere stones amid the larger tragedy of victims, the deceased, annihilated families, and charred children’s bodies. Yet, as a human being with emotions, I mourn the years of effort and the life I built — all gone.
Like millions of other Palestinians from Gaza, if we ever return to the north, we return homeless.
My cosy apartment, my children’s memories, my belongings—all crushed beneath the rubble.
The arrow points to the place where the author’s home once was [Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera]
How many times must we restart our lives from scratch? Who will compensate for the lost years and efforts spent securing life’s basics?
The war has made us see our siege as a paradise, the deterioration of our conditions as a bliss in the past, and the previous restrictions on our lives as a dream we long for.
We wrote about the Nakba, never imagining that we would live it. Now we endure conditions harsher than our ancestors described.
Sleeping in the streets and tents, queuing for flour and water, living in darkness without electricity, hot water, or basic amenities—we crave salt, sugar, rice, and clean water.
My daughter yearns for chocolates, chips, and candies, while we navigate empty supermarket shelves.
Searching for infant formula has become a futile quest. We change milk types for our children, tears in their eyes, as we cry for necessities. Infants born in tents receive water and sugar due to the unavailability of milk.
Amid this struggle for life’s details, the war has humiliated us. It has stripped away our humanity, dignity and self-esteem. We are left homeless, barefoot and exposed in streets and tents.
In the face of such adversity, we find ourselves alone, bearing witness to a battle we cannot match. Gaza lacks the resources of a superpower, unable to withstand the onslaught of massive military equipment funded by the United States.
I have seen extravagance in life, luxury and money spending, but I did not expect to see extravagance in the use of weapons that destroy stones and people.
The lavish use of US weapons in Gaza—artillery, planes, tanks, quadcopters, naval boats—comes at the cost of innocent lives, the majority of whom are women and children.
As we close the year, tending to wounds and bidding farewell to loved ones, there is no time for proper goodbyes or tears.
Three weeks ago, my aunt, her family, and grandchildren were killed when their six-storey home was bombed. Forty-five people were killed and their bodies remained trapped under the rubble for days.
My father and I mourned while offering condolences to my only surviving cousin, who was displaced with her husband to Deir el-Balah.
She told us that no one was able to get them out because of the presence of tanks and snipers around the place. Neighbours told them that they heard some of them alive screaming and pleading for help from under the rubble, but they could not help them. Then these voices eventually faded away after a few days.
The author’s five-month-old baby, and a candle by her side [Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera]
This is how lives end in Gaza. This is how people are killed. They get bombed in homes, left to bleed to death under rubble, without rescue. Pain eats away at the hearts of their loved ones who watch their deaths helplessly.
The wider world’s inability to stop this highlights how little our lives are valued. Our death and killing, our spilled blood, have become permissible.
While the world was illuminated to celebrate the New Year last night, I lit a candle for my five-month-old child, amidst the darkness of continuous bombings around.
Our only wish is survival, an end to the war. Farewell to a sorrowful and painful year. Long live Gaza.
Coordinated, focused, deadly and brutal, the Hamas attacks of October 7 were a shock to Israeli society. The country’s defence, intelligence and security organisations – sources of national pride – were caught unawares and unprepared.
They acted slowly and inadequately, with the whole establishment humiliated.
The first military reaction was in line with the Israeli military doctrine of powerful attacks against previously designated targets. It took a few days for everyone to get their act together, create the emergency unity government (that mostly unified belligerent right-wingers) and proclaim a huge mobilisation of 360,000 reservists.
Three weeks later, amid continuous indiscriminate bombardment, the Israeli army crossed into Gaza. Then, in more than two months of ground combat, the army cut Gaza in three, surrounding Gaza City and isolating Khan Younis. Most Palestinians fled to the south, where they now crowd Rafah in unbearable conditions.
Israel maintains that although it has not yet defeated Hamas, it is close to its proclaimed goal, claiming to have “eliminated” 8,500 fighters.
The Israeli military’s showing, however, has been very uneven across many aspects of the armed and diplomatic response.
Military performance: Not a failure, but far from success
In purely military terms, Israel has achieved a degree of success. It has conducted complex military operations in urban terrain, certainly the deadliest form of warfare, by advancing steadily – yet too cautiously and slowly.
The centres of Gaza City and Khan Younis are surrounded on the ground, but the military has so far failed to neutralise Hamas fighting units.
