Casualties
- 14,100 killed*, including 5,840 children, and 32,850 wounded in Gaza Strip.
- 225 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,200
*This figure covers the casualties from October 7 to November 22. Due to breakdowns in communication networks within the Gaza Strip (particularly in northern Gaza), the Gaza Ministry of Health has not been able to regularly update its tolls.
Key Developments
- Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said that “the starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension.
- The pause will add an additional day for every ten more Israeli captives Hamas releases, Kan News reported.
- Hamas agreed to release 30 children and 20 women captives, who will be handed to the Red Cross and then transferred to Israel, Kan News reported.
- A list of 300 names of Palestinian prisoners were handed to the Israeli government, including women and prisoners who were children at the time of their arrest, Kan News said.
- Hamas revealed details of the agreement, saying that it agreed on a temporary ceasefire in which Israeli forces would halt military action and allow medical, fuel, and aid trucks to reach all areas of the Gaza Strip.
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said prior to the vote on the truce: “We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals.”
- Israeli tanks are still besieging the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia for the third consecutive day, and sent a WhatsApp threat message to the management of an imminent raid of the facility.
- Human Rights Watch: Israel has killed more Palestinians in the West Bank in the last six weeks than in any full year since at least 2005, and put more Palestinians in administrative detention without charges or trial or charges than in over 30 years.
- The parliament in South Africa voted in favour of a motion to sever ties with Israel and shut down Tel Aviv embassy in Johannesburg till a permanent ceasefire in Gaza Strip reached.
Qatari mediated four-day truce reached between Israel and Hamas
A long-awaited “humanitarian pause” was agreed upon on Wednesday morning between the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli government, in which Hamas would release 50 captives in exchange for 150 Palestinian children and women prisoners.
The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which played a key role in brokering the agreement along with Egypt and the US, said that “the humanitarian pause will also allow the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid,” which includes fuel.
Qatar hosts a Hamas office and figures in Doha and was the go-to mediator to secure the release of Israeli captives taken by Hamas fighters during the October 7 surprise attack on settlements and military bases near the Gaza Strip.
In October, Hamas released two Israeli captives following Qatari-Egyptian mediation. The CIA and Mossad chiefs met the Qatari prime minister in Doha on November 9 with the goal of reaching a “temporary pause” in Gaza and releasing Israeli captives.
Hamas confirmed the details of the exchange deal. However, Israeli bombardment of Palestinian neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip did not stop, and at least 200 people were killed overnight, as the “humanitarian pause” and ceasefire did not go into effect yet.
“The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension,” the Qatari Foreign Ministry said.
According to Israel’s Kan News broadcaster, the pause will add an additional day for every ten additional Israeli captives Hamas releases. Kan reported that the deal is expected to go into effect on Wednesday night, in which Hamas would release 30 children and 20 women captives, who will be handed to the Red Cross and then transferred to Israel.
Kan News also said that a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners was handed to the Israeli government. Those include women and prisoners who were children at the time of their arrest. Hamas will release ten captives a day in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners.
According to Addameer prisoners’ rights group, as of November 6, there were 62 Palestinian women and 200 children serving various sentences in the Israeli jails.
Far-right Israeli ministers vote against the deal
Hamas revealed details of the agreement saying that it agreed on a temporary ceasefire, in which Israeli forces would halt military action and allow medical, fuel, and aid trucks to reach all areas of the Gaza Strip.
“The release of 50 women and children of the occupation’s detainees, all under the age of 19 years, in exchange for the release of 150 women and children of our people from the occupation’s prisons under the age of 19 years, at the time of imprisonment,” it said.
Hamas added that Israel would halt aerial attacks in southern Gaza for four days, and for six hours, from 10 a.m. till 4:00 p.m., in northern Gaza, and that forces would not attack or arrest Palestinians, allowing them to travel freely on Salah El-Din Street.
“While we announce the arrival of a truce agreement, we affirm that our hands will remain on the trigger, and our victorious battalions will remain on the lookout to defend our people and defeat the occupation and aggression,” Hamas added.
The Israeli government concluded a meeting at 3:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning, in which almost all the government ministers and chiefs of security agencies voted in favor of the deal.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the meeting, “we are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages, and ensure that nobody in Gaza can threaten Israel.”
Kan News reported that the rightwing Religious Zionism faction voted in favor after a clause was added to the decision confirming that the ground incursion into Gaza Strip will continue when the temporary truce concludes.
However, three pro-settlers ministers from the Jewish Power party, led by the National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, voted against going ahead with the deal.
Israel announced that there are 240 captives held in the Gaza Strip. In the past week, Hamas announced that at least 50 captives were killed or died during Israeli bombardments and airstrikes.
On Tuesday, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) announced the death of a 76-year-old captive, whom the group offered to release on humanitarian grounds.
