Israel-Hamas war Dec 5 updates: 'Not possible' to create 'safe zones' in Gaza

Israeli troops on Tuesday were engaged in ground combat in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, the army said as it expands operations in its war on Hamas.

"We are in the heart of Jabalia, in the heart of Shejaiya (in northern Gaza), and now also in the heart of Khan Yunis," Southern Command chief Major General Yaron Finkelman was quoted as saying in an army statement, describing "the most intense day since the beginning of the ground operation."

A Lebanese soldier was killed by Israeli fire near the country's southern border on Tuesday, Lebanon's army said, the first such death since cross-border hostilities began in October.

"An army military position in the... Adaysseh area was bombarded by the Israeli enemy, leaving one soldier martyred and three others injured," the Lebanese army said in a statement.

The Israeli army said on Tuesday that 80 soldiers had been killed since the start of its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

After weeks of heavy bombing, Israel launched a ground offensive in the territory on October 27 aimed at destroying Hamas in retaliation for an attack that Israeli officials say killed around 1,200 people, most of them civilians.

Nearly two months after Hamas' surprise attack on Israel that led to the killing of thousands of innocent Israelis, a chilling video footage has emerged, showing how the terrorists killed civilians at the Zikim beach on October 7. 

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The Swedish branch of climate movement Fridays for Future (FFF), best known for activist Greta Thunberg, Tuesday reiterated its support for Palestinians in Gaza following criticism of its stance on the Israel-Hamas war.

"Contrary to what many have claimed, Fridays for Future has not 'been radicalised' or 'become political'," FFF Sweden wrote in op-eds published in Swedish daily Aftonbladet and British newspaper The Guardian. 

"We have always been political, because we have always been a movement for justice."

"Advocating for climate justice fundamentally comes from a place of caring about people and their human rights," it wrote.

"That means speaking up when people suffer, are forced to flee their homes or are killed – regardless of the cause."

"Standing in solidarity with Palestinians and all affected civilians has never been in question for us," it added.

Times of Israel reported that a Health Ministry representative told the Knesset Health Committee that Hamas freed the hostages after freeing them. They have them tranquilizer pills before being handed over to the Red Cross for transfer to Israel. 

They did it so that the hostages appear calm, happy and upbeat.

A World Health Organization official in Gaza said on Tuesday the situation was deteriorating by the hour as Israeli bombing has intensified in the south of the Palestinian enclave around the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah. 

Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative in Gaza, told reporters via video link: "The situation is getting worse by the hour. There's intensified bombing going on all around, including here in the southern areas, Khan Younis and even in Rafah." 

Peeperkorn said the humanitarian aid reaching Gaza was "way too little" and said the WHO was deeply concerned about the vulnerability of the health system in the densely populated enclave as more people move further south to escape the bombing.

"I want to make this point very clear that we are looking at an increasing humanitarian disaster," he said.

The United Nations warned Tuesday that it was impossible to create so-called safe zones for civilians to flee to inside the Gaza Strip amid Israel's bombing campaign.

"The so-called safe zones... are not scientific, they are not rational, they are not possible, and I think the authorities are aware of this," James Elder, spokesman for the UN children's agency UNICEF, told reporters in Geneva via video-link from Cairo.

Qatar's ruler hit out at what he labelled "shameful" international inaction over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza as he opened a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Doha on Tuesday.

"It is shameful for the international community to allow this heinous crime to continue for nearly two months, during which the systematic and deliberate killing of innocent civilians continues, including women and children," Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in Tehran on Tuesday that he believed the killing of women and children in Gaza will "end" Israel's "rule."
He made the comments while addressing lawmakers in parliament before submitting his government's annual budget bill for ratification.
"We will witness, God willing, the victory of Palestinians and the destruction of Israel and its fake government," said Raisi.

The kins of those held in Gaza by Hamas will be meeting Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu today. The families have continously demanded for this since the truce collapsed last week between Israel and Hamas. During the truce, 105 hostages out of about 240 people who were taken during the October 7 Hamas attack were reunited with their families.

A report by Wall Street Journal claims that Israel is considering pumping water into Gaza tunnels. Israel could carry out the plan with a large pump network that can power thousands of cubic metres of water into tunnels, flooding them in a matter of weeks, the WSJ reported.

A disturbing video has emerged that shows an Israeli lawyer being kidnapped by Hamas militants during the Oct 7 attack. According to a report by the New York Post on Monday (Dec 4), a local Israeli news channel aired a snippet of 40-year-old Amit Soussana’s abduction. The video showed Soussana flanked by several Hamas militants marching outside of her house in Kibbutz Kfar Azza.