In an extremely challenging battle environment, the Israeli army successfully integrated many different units of various backgrounds, training and experience – including a plethora of specialised units that report directly to the General Staff outside of the normal territorial or brigade chain of command.
Those complex arrangements demand the presence of higher officers on the front lines to coordinate and avoid potential confusion. Among the 172 Israeli soldiers killed so far, the proportion of senior non-commissioned officers is unusually high, but the number of officers who died in battle is staggering, with no less than four full colonels among the dead.
Hamas’s losses are certainly lower than Israel claims. A prudent estimate would put it at 3,500 fighters to date – 20 percent of its front line complement. This would mean a ratio of 20 Hamas fighters killed for each Israeli soldier.
In classic warfare, any general would happily accept that proportion as a certain victory. However, not in this war. Hamas fighters are ideologically and religiously motivated, and conditioned to disregard death; the fallen are seen as martyrs, which strengthens the cause.
In contrast, Israeli society, which is heavily militarised – almost everyone, except the ultra-religious, serves in the military – has a lower tolerance for the losses of its people. Israelis do not see the tangible results of their sons’, husbands’ and brothers’ deaths.
The attitude towards losses is probably best demonstrated by the fact that the Golani Brigade, one of the army’s oldest and most decorated units, was pulled from fighting after 72 of its soldiers died in combat.
Finally, Israeli forces who claimed their overwhelming military (and moral) superiority, proved to lack either the capabilities or the willingness to decisively destroy the Hamas tunnel network. Despite demonstrating the mastery of technology to flood tunnels with seawater, the Israelis have yet to deploy that tactic.
Liberation of captives: Abject failure
Besides destroying Hamas, the other main proclaimed goal of the Israeli incursion into Gaza was to liberate the remaining captives. Not only has this aim not been achieved, but Israel managed to kill three captives who tried to give themselves up.
Military technology: Very good, but non-decisive performance
In many aspects of military technology, the Israeli military is known as a world leader. Most of its hardware and software perform to the army’s own high expectations, which will certainly boost its post-war exports and help, at least, to partially offset the staggering cost of war.
New weapons and systems have been successfully integrated with old ones. The Israeli-built Eitan armoured fighting vehicle was rushed into action a year before its planned introduction into combat units without issue. New products, like the Iron Sting smart mortar, and small, simple and cheap reconnaissance quadcopter drones, have proved valuable in reducing losses in urban fighting.
Existing products have demonstrated their versatility and become widespread: small body cameras and gun cams are now deployed on all teams; dogs with live cameras have expanded the possibilities of reconnaissance inside buildings suspected of being booby-trapped.
Another undoubted Israeli military success is managing to keep its combat data link communications secret, encrypted in real time – there has been no hint of compromise by Hamas. The already-proven Iron Dome antimissile system has continued to be reliable.
Just a few weapons have had issues, such as the much-touted Trophy armoured vehicle active protection system, which proved of mixed or no value in close-quarter combat. Initial overreliance on it cost the Israeli army some casualties in the first phases of the battle.
But the Israeli army’s learning curve has been steep and, like in the case of the Merkava tank’s lack of protection from above, remedial action has been applied quickly and successfully. Despite the military’s operational success, none of its technology proved to be a real game changer.
Public relations: A disaster despite all efforts
The notorious overwhelming Israeli propaganda machinery has tried very hard to sell its official line but with limited success. Calling Hamas “terrorists” caught on in much of the Western world – not as much for the rest of the planet.
Attempts to equate Hamas with ISIL (ISIS), an effort aimed particularly at the Arab and Islamic world and reinforced by Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Avichay Adraee to the Arab world, appear to have failed miserably.
But Israel’s biggest failure was the attempt to make the world believe the claim that “Israel is committed to minimising civilian harm and abiding by international law”.
Even Israelis themselves have questioned those claims. Videos of purported Hamas fighters, which showed men – many who were overweight, unfit and older than 40 – surrendering to Israeli forces stripped to their underwear, were laughed at and eventually rebuked.
Statements intended to dehumanise Palestinians, like their description as “human animals”, made — among others — by Israeli Major-General Ghassan Aslian, ironically a Druze officer, resulted in more revulsion than solidarity. The Druze are an Arab minority group who have faced discrimination within Israel.
However, the biggest failure of the Israeli military campaign must be its deliberate, disproportionate and brutal overreaction – one that has killed tens of thousands of civilians.
