EXPLANER
New Israeli attacks kill dozens of Palestinians in Gaza, amid Qatar-led mediation efforts to restore the truce.
Here is what you need to know about the situation on Saturday December 2, 2023:
The fights
More than 180 Palestinians were killed and around 600 injured on the first day of new Israeli attacks on Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The armed wings of the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they fired barrages of rockets and mortars at various Israeli towns and settlements from Gaza.
Gaza is “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child,” Catherine Russell, head of UNICEF, said in a presentation to the United Nations Security Council.
The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists said 61 journalists had been killed since the start of the Gaza war – 54 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese.
Fighting on the Israeli-Lebanese border has resumed after a week-long truce broke down, with at least three people also killed in southern Lebanon by Israeli fire.
Diplomacy
Qatar, which played a central mediating role in the truce efforts, said talks were continuing with the Israelis and Palestinians to restore the truce, but that renewed bombing of Gaza was complicating matters.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington was working diplomatically to restore the truce with Israel, Egypt and Qatar, while accusing Hamas of failing to meet hostage conditions and carrying out an attack on Jerusalem.
Hamas has accused the United States of greenlighting Israel’s “war of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he “deeply regrets” the resumption of military operations in Gaza.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths has renewed calls for a truce, saying Palestinians in the enclave have nowhere safe to go and “very little to survive”.
Other developments
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli forces had cut off all aid deliveries to Gaza via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said aid deliveries must resume at the same frequency and scale as those allowed during the truce between Israel and Hamas, although “much more is needed.” that “.
Israel has informed several Arab states it wants to create a buffer zone on the Palestinian side of the Gaza border to prevent future attacks as part of proposals for the enclave after the war ends, Egyptian sources told Reuters and regional.
The United States has provided Israel with large bunker-busting bombs, among tens of thousands of other weapons and artillery shells, to help dislodge Hamas from Gaza, U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal.
Israel’s consul general in the southeastern United States has accused a protester who set himself on fire outside the country’s consulate in Atlanta, Georgia, of acting out of hatred toward Israel.
