Casualties:
- 18,787+ Palestinians killed and 50,897+ wounded in the Gaza Strip
- 288 Palestinians killed (WAFA) and 3,365 wounded in the Occupied West Bank.
*Due to breakdowns in communication networks within the Gaza Strip, the Ministry of Health in Gaza has not been able to regularly and accurately update its tolls since mid-November. Some rights groups put the death toll number closer to 20,000.
Key Developments:
- Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Samer Abudaqa succumbs to wounds after being left to bleed out, following an Israeli airstrike on a UN school in Khan Younis Friday.
- Committee to Protect Journalists: 64 journalists and media workers have been killed since October 7; 57 Palestinians, 4 Israelis, and 3 Lebanese.
- Israeli bombardment continues in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where tens of thousands of Gazans from north Gaza have fled to since October.
- United Nations warns of “domicide” in Gaza as private homes, infrastructure, and “everything you need to live” is destroyed.
- Medical Aid For Palestinians: Communications blackout in Gaza continues to hamper the delivery of life-saving humanitarian aid
- Hundreds of Israelis protest in Tel Aviv after the Israeli military admitted to mistakenly killing three of its own hostages in Gaza.
- Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu announces that Israel should “reoccupy the Gaza Strip” on Kan Public Radio
- Palestinian Prisoner’s Club: Sixteen Palestinians arrested in the Occupied West Bank; number of Palestinians detained since October 7 is now 4,520.
- Palestinian Center for Policy and Social Research: Public support for Hamas in the West Bank has increased from 38 percent to 42 percent since the Israeli aggression started in October.
- UN General Assembly resumes its 10th emergency special session to address the situation in Gaza.
- Palestinian-American families sue the Biden administration for doing nothing to assist their trapped relatives to escape Gaza.
- A spokesman for Yemen’s armed forces claims responsibility for an attack on Eilat in southern Israel with drones.
- The government of Qatar says diplomatic efforts to reach a truce in Gaza are ongoing
Al Jazeera journalist left to bleed out after Israeli airstrike, succumbs to wounds; occupation of Kamal Adwan Hospital continues
Journalists are in mourning after Al Jazeera cameraman, Samer Abudaqa, 45, succumbed to his wounds this morning after being injured Friday in an Israeli airstrike in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
According to Al Jazeera, Abudaqa, a veteran cameraman for the Al Jazeera bureau in Gaza, was accompanying journalist and Al Jazeera correspondent Wael al-Dahdouh on coverage of Israeli strikes in Khan Younis. The pair were reporting at the Farhanda school in Khan Younis when they were hit in the strike.
Al-Dahdouh, who was injured by shrapnel, was able to escape the area on foot, where he reached ambulances. He recounted the attack in an interview from his hospital bed:
“We got in the ambulance, I asked them to go back to where I was because Samer was still there and he was screaming and he was calling for help,” said al-Dahdouh, speaking from a hospital bed where he was recovering from his injuries. He gave the interview before he knew that Abudaqa had been killed in the attack.
“He [Abudaqa] got injured in the lower part of his body but the paramedics told me that we need to leave immediately and that they will send another ambulance so that we won’t be all targeted.”
While there were attempts to send an ambulance to reach Samer, the ambulances came under Israeli fire, rendering them unable to reach Abudaqa in time. According to Al Jazeera, Abudaqa was left to bleed out for more than five hours as ambulances and medics were continuously shot at and prevented from reaching him.
“The Network holds Israel accountable for systematically targeting and killing Al Jazeera journalists and their families,” a statement by Al Jazeera read.
Abudaqa’s son, Yazan, told Al Jazeera in an interview: “‘I’m proud of my dad. He’s a martyr. Israeli forces deliberately targeted him while he was doing his job as a journalist.”
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Abudaqa is the 64th journalist to be killed since October 7, the vast majority of whom are Palestinian. The Palestinian Journalist Syndicate, however, says the number of slain Palestinian journalists and media workers is much higher.