The exact number would depend on how many Hamas fighters are among the 21,800 killed so far. If the Israeli claim of 8,500 Hamas fighters is true, that would still mean that 13,300 civilians, including 8,600 children, have been killed. If Hamas has lost 4,000 people – a figure I find much more credible – the number of civilians who have been killed intentionally or by the negligence of the Israeli military is well above 17,000.
That number is considered unacceptable, under any conditions, by many people across the globe who believe that whenever and however the war ends, those dead civilians will come back to haunt the whole of Israel.
Israel’s far-right finance minister says Israelis who would replace Palestinians would ‘make the desert bloom’.
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for Palestinian residents of Gaza to leave the besieged enclave, making way for the Israelis who could “make the desert bloom”.
Smotrich, who has been excluded from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet and discussions of day-after arrangements in Gaza, made the comments while speaking to Israeli Army Radio on Sunday.
“What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” he said.
“If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not two million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different,” he said.
He added that if the 2.3 million population were no longer there “growing up on the aspiration to destroy the state of Israel”, Gaza would be seen differently in Israel.
“Most of Israeli society will say: ‘Why not? It’s a nice place, let’s make the desert bloom, it doesn’t come at anyone’s expense’.”
Sara Khairat, reporting for Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv, said Smotrich’s comments “tie into a narrative that many are starting to believe that Israel wants to re-occupy Gaza”.
“Pushing the idea that they want to push the Palestinians out”, Khairat said, would be reminiscent of scenes from the “Nakba” (catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the wake of the 1948 war that accompanied the founding of the state of Israel.
Most Palestinians displaced after the Nakba ended up in neighbouring Arab states, and Arab leaders have said any latter-day move to displace Palestinians would be unacceptable.
Smotrich’s far-right agenda
Smotrich, whose far-right Religious Zionist Party draws support from Israel’s settler community, has made similar comments in the past, setting himself at odds with Israel’s most important ally, the United States.
But his views conflict with the official government position that Palestinians in Gaza will be able to return to their homes after the war.
Smotrich’s party, which helped Netanyahu secure the majority he needed to become prime minister for the sixth time almost exactly a year ago, has seen its approval ratings slump since the start of the conflict.
Opinion polls also indicate that most Israelis do not support the return of Israeli settlements to Gaza after they were moved out in 2005 when the army withdrew.
Israel withdrew its military and settlers from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation, and Netanyahu has said it does not intend to maintain a permanent presence again, but would maintain security control for an indefinite period.
However, there has been little clarity about Israel’s longer-term intentions, and countries including the US have said that Gaza should be governed by Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Israel bombed Aleppo and Neirab, leaving Syrians trapped between two forces raining fire from the sky.
Idlib, Syria — Two civilians, including a child, were killed, and 16 others, including four children, were injured in an artillery attack by Syrian regime forces targeting a popular market in the centre of Idlib city on Saturday evening, according to the Syria Civil Defence.
“We received two martyrs and 14 injuries, including two critical cases, at the hospital, and they are now in the operating room,” said Ismail al-Hassan, the head of the emergency department at Idlib University Hospital.
Al-Hassan told Al Jazeera that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had recently intensified its targeting of the area, necessitating a constant state of preparedness to receive any injuries within the city or its vicinity in the event of any bombardment.
“For nearly 13 years, we have been working to save civilian casualties targeted by the Assad regime and Russia,” al-Hassan said. The Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, said that earlier on Saturday, a child was wounded as a result of artillery shelling targeting the city of Atarib in the western Aleppo countryside.
“The timing and location of today’s attack in Idlib indicate that its goal is to kill the largest number of civilians,” said Ahmed Yazji, a board member of the Syria Civil Defence. Yazj told Al Jazeera that the attacks by the Syrian regime and Russia on the Idlib region consistently aim to target vital centres, schools, and hospitals with the intention of killing civilians.
“Since the beginning of 2023 until today, we have documented more than 1,200 attacks by the Assad regime and Russia on the northwestern Syria region, including 27 attacks on schools and 16 attacks on displaced camps,” he said. “The attacks of the Assad regime and Russia on the region can only be described as terrorist attacks seeking to undermine stability in the area.”
Idlib province, the last stronghold controlled by Syrian opposition fighters, is considered the most densely populated area in northwestern Syria, hosting 4.5 million people, including 1.9 million living in internally displaced camps, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“Within moments, the market turned into a pool of blood and thick dust,” said Abdullah Aloush, a displaced person from Khan Shaykhun and the owner of a nearby shop in the targeted area in Idlib city. Aloush told Al Jazeera that the market was targeted at a time when it was crowded with civilians. “Initially, myself and those with me in the shop were helpless, not knowing what to do, before we went out to check on our neighbours and assist the injured.”
