‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 76: Extrajudicial killings of men in front of their families in Gaza 

Casualties 

• 19,650+ killed* and at least 53,000 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
• 303 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
• Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147.
• 469 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, and at least 1,831 injured.

*This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health. 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 26,000.

Key Developments 

• UNOCHA: Israeli forces allegedly executed at least 11 unarmed Palestinian men in front of family members in Gaza’s Remal neighborhood
• Palestinian Ministry of Health: Hundreds of wounded die as a result of the lack of health services in Al-Shifa Hospital.
• Israeli forces kill 16-year-old boy near Bethlehem in occupied West Bank. 
• OCHA: Over 360,000 cases of infectious diseases recorded in UNRWA shelters
• WHO: About 14 healthcare workers of al-Ahli Arab Hospital arrested by Israeli forces and held in unknown locations.
• Al-Haq: Israeli forces deliberately destroyed access to health services in Gaza since October 7 through patterns of intimidation, direct targeting, siege, and occupation, “resulting in a humanitarian disaster.”
• WFP: first aid convoy from Jordan, including 46 trucks, reaches Gaza on Wednesday. 
• Human Rights Watch: Meta systematically censoring content about Palestine on Instagram and Facebook.
• Israeli media: Muhammad Deif, leader of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades who survived seven assassination attempts by Israel, alive and in better condition than previously believed.
• Australian Defence Minister: Australia to send “up to six additional” troops, but no warships, to support U.S.-led Red Sea operation.
• Lebanese Civil Defense: civilian woman killed by Israeli shelling in Lebanese border village of Maroun al-Ras.

Shot dead, one after the other

Israeli forces have continued their rampage across the Gaza Strip for the 76th consecutive day. Emerging reports indicate that the Israeli army is not only taking Palestinians hostage and reportedly torturing them, but is conducting extrajudicial executions. 

UNOCHA has received “disturbing information” alleging that Israeli forces killed at least 11 unarmed Palestinian men in front of their family members in Gaza’s Remal neighborhood. 

The Israeli army “allegedly separated the men from the women and children, and then shot and killed at least 11 of the men, mostly aged in their late 20s and early 30s, in front of their family members”, the statement said.

“This raises alarm about the possible commission of a war crime,” the human rights organization continued, calling for an independent investigation.

Meanwhile, Palestinians who are not killed by the Israeli army are being abducted.

Citing testimonies from freed prisoners, Mustafa Barghouti, the head of the Palestinian National Initiative party, says the Israeli army is brutally torturing Palestinian prisoners from Gaza.

“More than a thousand detainees, including the director of al-Shifa Hospital, are being subjected to brutal torture and severe beatings,” Barghouti said in a statement.

“The Israeli interrogators use torture with electricity, waterboarding, hanging stress positions, and psychological pressure,” he continued, noting prisoners said they were held in a makeshift detention camp in Beersheba, also known as Bir as-Sab, and that several elderly and sick prisoners were killed as a result of the torture. 

“The detainees are held in barracks that are unfit for life, exposed to the cold, and are given scarce food,” Barghouti said. “No one, including the Red Cross, is allowed to contact them or know anything about them.”

Death and despair 

Israel’s offensive attacks on Gaza’s starving population have only intensified as time goes on. 

While Israel’s on-the-ground invasion moves farther south, the Rafah governorate bordering Egypt has become the most densely populated area in the besieged enclave. 

Despite reports from the UN agency OCHA of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people being squeezed into extremely overcrowded spaces and in dire living conditions in Rafah, more displaced Palestinians from Khan Younis will have no choice but to join them. 

The Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of about 20 percent of central and south Khan Younis, which has sparked fear among civilians in the south of a further expansion of Israel’s military operation.

However, nowhere in Gaza is safe, and the Palestinian civilians sheltering in Rafah are still being bombed and killed. 

On Wednesday, Israeli forces attacked an area in the southernmost governorate, which contained a hospital and a United Nations-run shelter housing thousands of people, according to Al Jazeera.

The attack has also delayed the opening of a neonatal clinic, which will be dedicated to providing much-needed care to pregnant and newborn Palestinians and was meant to begin seeing patients this week.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says there are approximately 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and about 180 births a day. 

“This setback delays our ability to begin treating patients, a disservice to parents eagerly seeking critical care for their newborns,” Chris Skopec, executive vice president of global health at Project HOPE, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, in northern Gaza, the WHO chief has announced that the last functioning hospital where injured people could undergo surgery, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, has closed. 

“That has left north Gaza with no functional hospital. Only four hospitals operate at a minimum level, providing very limited care,” Tedros Ghebreyesus said in a post on X.

Standing in al-Ahli Hospital, Ghebreyesus explained: “There are patients here who have been injured for more than a month and have had no surgery. There are patients who have been operated on but they are now getting postoperative infections because the hospital doesn’t have sufficient antibiotics.”

“This is a completely unacceptable situation.”

The Israeli army has also continued their siege on an ambulance center in the northern area of Jabalia.

The Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) said in a post on X that “artillery shelling continues in the vicinity of the center, with the sounds of explosions heard.”

“Israeli snipers are positioned on the roofs of surrounding buildings, posing a threat to the safety of 127 individuals, including paramedics, volunteers, and their families,” the organization said, adding that 22 of them are wounded individuals receiving treatment inside the center.”

“Hospitals and medical personnel are sacred,” the UN human rights expert Francesca Albanese said in a post on X, “especially at a time of great destruction, suffering and despair as this senseless war against the people in Gaza.”

Can an agreement be reached? 