Read in detail here.

A paediatrician in Israel's Schneider Children's Medical Center said that the reports of Israeli hostages being in stable condition after being released by Hamas were misleading.

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A disturbing video has emerged that showed an Israeli lawyer being kidnapped by Hamas militants during the Oct 7 attack. According to a report by the New York Post on Monday (Dec 4), a local Israeli news channel aired a snippet of 40-year-old Amit Soussana’s abduction.

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The Israeli military was battling Hamas militants in southern Gaza on Tuesday after it expanded its offensive deeper into the besieged territory.

As per official data released by both sides, the death toll from the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict has exceeded 17,300.

The Hamas-run health ministry on Monday said that due to Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian death toll has risen to 15,899.

At a press conference in Khan Yunis, Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman of the ministry, said that the number of injured people has risen to more than 42,000, of which 70 per cent of the victims were children and women.

Israel has accused Hamas of raping "dozens" of women and some men during day one of the attack — a charge vehemently refuted by the militant group. 

Here's all we know about the alleged use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war in the Israel-Hamas war

Several thousand people gathered on Parliament Hill in the Canadian capital, demonstrating in solidarity with Israel and calling for an end to anti-Semitic violence.

"It's so important that diverse parts of our country come together and stand up for the Jewish people... and stand together against hatred of Jews," said Sara Lefton of United Jewish Appeal, one of the groups sponsoring the rally, while talking to AFP. 

The United Nations reported that Israel launched one of its heaviest air, land and sea bombardments of the Gaza on Sunday and Monday, which according the Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry had killed at least 349 Palestinians and injured more than 750. 

Since Israeli ground operations are now focused on southern Gaza, conditions to deliver aid "do not exist", said UN's humanitarian coordinator for Palestinian territories Lynn Hastings and warned of "an even more hellish scenario is about to unfold, one in which humanitarian operations may not be able to respond."

"What we see today are shelters with no capacity, a health system on its knees, a lack of clean drinking water, no proper sanitation and poor nutrition for people already mentally and physically exhausted: a textbook formula for epidemics and a public health disaster," Hastings added.

100 aid trucks carrying humanitarian supplies and 69,000 litres of fuel entered from Egypt into Gaza, on December 4 said the UN, adding that this is "well below the daily average of 170 trucks and 110,000 litres of fuel that had entered during the humanitarian pause implemented between 24 and 30 November." 

Israel is considering flooding the tunnels used by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza in a bid to drive out fighters and has assembled a large system of pumps that may be used to that, said a report by the Wall Street Journal citing US officials. 

Around the middle of November, Israel's army completed the set-up of at least five pumps about a mile north of the Al-Shati refugee camp that could move thousands of cubic meters of water per hour, flooding the tunnels within weeks, the report said. 

It was not clear whether Israel would consider using the pumps before all hostages were released, the report added. However, Hamas has previously said it has hidden captives in "safe places and tunnels."

Reuters asked a US official about the report, who said it made sense for Israel to render the tunnels inoperable and that the country was exploring a range of ways to do that.

The Israeli army has denied telling the UN health agency WHO to empty an aid warehouse in southern Gaza before ground operations in the area render it unusable.

"The truth is that we didn't ask you to evacuate the warehouses and we also made it clear (and in writing) to the relevant #UN representatives," the Israeli defence ministry body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, COGAT, said on X.

A deal to pause the Gaza war broke down in part because Hamas militants did not want Israeli women hostages to reveal what happened to them, a US official said Monday.

"It seems one of the reasons they don't want to turn women over that they've been holding hostage and the reason this pause fell apart is they don't want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

Eight released Israeli hostages wrote a letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross on Monday, asking the humanitarian organization to provide medical assistance and to visit their relatives still being held by Hamas in Gaza.

The United States will continue to press for the release of additional hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday (November 4).

Sullivan, who said he held several rounds of phone calls over the weekend regarding the developments in Gaza, says Hamas is refusing to release civilian women.

It was too early to make a definitive assessment of whether or not Israel was heeding U.S. calls to protect civilians in its renewed military operations in Gaza, the State Department said on Monday (December 4). U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that Israel's targeted evacuations were an improvement compared to telling an entire city to vacate.