“We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was stalling, and this led to her death,” PIJ’s military wing Al Quds Brigades said.
Israeli tanks besiege the Indonesian hospital for the third consecutive day
Amid all the promises of a temporary ceasefire, Israeli tanks are still besieging the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia for the third consecutive day.
Wafa news agency reported that Israeli forces sent a WhatsApp message to the hospital management, threatening them of an imminent raid on Wednesday night.
“A special warning to evacuate the Indonesian hospital. The Israeli army has information about military activity inside the hospital, and the army is requesting an immediate halt to all military actions,” the text said.
“If military activity does not stop within 4 hours, the army reserves the right to engage in activity against military operations in accordance with international laws,” it added.
Israeli forces are claiming that Hamas has tunnels underneath the Indonesian Hospital, which was opened in 2016 following an $8 million donation from Indonesian citizens and groups such as the Indonesian Red Cross Society.
Israel used similar claims to justify the siege, raid, and forced evacuation of Palestinians from Al-Shifa’ Hospital, west of Gaza City, last week. While the Israeli army has released a number of videos purporting to show the tunnels around Al-Shifa, Israel has yet to provide any evidence of the “Hamas command center” underneath the hospital.
Patients and the medical staff are in a state of panic, as there are nearly 630 wounded and 200 medical staff at the hospital.
Israeli forces bombard southern and northern Gaza
Gaza’s Ministry of Health announced on Wednesday morning that 14,100 Palestinian martyrs, including more than 5,840 children, have been killed in the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip. At least 33,000 have been wounded, and more than 6,800 are still missing and believed to be dead under the rubble.
In the past 24 hours, at least 200 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombardments, according to the director of the media office of Hamas’ government in the Gaza Strip, Ismail al-Thawabteh, who said that nearly 800,000 Palestinians are still living north of the Gaza Valley.
The Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Ahmed al-Kahlot, told Al-Jazeera Arabic that they have received 60 people who were killed and 200 injured in the Israeli bombardment.
Kahlot said that Kamal Adwan Hospital started using vegetable oil instead of diesel to operate electric generators amid the lack of sufficient fuel.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister, Ayman Al-Safadi, said on Wednesday that the Gaza Strip needs 800 aid trucks per day of food, water, medical, and fuel supplies to ease the crisis.
Israeli forces bombed ten houses on Wednesday morning in the Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, killing 30 people. Also, ten people were killed in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City following the attack on two houses, Wafa reported.
In the Al-Sabra neighborhood, 15 people were killed when airstrikes hit six houses, while five homes in Al-Daraj and Al-Tuffah neighborhoods in Gaza City were bombed, killing and injuring dozens of people.
Tens of homes in the Al-Rimal neighborhood, Al-Shati refugee camp, Tal Al-Hawa and Sheikh Ejleen were bombed, all of them in northern Gaza. Three houses were bombed in Beit Hanoun, killing 25 people.
In southern Gaza’s Rafah district, the house of the Awaida family was bombed. Israeli warplanes and tanks also pummelled areas in Khan Yunis, Al-Maghazi, Al-Bureij, and Al-Nuseirat.
South African parliament vote to sever ties with Israel
On Tuesday, the parliament in South Africa voted in favor of a motion to sever ties with Israel and shut down the Israeli embassy in Johannesburg until a permanent ceasefire in Gaza Strip is reached.
The motion was proposed by the ruling African National Congress party and received a vote of 248 lawmakers in favor and 91 against.
In objection, Israel summoned its ambassador to South Africa, Eliav Belotserkovsky, “for consultations.”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday that “the collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the unlawful use of force by Israel is a war crime.”
“The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide,” he added during a virtual meeting of the country leaders of the BRICS bloc.
West Bank: six Palestinians killed in Israeli drone attack in Tulkarm
Despite the deal of prisoners and captives exchange in Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces arrested 3,035 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
Israel detained 38 people in Tubas, Hebron, Bethlehem, Qalqilya, Tulkarm, and Ramallah overnight.
In the past 24 hours, the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health announced that seven martyrs were killed or succumbed to their wounds. In total, 225 Palestinians have been killed and around 2,850 injured October 7.
In a new report, Human Rights Watch says more Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces in the last six weeks, since October 7, than in any entire year since 2005.
In Tulkarm, a town north of the West Bank, six people were killed following an Israeli drone attack with two missiles on a house in the Balouneh neighborhood in Tulkarm refugee camp.
Their names were identified as Rami Al-Shamli, Uday Al-Zayat, Ahmed Salit, Muhammad Abu Anin, Bassam Al-Shafi, and Firas Awad Balawneh.
Wafa reported that two were critically injured in the Israeli drone attack, a 16-year-old boy, injured with shrapnel in the face, and another with shrapnel in the upper part of his body.