As Israel’s attacks on Gaza and its population intensify, truce talks between Hamas and Israel grow. 

“These are very serious discussions and negotiations, and we hope that they lead somewhere,” White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday, reported Reuters.

However, it is unclear when or if these discussions will lead somewhere, as both Israel and Hamas have different ideas and goals. 

On Wednesday, Hamas rejected an Israeli offer to stop fighting for one week in exchange for dozens of captives, reported the Wall Street Journal, citing Egyptian officials who said the group would not discuss any releases until a ceasefire first takes hold. 

“Our message to the families of the captives is loud and clear: your crisis is with Netanyahu and his war cabinet. The continued aggression impedes the release of captives. If you want them back, then you must make Netanyahu understand the resistance will not break,” said Hamas’s senior spokesperson, Osama Hamdan, during a news conference. 

“Our vision is very clear: We want to stop the aggression,” he said. “What is going on in the ground is a big catastrophe,” Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told Al Jazeera, referencing the “mass destruction and mass killing” caused by the Israeli attacks on Gaza.

The group added that although “some people” are looking for pauses in fighting for a few days or weeks, they would not agree to that.

“Israel will take the card of the hostages and after that, they will start a new round of mass killing and massacres against our people,” he continued, “we will not play this game.”

Conversely, Israeli politicians have been highly vocal that, although they aim to free their captives inside of Gaza, they have no plans of halting the war on Gaza any time soon. 

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said in a video statement that “those who think we will stop are not connected to reality,” before reiterating Israel’s goals, “the elimination of Hamas, the release of our hostages and the removal of the threat from Gaza.”

“We are not going back to what was before,” Israeli army’s Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi told reservists, warning them to expect “a lot of action in the coming year” in the country’s north.

 “Our role as uniform wearers is to prepare the first option, to be very well prepared for it, for combat,” Halevi said. 

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has also expressed his support for the continued aggressions on Gaza, writing, “The war cabinet must send the head of Mossad to eliminate Hamas leaders, not negotiate with them,” in a post on X.

The U.S. is all talk

Outside of making statements, the U.S. has done little to nothing to convince Israel to tone down the intensity of their attacks, which has led to outrage both globally and by the American public. 

UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese called on Biden to “intervene to stop this senseless carnage of innocent civilians in Gaza.”

“Every additional day the international community doesn’t act to stop Israel’s extermination campaign is another nail in the coffin of humanity and the international law-based order,” she said in a post on X. 

At an end-of-year news conference, the U.S. top diplomat Antony Blinken outlined Washington’s “core priorities” in their response to the war, which included helping Israel “ensure what happened on October 7 can never happen again” while also bringing the conflict to an end as quickly as possible.

“We continue to believe that Israel does not have to choose between removing the threat of Hamas and minimizing the toll on civilians in Gaza,” Blinken said. “It has an obligation to do both, and it has a strategic interest to do both,” Blinken said. 

“And we expect to see and want to see a shift to more targeted [Israeli] operations with a smaller number of forces that’s really focused in on dealing with the leadership of Hamas, the tunnel network and a few other critical things,” he continued, adding that Israel needs to “move to a lower intensity phase.”

“What I have seen from day one is that countries throughout the region, as well as countries around the world, want to work with us and are looking for American leadership in this crisis,” he concluded.

However, political scientist Ian Bremmer told Al Jazeera that U.S. support for Israel’s actions has only “isolated” Washington. 

Bremmer notes that the U.S. is even more isolated “than the Russians were when they invaded Ukraine” while highlighting that the human carnage of Israel’s ongoing war is not making Israel safer but instead strengthening Hamas. 

Another UN resolution 

Meanwhile, the UAE is drafting yet another UN Security Council resolution. However, many leaders have become disillusioned with the UN as it continually fails to hold Israel accountable. 

Still, UAE envoy to the UN Lana Nusseibeh says she has faith in the diplomatic negotiations that are taking place at the UN, despite the expected council vote being delayed for the third time.

“Everyone wants to see a resolution that has impact and is implementable on the ground, and there are some discussions going on on how to make that possible,” she told reporters in New York.

“In another sense, if this fails, then we will continue to keep trying, because we have to keep trying because there is too much suffering on the ground for the council to continue to fail on this,” she continued.

According to Gideon Levy, an Israeli columnist at Haaretz, as long as the U.S. gives Israel the green light to continue, their war on Gaza will continue. 

Meaning, “Israel will continue no matter how many victims are in Gaza, no matter how many children are killed in Gaza, and even no matter how many Israeli soldiers are killed,” Levy told Al Jazeera.

Levy added that, without sanctions against Israel, a UN Security Council resolution is not enough to pressure Israel to end its war. 

“As long as it will be only declarations, condemnations — Israel ignored many resolutions of the international community in the past, including many resolutions of the Security Council,” he said

“Every hour that it doesn’t pass is another hour in which hundreds of Palestinians are being bombed and killed,” Helen Lackner, a Middle East analyst, told Al Jazeera. “Every delay is a delay that allows the Israelis to continue their relentless bombardment,” she said.

Still, even if the resolution passes, “the Israelis have got a very long history of ignoring” such measures, Lackner added. 

“So I don’t see any rapid and serious result out of this resolution even if it is passed.”

Similarly, Hamas official Hamdan says the group “would like to emphasize that the Biden administration is a partner in the war against Gaza as they impede the delivery of aid. This administration has crippled the UN Security Council with its veto. Unless they stop the Israelis, they will be held morally and legally responsible for all crimes committed in Gaza.”