Tag: israel

The Israeli military has carried out multiple raids in the occupied West Bank as heavy fighting continued across the Gaza Strip a day after the United States used its veto power in the United Nations Security Council to block overwhelming demands for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

The raids that started overnight and continued into Saturday took place near Jenin, Qalqilya, Nablus, Jericho, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron as at least 15 Palestinians were detained across the region, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society told Al Jazeera.

A teenager was killed by Israeli forces in Dura, in the south of Hebron, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.

Meanwhile, Sari Yousef Amr, a 25-year-old Palestinian, who was shot by Israeli forces earlier on Saturday subsequently died, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Amr was wounded during the raid in Dura, with Wafa citing his father as saying that Israeli forces fired live bullets into his home before detaining Amr and his brother Suhaib.

The ministry said at least 273 people, including 63 children, have been killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7, when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict broke out.

The attacks by Palestinian armed group Hamas that day prompted Israel to begin a massive air and ground offensive in Gaza that has killed close to 17,500 people. In Israel, the death toll stands at 1,147.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Ramallah, said that raids have been carried out daily in several Palestinian towns and cities in the occupied West Bank.

“Israel even detains people who have been released as part of the latest [truce] deal,” she said, which saw the exchange of captives held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Some of the prisoners have been held and beaten before being freed again.

While Israeli forces have not rearrested any of the more than 200 Palestinians who were released as part of the temporary pause, that could soon change with the uptick in raids in the occupied West Bank, Ibrahim said.

“Palestinians say it could be a matter of minutes, that [Israeli forces] would arrest those prisoners,” she said, noting that the number of Palestinian arrests mounts every day.

A 15-year-old in Jericho was detained for 2.5 hours, beaten up and eventually released, according to our correspondent.

In the first four days of a weeklong truce between Israel and Hamas, Israel released 150 Palestinian prisoners. Over the same four days, Israel arrested at least 133 Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the West Bank, according to Palestinian prisoner associations.

More than 3,600 people have been arrested since Hamas’s October 7 infiltration and attack.

In Jenin, Israeli forces on Saturday detained four brothers of Bilal Diab – a reported member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, while a minor was taken into custody from Qalqilya. At least four Palestinians were detained in Ramallah, with more detentions in Bethlehem and Hebron.

Gaza bombardment

Israeli military jets were pounding parts of north, central and south Gaza.

There were strikes on the southern city of Khan Younis, and at least five people were killed in a separate attack in Rafah – a city designated by the Israeli military as safe, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said.

Many of the 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza who have been displaced by the war have headed south, turning Rafah near the Egyptian border into a vast camp of despair and desperation as Israel’s offensive has widened.

“In Khan Younis, there has been non-stop artillery shelling and aerial bombardment on the eastern and central sides. The Israeli military vehicles kept pushing to the centre of the city, very close to the vicinity of Nasser hospital,” said Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafa.

“A home was targeted where an entire family, 13 people, were killed this morning,” he said.

Deir el-Balah in central Gaza was also targeted.

“This area was described as a safe area by the Israeli army, that’s why there are so many displaced people here. Survivors are trying to rescue those injured. The state of destruction is massive and it’s very difficult to rescue those injured. There is no equipment and everyone, including the rescue officials, is using their hands to remove the rubble,” said our colleague at Al Jazeera Arabic.

‘People haven’t eaten for days’

Vast areas of Gaza have been reduced to rubble and the UN says about 80 percent of the population has been displaced, with dire shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine reported.

Mahmoud said people in Rafah lack all the basic supplies that could help them survive.

“People here haven’t eaten for the past two days. If people do not die from the bombardment, they could die from starvation,” he said.

He added: “The situation is very desperate. It’s very cold and windy … and there is a possibility of floods if it started to rain. The tents are very small and inappropriate for people to live in.”

Meanwhile, with the death toll of medical workers in the conflict mounting, more than a dozen World Health Organization member states submitted a draft resolution on Friday that urged Israel to respect its obligations under international law to protect medical and humanitarian workers in Gaza, as well as hospitals and other medical facilities.

Only 14 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were functioning in any capacity, according to UN humanitarian agency OCHA.

EXPLAINER

US vetoes a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution as hundreds of Palestinians are killed in new attacks on Gaza.

Here’s how things stand on Thursday, December 9, 2023:

Fighting

• The Palestinian media said early this morning that bombardments by Israeli forces resulted in “dozens” of casualties in the north and south of Gaza.
• Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip killed at least 310 Palestinians in a 24-hour period, according to the authorities in Gaza.
• The Palestine Olympic Committee said 64 athletes and sports-related officials have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the official Wafa news agency.
• An Israeli drone fired on a car in southwest Syria, killing four people, according to Syrian state media.
• Israel carried out raids in the southern city of Hebron and in Qalqilya as well as Jericho, Jenin, Salfit and Ramallah, according to Al Jazeera sources and the Palestinian media.
• US officials told Reuters that Washington asked Congress to approve the sale of 45,000 shells for Israel’s Merkava tanks.
• Palestinians paid tribute to Refaat Alareer, a prominent poet and scholar who sought to tell the stories behind the news headlines in Gaza, who was killed by Israel.

UN veto

• The US vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
• Hamas strongly condemned the US veto on the proposed resolution as “unethical and inhumane”.
• UN General Assembly President Dennis Francis said he would continue to work for an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza.
• Israel’s envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, thanked US President Joe Biden for “standing steadfastly” with Israel.