Press freedom organizations have pointed out that more journalists have been killed over the past two months in Israel’s assault on Gaza than during the entire Vietnam War. Israel has arrested and assaulted numerous journalists both in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. Many others have been threatened and censored.
In late October, four members of Wael al-Dahdouh’s family were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the home where they were sheltering, which many point to as one of the myriad ways in which journalists reporting on the conflict have been specifically targeted by the Israeli military.
Samer Abudaqa’s son, Yazan, who lives in Belgium, said he wants to file a complaint with the International Criminal Court for his father’s killing.
“My dad wasn’t a fighter, what did he do?” he said in an interview. “He wasn’t carrying a missile, but rather a camera to show people what the occupying Zionists are doing in Gaza.”
Relentless airstrikes continued on Saturday in Khan Younis, where saving people from under the rubble has been described as a “nightmare” while countless families gather to bury their dead. Gazans are now having to resort to “roadside burials” in order to bury the dead quickly.
Khan Younis was one of the primary destinations for Gazans who were forced to flee their homes in the north of the Strip. Gazans were told by the Israeli military that the southern part of the Strip was safe and that Israel was concentrating its attacks on Hamas in the north. After weeks of a ground invasion and the decimation of the northern Gaza Strip, Israel then turned its sights on Khan Younis and began pushing Gazans even further south to the city of Rafah.
Meanwhile, Israel’s brutal occupation of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza continues, with eyewitnesses reporting that Israeli bulldozers have trampled over tents sheltering displaced Palestinians, brutally crushing them.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the Israeli army is targeting ambulances as well as anyone who moves in the vicinity and has destroyed the entire southern part of the hospital. Twelve newborn babies are still trapped in incubators in the hospital, eerily reminiscent of the babies who were found decomposing at the Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital in northern Gaza earlier this month following the brief truce.
West Bank: 16 Palestinians arrested
Israeli forces arrested 16 people across the occupied West Bank today, including a woman with cancer, according to Wafa news agency. The total of those detained across the West Bank since October 7 is now 4,520.
In the northern West Bank district of Nablus, 30-year-old Hamza Ibrahim Bishkar was shot dead by Israeli soldiers near the town of Huwwara.
According to Wafa, 288 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since October 7, and more than 3,000 have been injured.
Meanwhile, a recent poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and Research (PCPSR) shows that support for Hamas among Palestinians living in the West Bank has soared from 38 percent before October 7 to 42 percent.
In contrast, only 11 percent remain satisfied with Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas. Many Palestinians in the West Bank blame Abbas and his authority for the conditions they face in the territory and the lack of safety under a violent Israeli military and settler population.
Protests in Tel Aviv as Israeli army accidentally shoot three Israeli hostages in Gaza
Hundreds protested in Tel Aviv Friday night after the Israeli military admitted that it had mistakenly shot and killed three Israeli captives during a raid on Gaza City.
According to reports, the hostages were carrying a makeshift white flag, and one was even yelling for help in Hebrew. It is believed that the hostages might have either escaped or been abandoned by their captors.
In statements made by the Israeli army to the media, during “combat operations” in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood of eastern Gaza City, the Israeli military “mistakenly identified three Israeli hostages as a threat.”
An Israeli army spokesperson told CBS news that the three Israeli hostages “emerged tens of meters from one of our forces positions,” and that they were not wearing shirts and were waving a white flag. Two were killed immediately, while the third ran away “crying for help in Hebrew.”
“Though the battalion commander issued a ceasefire order, there was ‘another burst of fire at’ the third hostage, which killed him,” CBS reported.
The Guardian reported that upon spotting the three hostages, an Israeli soldier on a rooftop opened fire on the men, shouting “Terrorists!”
Contrary to the statement issued by an Israeli army spokesperson to CBS that a ceasefire order was issued by a commander, The Guardian reported that “when a commander arrived on the scene, the unit was ordered into the building where it killed the third hostage despite his pleas for help in Hebrew.”
The Guardian added that two days prior to the incident, the Israeli army had identified a nearby building marked with “SOS” and “Help! Three hostages,” but had “believed it might be a trap.”