A large number of Israeli forces of stormed Tulkarm on Tuesday night, while bulldozers destroyed Tulkarm camp street and closed its entrance with a pile of debris.
Wafa reported that Israeli forces stormed the emergency department of Thabet Thabet Hospital, inspected ambulances, and arrested an injured man from inside one of them.
At least 14 people were arrested in Tulkarm, including medical staff at Thabet Thabet Hospital.
On Tuesday evening, Hussein Khalil Hussein Abu Jaasa, 51, succumbed to his wounds. Abu Jaasa was shot with live bullets in the abdomen during an Israeli raid in Balata camp, east of Nablus, on Tuesday morning.
Israel and its allies are repurposing the goals and lies of 1948 – in Gaza in 2023
Jonathan Cook 21 November 2023
Israel is openly carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Yet, just as happened with the first Nakba in 1948, Israel’s lies and deceptions dominate the West’s media and political narrative
“History is repeating itself – and every politician and establishment journalist is pretending they cannot see what is staring them in the face. There is a collective and wilful refusal to join the dots in Gaza, even when they point in one direction only.”
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2023-11-21/israel-goals-lies-1948-gaza/
As for the general situation, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Israel has no endgame, it looks like another 20 years of occupation. It’s also become clear to more and more people that it’s revenge, not ‘self-defense’. This essay just appeared in the New York Review of Books, unfortunately you must be a subscriber:
No Endgame in Gaza…After weeks of bombardment and thousands of deaths, what are Netanyahu’s political and ethical limits?…It does not seem that Israel understands what its endgame is. Without a clear sense of an ending, there can be no answer to the most crucial moral and strategic question: When is enough enough? Even in the crudely mathematical logic of vengeance, the blood price for Hamas’s appalling atrocities of October 7 has long since been paid. The body count—if that is to be the measure of retribution—has mounted far beyond the level required for an equality of suffering. Yet it appears to have no visible ceiling. What factor must Jewish deaths be multiplied by? ….Bombs and tanks do not answer questions. Who is to govern Gaza if not Hamas or Israel itself? Does Israel really think that, without the creation of a Palestinian state, somebody else—either an international consortium or a Palestinian puppet regime—will sail into a blood-soaked hellscape of rubble and dust, inhabited by traumatized survivors, and take responsibility for rebuilding, policing, and governing it? How is Israel going to make the kind of peace with its immediate neighbors without which the security of its citizens cannot be rebuilt?…While these political questions go unanswered, so do the moral ones. How many deaths are too many? How are obligations to international law and common decency going to be fulfilled in dense streets crowded with children, women, the elderly, and the sick? What is the “self” in Israel’s “self-defense”? Does it see its true image in this bloodletting? Can it imagine a life beyond revenge?
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/12/07/no-endgame-in-gaza-fintan-otoole/
If you can somehow get hold of it, the essay makes many interesting observations about Gaza.
The US media seems giddy about the release of the Israeli hostages, and it is very noticeable, that they NEVER mention the Palestinian hostages on the other side. No spotlight on their heartbreaking plight, or how they were arrested and left in jails with no legal recourse. All condemned by the human rights organizations. These are women and children, who have had to live for a long time, being abused, and unable to have access to their families. The narrative is that the Israeli people are precious and worthy of mention, while the Palestinians, who have suffered for decades, have been sadistically treated by their occupiers, and have been dehumanized in every way their evil minds can think of. Shame on the US media, for going along with the narrative of the apartheid racist nation, and treating these poor Palestinians as what the apologists refers to as the “sub-humans”, or as their terrorist leaders call “animals”.
Your beloved IDF killers snuffed out the lives of almost 6,000 Palestinian children over the last 49 days. When I say snuffed out, I mean killed, murdered, ripped apart and many buried under the rubble of their dwellings. All at the hands of your admired IDF savagery.
By the way, can you give / provide as to how many Israelis were killed from the IDF crossfire and how many were killed by Hamas on Oct. 7?
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jon s, your words … “But not comparable to murdering children, shooting them”
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Palestinian Casualties ( Oct. 7 – Nov. 22)
“14,100 killed*, including 5,840 children, and 32,850 wounded in Gaza Strip.
226 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.”
Stone Cold Justice: Israel’s torture of Palestinian children – ABC Australia
“A film which has been produced by a group of Australian journalists has sparked an international outcry against Israel after it explicitly detailed Tel Aviv’s use of torture against Palestinian children. The film, titled ‘Stone Cold Justice’ documents how Palestinian children, who have been arrested and detained by Israeli forces, are subjected to physical abuse, torture and forced into false confessions and pushed into gathering intelligence on Palestinian activists.”
Feb 10, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvOSv2fGJ5w