Earlier on Saturday, Israeli warplanes conducted air strikes on Aleppo and Neirab airports, as well as several points belonging to the Syrian regime south of Aleppo. The Israeli air strikes targeted farms between the villages of Zahabiya and Sheikh Saeed in the Neirab military airport area, housing warehouses and headquarters for Iranian militias. A missile also fell in the area of Aleppo International Airport and Neirab military airport, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in London.
“As usual, the Assad regime, unable to respond to Israeli raids on its sites, targets civilians in northwestern Syria,” said Mohammed al-Saleh, 34, the owner of a cafe on the street in Idlib that was bombed.
Al-Saleh, who was approximately 15m (50 feet) away from the bombing, warned everyone in the cafe not to leave the place for fear of a repeat of the bombing in the area and to avoid new casualties. “At these moments, our feeling can only be described as being in the embrace of death,” said Al-Saleh. “In these days, while people around the world are preparing to celebrate the start of a new year, we in Idlib are preparing to bury our friends and family who were killed today.”
Sao Paulo, Brazil – It wasn’t unusual for patients to arrive in a foul temper at the hospital emergency room in São Paulo, Brazil, where physician Batull Sleiman worked.
After all, every day brought new medical crises, new requests for urgent care. Sleiman had seen it all. But she was not expecting the level of anger she received several weeks ago.
A patient had arrived in her examination room frustrated over the time he spent waiting for a doctor’s care. Sleiman recalled his issue was “not urgent”. Still, as she treated him, he accused her of being impolite.
“You’re being rude with me because you’re not from Brazil,” Sleiman remembers him saying. “If you were in your country…”
Batull Sleiman believes one of her patients lashed out after seeing her hijab [Courtesy of Batull Sleiman]
Sleiman said she turned away rather than hear the rest. The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she believes the man reacted the way he did because of one thing: her hijab.
“I was surprised and outraged,” Sleiman told Al Jazeera. But, she added, the atmosphere in Brazil had grown more tense since the war in Gaza had erupted. “I’ve been noticing that people have been staring more at me on the street since October.”
But Sleiman is not alone in feeling singled out. As the war in Gaza grinds on, Brazil is one of many countries facing increased fears about religious discrimination, particularly towards its Muslim community.
A survey released last month from the Anthropology Group on Islamic and Arab Contexts — an organisation based at the University of São Paulo — found that reports of harassment among Muslim Brazilians have been widespread since the war began.
An estimated 70 percent of respondents said they knew someone who experienced religious intolerance since October 7, when the Palestinian group Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel, killing 1,140 people.
Israel has since led a military offensive against Gaza, a Palestinian enclave, killing more than 21,000 people. That response has raised human rights concerns, with United Nations experts warning of a “grave risk of genocide”.
While Palestinians are an ethnic group — and not a religious one — the University of São Paulo’s Professor Francirosy Barbosa found that the events of October 7 resulted in incidents of religious intolerance in Brazil, as Palestinian identity was conflated with Muslim identity.
She led November’s survey of 310 Muslim Brazilians. Respondents, she explained, reported receiving insults that reflected tensions in the Gaza war.
“Many Muslim women told us they are now called things like ‘Hamas daughter’ or ‘Hamas terrorist’,” she told Al Jazeera.
The survey, conducted online, also found that many of the respondents also had firsthand experience with religious intolerance.
“About 60 percent of the respondents affirmed that they suffered some kind of offence, either on social media or in their daily lives at work, at home or in public spaces,” Barbosa said.
Women in particular, the study noted, reported slightly higher rates of religious intolerance.
A Palestinian Brazilian woman holds up a sign at a protest in Brasilia on October 20 that reads, ‘Muslim women of Brazil: anti-Zionism, anti-militarism, anti-extremism’ [File: Eraldo Peres/AP Photo]
The question of Islamophobia was catapulted into the national spotlight this month when a video spread on social media appearing to show a resident of Mogi das Cruzes, a suburb of São Paulo, rushing towards a Muslim woman and grabbing at her headscarf. The video was even broadcast on news outlets like CNN Brasil.