Diplomacy

• Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and an international peace conference to work out a lasting political solution, leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
• Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that “urgent steps” must be taken to achieve a truce in Gaza and the delivery of food and medical supplies.
• A UN World Food Programme official said “chaos, desperation” are widespread as displaced Palestinian families are starving on the streets of Gaza.
• The White House said more can be done by Israel to reduce civilian casualties and the US shares international concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s hold on his position as prime minister of Israel appears increasingly tenuous.

Many Israelis hold him and his cabinet responsible for the security failures of October 7, and he has come under heavy domestic criticism for his handling of the war on Gaza. Add to that the fact he has long been bogged down by corruption charges and criticism over plans to change the judicial system.

Several polls show he would be forced to step down if elections were held now.

Now, as Israeli forces march deeper into southern Gaza, Netanyahu could face a decision that may have huge political ramifications for his career: Whether to send Israeli troops into the 500km (310-mile) tunnel network below Gaza.

‘Each tunnel poses a significant threat’

If Israelis were to enter the tunnel network in Gaza, it would usher in a new phase in the war, significantly levelling the playing field between the opponents, according to Philip Ingram, MBE, a former British military intelligence officer.

Above ground, Israel has waged a relentless aereal bombardment and ground invasion of the 365sq km (141sq mile) enclave, using its superiority in arms.

Underground, Hamas would be able to rely on a sophisticated network of tunnels that would channel Israeli soldiers on foot into a single file.

The challenges for the Israelis would be “enormous” due to a lack of sufficient information on where the tunnels are, how far they stretch and what potential boobytraps were laid out by Hamas in preparation, Ingram said.

From a military point of view, the Israelis would want to “avoid actually having to fight in the tunnel”, he added.

Given Hamas’s expertise in setting booby traps and ambushes, “each tunnel poses a significant threat” to Israeli troops, Elijah Magnier, a military analyst who has covered the Middle East for more than 30 years, believes.

The “Palestinian resistance appears to have a strategic advantage” when it comes to tunnel warfare he said, referencing the high numbers of Israeli soldiers who die or are injured when searching for entrances to the tunnel network.

The Israel military boasts the Weasels (Samur), a specialised tunnel-warfare unit amongst its ranks, Ingram said, explaining that the specialised troops will have “all the gadgets” and trained dogs to help navigate the tunnels.

Still, no matter how much they will have practised, he says, the reality of what is down there remains largely unknown, making it very risky.

The preparations Hamas will have made and their intimate knowledge of the sprawling tunnel network would also shift the fighting from a “360-degree conflict” above ground to a “3D” one for the Israeli troops who could face an attack from any angle, he said.

Regardless, experts believe a potential conflict in the tunnels remains a probable outcome due to Netanyahu’s promise to eliminate Hamas and its underground command centres.

Magnier believes that the recent seven-day “humanitarian pause” in Gaza “allowed Hamas and Islamic Jihad to restructure their defensive strategies and prepare for the ongoing conflict”.

There were media reports weeks ago that Israel would consider trying to gain an advantage by using poison gas in the tunnels to try to eradicate Hamas fighters in them. The idea caused an international uproar.

The Wall Street Journal recently said Israel could be weighing up flooding the tunnels with seawater as an alternative to troops having to enter.

Citing US officials, the media outlet said Israeli forces had already assembled a system of five pumps just north of the Shati refugee camp in mid-November.

The pumps would draw water from the Mediterranean into the tunnels and would be able to flood the network within weeks, the article said.

‘Eradicate Hamas’

Netanyahu committed to “destroying Hamas” as one of the responses to the attack on October 7.

And he may ultimately decide to send troops into the tunnels to save his political career, despite the risk of huge casualties, Nader Hashemi, associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University, said.

Netanyahu, Hashemi added, knows that unless he can “eradicate Hamas and … claim an ultimate victory, he doesn’t have a chance to continue in Israeli politics”.

It is not just the defeat of Hamas that Netanyahu has promised but also the release of the 125 captives Israel says are still in Gaza.

Israel believes the captives are kept in the underground networks below Gaza, which means access to the tunnels will be viewed as crucial by the Israeli forces tasked with freeing them, according to Magnier.

A military operation in the tunnels could also put these captives at risk, something else that Netanyahu may be willing to risk to secure the defeat of Hamas.

Hashemi refers to the Hannibal Directive, a mysterious Israeli military policy that reportedly allows the use of maximum force in the event of a soldier being kidnapped, even if it resulted in the death of the soldier, as an indication that Israel could “prioritise its military objectives over the deaths of hostages”.

Military costs vs political benefits

Hashemi said that even as Netanyahu looks at a potential operation in the tunnels, the question on his mind will be “how many casualties is he willing to publicly suffer” to accomplish his goal.

Ingram feels the decision will be made after weighing risks against benefits and that a likely outcome will be Israel continuing to map the network from above, using ground-penetrating radar and looking to identify key command centres which they can target specifically by “blowing a hole” in the network.

He says that although there was tunnel warfare in many previous conflicts, the “underground city” Hamas has created has taken it to “a new level”. The Israeli military is facing an unprecedented task, he said, and will need to be incredibly cautious.

When Israel could attempt to enter the tunnels remains unclear.

Israel is under pressure, Magnier said, “in the face of mounting global criticism and war crimes and crimes against humanity” and while that implies that it would need to accomplish its goals faster, “setting a specific timetable for ground operations is a challenge for any military commander”.

The Israeli advance, he says, has been “remarkably slow despite being in a small but densely populated residential area”.

Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas has provided cover and shelter, inadvertently aiding the resistance, he explains.

If Israeli troops do enter the tunnel network, it could spell a prolonged conflict, played out underground in an information vacuum.

Hemmed in, Hamas may face fuel and supply shortages while, in contrast, Israeli troops could be “crawling for weeks and weeks just to progress 100 metres”.