The Israeli army spokesperson said the incident “was against our rules of engagement,” calling it very tragic. Many Palestinians online, however, pointed out that the nature in which the Israeli army targeted the three hostages carrying a white flag was indicative of the way Israel regards civilians in Gaza, citing reports that have existed for weeks of Israeli forces firing at Palestinian civilians carrying white flags.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted to the news, saying in a statement: “Together with the entire people of Israel, I bow my head in deep sorrow and mourn the death of three of our dear sons who were kidnapped. My heart goes out to the grieving families in their difficult time.”
Netanyahu’s words, however, did little to stop angry crowds in Tel Aviv from taking to the streets to protest. “Their time is running out! Bring them home now! There is no victory until every last hostage is released!,” chanted the crowds, according to Israeli media reports.
The issue of the hostages has been a thorn in Netanyahu’s side since October 7, as the families of the hostages have pushed for a ceasefire to allow for an exchange, with many families even backing an “all for all exchange,” that would see the return of all Israeli hostages and captives in exchange for the release of all Palestinians being held inside Israeli prisons.
Netanyahu and his government have insisted that a military solution to “bring Hamas to its knees” is the best path forward. The killing of the three hostages, however, has reignited calls for a political solution that will end the hostage crisis.
“It’s horrible news and we know it was not the fault of the soldiers who we understand are under pressure,” said Tagit Tzin, the aunt of Dafna and Ela Elyakim, two of the hostages who were released last month after being held in Gaza for fifty days, told The Independent in Tel Aviv, as the family members gathered to demand the release of their loved ones.
“Only a ceasefire deal will bring the hostages out alive and not put our soldiers in danger like this.”
According to the Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which brokered the last temporary ceasefire, there are ongoing efforts to reach a diplomatic solution in Gaza.
According to an Axios report, the head of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, David Barnea, was dispatched by Netanyahu on Friday night to meet with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani in Europe to discuss resuming negotiations.
Meanwhile, British Palestinians have called upon the UK government to implement a Ukraine-style visa scheme to safely evacuate their families out of Gaza.
In a similar effort, two Palestinian-American families are suing the Biden administration for not assisting their U.S. citizen relatives stuck in Gaza in the way that they assisted U.S.-Israel dual nationals. While the U.S. organized charter flights from Tel Aviv to Europe to help U.S. citizens evacuate Israel after October 7 and helped 1,300 U.S. citizens in Gaza evacuate to Egypt, there are still an estimated 900 U.S. citizens, residents, and family members who remain trapped in Gaza.
Day 71: how will it end? Today the NYT ran a number of suggestions, and none of the contributors see an Israel from the river to the sea. You can read them all here:
Empower Palestinians…Let NATO send troops…create an economic future…establish an interntional trusteeship…grant Gaza statehood…create a confederation of two states…
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/12/opinion/gaza-israel-palestinians-plans.html
And my favorite:
The U.S. Must Embrace Palestinian Statehood Now
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/opinion/us-palestine-statehood-recognition.html
Apartheid Israel and its IDF killers don’t want anyone, any journalists, any cameraman/woman to video the war crimes, the killings, the Genocide that its vicious IDF killers are committing in Gaza and elsewhere. They don’t want the images of killed, ripped to pieces of Palestinian women and children corpses to be uploaded on various medias … to be seen around the world. Israel’s brutal army has killed 64 journalists (some reports say more), and the majority of them are Palestinians. And they even killed the families of some of the Palestinian journalists.
They want to silence, muzzle and intimidate journalists who might hurt the image of Apartheid Israel in the Western public eye; especially, the American public!
There is no doubt these war criminals are deliberately targeting journalists, members of the media, their families, doctors, medical personnel, activists, and other talented Palestinians, who are capable and qualified to help their people. It is unfortunate that the US media keeps ignoring the fact that those in their profession are being killed to silence them, prevent them from informing the outside world of their sadistic crimes, and that they do not have the decency to speak out against these assassinations, or show outrage. It seems the Biden administration is conveniently, ignoring these war crimes too.