One of the women involved, Karen Gimenez Oubidi, who goes by Khadija, had married a Moroccan man and converted to Islam eight years ago. She told Al Jazeera that the altercation involved one of her neighbours: She was upset after their children had argued.
“She came down with her brother and was very aggressive. She called me a ‘cloth-wrapped bitch’. I soon realised it was not only about the kids’ fight,” Gimenez Oubidi said.
Neighbours attempted to separate the two women. One man in the video, however, grabbed Gimenez Oubidi from behind, wrapping an arm around her throat to hold her down. Gimenez Oubidi identified him to Al Jazeera as her neighbour’s brother.
Karen Gimenez Oubidi, known as Khadija, was the subject of a viral video that raised questions about Islamophobia [Courtesy of Karen Gimenez Oubidi]
“He said a few times to me, ‘What are you doing now, terrorist?’ He didn’t say it loudly: It was just for me to hear. He knew what he was doing,” Gimenez Oubidi said. She added that the fight her son had had with the neighbour’s child was also over her hijab.
The woman who attacked Oubidi, Fernanda — she said she did not want her full name revealed for fear of a public backlash — disputed this account.
Fernanda said her son had been hit by Oubidi’s son in the playground, and while she had physically attacked Fernanda, she had not referenced her religion. “I never insulted her for her religion. That simply didn’t happen. I’d never do something like that,” she said.
A government report from July noted that religious intolerance “occurs most intensely against those of African origin, but it also affects Indigenous, Roma, immigrant and converted individuals, including Muslims and Jews, as well as atheist, agnostic and non-religious people”.
Brazil is predominantly Christian, home to an estimated 123 million Catholics — more than any other country in the world.
But it has a long-standing, if smaller, Muslim population. Academics believe Islam arrived in the country with the transatlantic slave trade, as kidnapped African Muslims continued to practice their religion in their new surroundings.
One group of enslaved Muslim Brazilians even launched a rebellion against the government in 1835, called the Malê uprising — a term derived from the Yoruba word for Muslim.
Brazil’s Muslim population grew with waves of immigration in the late 19th and 20th centuries, particularly after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Arab immigrants, particularly from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, came to know Brazil as their home.
The exact number of Muslims in Brazil today is unknown. The 2010 census counted 35,167 people identified as Muslim, but in the years since, other estimates have come out, setting the population as high as 1.5 million.
Some advocates, however, point to other demographic and political trends as setting the stage for tensions to rise between Muslim and non-Muslim groups.
Evangelical Christians make up the fastest-growing religious segment in Brazil today, comprising about a third of the population. Their numbers have turned them into a significant political force.
Evangelical voters were credited with helping to elect far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in 2016, with polls showing 70 percent supporting him.
During his failed 2022 re-election bid, Bolsonaro repeatedly invoked Christian imagery in his appeals to voters, framing the race as a “fight of good against evil”.
Mahmoud Ibrahim, who heads a mosque in Porto Alegre, believes that the us-versus-them mentality has translated into antagonism against his community.
A man marches in a religious freedom demonstration in 2022, holding a sign that reads, ‘I am a Muslim man. Ask me a question!!’ [File: Bruna Prado/AP Photo]
At recent protests against the war in Gaza, he said onlookers called him a “terrorist” and “child rapist”.
“Evangelicals and Bolsonarists insult us all the time. They even chased a person who was going to our demonstration the other day,” he said.
Ibrahim added that he had heard of at least one woman who was left bleeding after attackers attempted to tear her hijab off, causing the pins in the scarf to dig into her skin.
Girrad Sammour heads the National Association of Muslim Jurists (ANAJI), a group that offers legal support in cases of Islamophobia. He said the number of reports to ANAJI has always been high, but since the start of the war on October 7, it has exploded.
“There was a rise of 1,000 percent in the denunciations that we received,” he told Al Jazeera, crediting some to inflammatory remarks from far-right evangelical pastors.
But Barbosa, the survey leader, believes there are ways to lessen the hatred and suspicion directed at Muslim Brazilians. She pointed to a lack of media representation as an example.
“Few Palestinian leaders and experts in the Middle East with a pro-Palestine view have been invited by TV shows, for instance, to comment on the conflict in Gaza,” Barbosa said.
But she also encouraged Muslim Brazilians to speak up about their experiences, in order to raise awareness.
“What is not denounced doesn’t exist for the government,” she said. “Only if the authorities know what is happening will they be able to take adequate measures, like investing in education against religious intolerance.”
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