Washington had seen some aspects of Israel's operations in south Gaza that do not look like the earlier assault on the north, Miller said. Intense Israeli air strikes hit the south of the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, including in areas where Israel had told people to seek shelter, residents and journalists on the ground said. Israel's closest ally the United States has urged it to do more to safeguard civilians in the southern part of Gaza than in last month's campaign in the north. But about 900 people have been killed in Israeli air strikes since a week-long truce ended on Friday, Gaza health authorities said.

Israel held an event at the United Nations in New York on Monday (December 4) focused on sexual violence against women during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. Israel has been critical of the world body's response to the attacks. Hamas denies the abuses.

"As a global community we must respond to weaponized sexual violence, wherever it happens, with absolute condemnation. There can be no justification and no excuses. Rape as a weapon of war is a crime against humanity," former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the event in a pre-recorded video. Keynote speaker and Leanin.org founder, Sheryl Sandberg, called upon "the entire U.N. to formally condemn Hamas for these rapes, make sure there is a full and fair investigation and hold the terrorists accountable.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council last week that sexual violence committed on Oct. 7 "must be vigorously investigated and prosecuted." A U.N. commission of inquiry investigating war crimes on both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict will focus on sexual violence by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and is about to launch an appeal for evidence, its chair told Reuters on Wednesday (November 29).

The main telecom company in the Gaza Strip said Monday that mobile telephone services and internet connections had been cut across the Palestinian territory.

"We regret to announce that all telecom services in Gaza Strip have been lost due to the cut off of main fibre routes from the Israeli side," PalTel said in a message on social media. "Gaza is... blacked out again."

Two-month old Adnan was being treated for injuries sustained during an airstrike in Gaza’s Khan Younis earlier on Monday (December 4), after his family fled bombardment in the north.

His father, Ibrahim Esbeitan said his son was born on October 9, two days after militants from Hamas, the group that runs the Gaza Strip, rampaged through southern Israel, killing 1,200 people including babies and toddlers and seizing 240 hostages of all ages, according to Israeli figures.

“I would have wished he would see a life other than this one. Every day we die a million deaths,” he said as he kissed his son on the hand.
 

The Israeli army on Monday (December 4) released footage it said shows various aerial attacks against Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as Israel presses the ground offensive in southern Gaza as well.

In the videos, aerial footage showed airstrikes of what the Israeli army said was Hamas fighters' infrastructures, including a rocket launcher and a weapons warehouse.

The United States said Monday it was asking Israel to let more fuel into the battered Gaza Strip after the end of a pause in its ally's war with Hamas. "We've made clear we want to see it back up not just to the level of fuel that went in during the pause, but actually higher," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

Intense Israeli air strikes hit the south of the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, including in areas where Israel had told people to seek shelter, residents and journalists on the ground said.

Israeli troops and tanks also pressed the ground campaign against Hamas militants in the south of the enclave after having largely gained control of the now-devastated north.

The United States said Monday it had seen some improvement by Israel in narrowing targets in its Gaza offensive as it renewed a call on its ally to spare civilians.

Days after a truce ended just as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was visiting, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller voiced guarded praise for Israeli tactics as its campaign expands to the south.

"What we have said is they need to take additional steps to protect civilians," Miller told reporters.

"We've seen a much more targeted request for evacuations" than in the earlier campaign in the north, he said.

"So that is an improvement on what's happened before."

As a result of Israeli actions, "the numbers of displaced persons will hopefully be lower in southern Gaza than it was in the north," he said.

"But when it comes to results, we are going to monitor it very closely."

Smoke rose over Gaza and the sound of explosions rang out on Monday (December 4) as Israel pounded the north and south of the Palestinian enclave with air strikes.

Israeli troops and tanks have also pressed on with a ground campaign against Hamas militants in the southern sector.

The World Health Organization's executive board will hold a rare emergency session on Dec 10 to discuss the health crisis in Gaza and the West Bank, with the Palestinian envoy seeking more medical aid and access for foreign healthcare workers. 

The WHO confirmed on Monday it had received a request from 15 countries to hold the session. The special session will be convened by Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in consultation with the Qatari chair. 

The Palestinian ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ibrahim Khraishi, said the meeting would focus mostly on Gaza. It will also cover attacks on the health sector in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. 

"We want to empower the WHO and call for the Israeli side not to target the medical sector. We want to allow for fresh medical supplies," he told Reuters, adding that his diplomatic mission was drafting a motion to be reviewed by the board.

"One idea is to send more doctors in from around the world," he added, saying many countries had offered. The "Occupied Palestinian Territory" is a WHO observer rather than a member state but has influence in the organisation through supporters.

Israel said the session was an example of the "double standards and disproportionate attention towards Israel in the multilateral arena".