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EXPLANER
Netanyahu says war is not over and Israeli forces arrest Palestinian politician – here are the main updates.
Here’s how things go on Tuesday, December 26, 2023:
Latest developments
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the war was far from over when he visited Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
- He added that the remaining prisoners captured by Hamas during its October 7 attack on southern Israel cannot be released without military pressure. Families of the captives heckled Netanyahu during a speech in Parliament earlier Monday.
- The Palestinian Authority and Hamas denounced Netanyahu’s statements in Gaza.
Human impact and fighting
- More than 100 people were killed overnight in the Israeli airstrike on the Maghazi refugee camp, while some families are still trapped under the rubble.
- Palestinian authorities reported that 250 people were killed in waves of Israeli bombing over 24 hours over Christmas.
- The attacks took place in the al-Amal neighborhood in the southern town of Khan Younis, as well as in the Bureij and Nuseirat and Juhor ad-Dik camps in central Gaza.
- An Israeli airstrike outside Syria killed a senior Iranian military adviser, Sayyed Razi Mousavi, on Monday.
- WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday that Gaza’s health system was under “unbearable pressure.”
Diplomacy
- Israel will not renew the visa of a UN staff member in the country and will also refuse the visa application of another UN employee.
- Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said in a message on Monday: “We will stop working with those who cooperate” with Hamas.
- In response to Cohen’s criticism of the UN over recent visa denials, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, said Israel’s “baseless attacks” on the UN “only prove moral cowardice”.
1/2. Baseless attacks on the UN only demonstrate moral cowardice. The UN has been weakened by decades of ISR impunity for violations of international law, including the colonization of the occupied territories and Pal. forced displacement.
The UN must hold the ISR accountable if it is to save its reputation and purpose.— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur, TPO (@FranceskAlbs) December 25, 2023
- The United States has acknowledged strikes against Iranian-backed groups in Iraq as US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday that “proportionate strikes” had hit three sites used by the Iraqi group Kata’ ib Hezbollah and other affiliated groups.
- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva hosted a Christmas lunch with the last group of Palestinian-Brazilians repatriated from Gaza. Protesters in New York also held rallies on Christmas Day in solidarity with Palestine.
Climbing in the West Bank
- Tel Aviv Tribune’s occupied West Bank team reports that Khalida Jarrar, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine political group, was arrested in Ramallah.
- Israeli forces attacked different areas of the occupied West Bank, including the governorates of Tulkarem, Nablus and Hebron.
- The ongoing Israeli attacks in Nur Shams, Tulkarem, have been described by residents as one of the largest since the start of the war, Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hamdah Salhut reported from occupied East Jerusalem. At least one house was destroyed by the Israeli army.
- In Nablus, a young man was injured after settlers attacked his vehicle near the Taneeb intersection, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
