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EXPLANER
Clashes over a two-state solution and US foreign policy in the face of Houthi strikes – here are the main updates.
Here’s how things are going on Friday January 19, 2024:
Latest updates
- A near-total communications blackout in Gaza entered its seventh day on Friday.
- Families of Hamas prisoners in Gaza blocked the Ayalon highway in Tel Aviv on Thursday. Losing patience with the Israeli government, family members of four captives vowed to take “extreme measures”, including preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza with their own bodies, as a way to bring their loved ones home, The Times of Israel reported.
- The Israeli siege of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank has lasted for at least 40 hours, with forces saying they are trying to root out resistance fighters in the town. The body of a Palestinian killed by an Israeli sniper in Tulkarem was also found around midnight on Friday, the Wafa news agency reported.
Human impact and fighting
- Five people were killed overnight by an Israeli airstrike on a residential building west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, local media reported.
- An Israeli airstrike on a building near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Friday killed 12 people and injured several others, according to local media.
- On Thursday, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry accused Israel of committing 15 “massacres,” killing 172 people in 24 hours, under the cover of a communications blackout in Gaza.
- U.S. Central Command on Thursday confirmed reports of an attack on a U.S. ship in the Red Sea, but says the ship was not damaged, contrary to Houthi claims.
- Israeli forces in northern Gaza repeatedly called for airstrikes against Palestinian fighters on Thursday, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP). “This activity is consistent with CTP-ISW’s assessment that Hamas is likely to reinfiltrate some of these areas,” they said.
Diplomacy
- In a public statement released Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Biden White House that he rejects any attempt to establish a Palestinian state.
- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesman said peace in the region can only come after the creation of a Palestinian state with “East Jerusalem as its capital, on the 1967 borders”, Wafa reported Thursday.
- Speaking to reporters on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said strikes against Houthi rebels would continue, although he admitted they had failed to stop the group’s attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
- China’s Commerce Ministry said late Thursday that it was closely monitoring the escalating situation in the Red Sea, Reuters reported.
