‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 90: Hezbollah says the killing of al-Aruri will not go unpunished

Casualties:

• 22,313+ killed* and at least 57,296 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
• 321 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.
• 506 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, at least 2,193 injured.

*This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health on January 3. Due to breakdowns in communication networks within the Gaza Strip, the Ministry of Health in Gaza has been unable to regularly and accurately update its tolls since mid-November. Some rights groups say the death toll is higher than 30,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.

Key Developments

• UNICEF: Children of Gaza face “severe acute malnutrition” with risks of intensifying into famine as Israel continues to deny Palestinians basic aid. 
• Wafa: Violent Israeli raid on Tulkarem in Occupied West Bank continues for second day. 
• Hezbollah Chief: The killing of al-Aruri will not go unpunished, warns unrestrained war with Israel in the event that Israel attacks Lebanon.
• Palestinian Ministry of Health: 29-year-old Palestinian shot dead during military raid on Tammoun, occupied West Bank.
• Nine Hezbollah members reportedly killed on Wednesday as exchange of fire continues along Israel-Lebanon border.
• Imam shot dead outside New Jersey mosque in U.S., attacker remains at large.
• International Court of Justice confirms public hearings on January 11 and 12 in genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel.
• Senior U.S. education official resigns over Biden administration ignoring “atrocities” in Gaza.
• Israeli airstrike targets Palestinian Red Cresent: one dead, six injured. 
• Two families killed near evacuation zone west of Khan Younis, majority under ten years old. 
• Following Hezbollah Chief’s speech, Israel attacks three-floor residential building in Lebanon’s Naqoura, killing four Hezbollah members.

Day 90: Everyone is still under attack.

Israel’s attacks on Gaza have entered their 90th day, and Palestinian society in the besieged enclave has all but collapsed. Israeli forces have continued their ruthless assault against the entire population, including civilians, children, civil defense forces, and humanitarian groups. 

In southern and central Gaza, “horrific scenes” have been reported as Israel’s ground operation expands into these areas.

“We have been seeing horrific scenes emerging from this region, where children have been killed and women have been injured amid ongoing efforts by the civil defense crews to keep evacuating people from under the rubble,” Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from Gaza.

“During the past three days, the occupation army has committed six massacres by forcing civilians to flee their homes to other areas it claimed were safe in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, and then bombed them, resulting in the death of 31 people,” said the Gaza Media office in a statement.

“The Israeli occupation army has repeated the crime of forcing civilians, under threat of weapons and death, to flee from their safe homes and residential neighbourhoods to other areas that it claimed were safe, but it bombed them,” the statement continued. 

On Thursday morning, Wafa News reported that dozens of Palestinians were killed in the central and southern parts of Gaza by yet another airstrike, including at least 20 Palestinians in Khan Younis and four in Rafah in the south.

According to Al Jazeera, the constant overnight bombardment took place near the al-Mawasi evacuation zone, west of Khan Younis, where the Israeli military has instructed people to shelter.

Fourteen of the 20 killed were from two families sheltering near the area, with the youngest victim at 5 years old and the vast majority 10 years old.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Palestine Red Crescent (PRC) said Israeli forces targeted the aid organization headquarters in Khan Younis, striking the fifth floor and killing at least one person and injuring six others.

They added that another strike on a neighboring home caused further damage to the facility and the nearby al-Amal hospital.

The day before, the PRC had warned that several residential buildings around El Amal Hospital and the organization’s headquarters were being shelled by the Israeli army, “causing a state of panic and fear among displaced people seeking shelter at the hospital.”

On Wednesday, several days after seven people were left to die in an area north of Khan Younis where ambulances were not allowed to reach, PRCS successfully undertook a “risky mission” to retrieve those killed, including the brother of paramedic Muntaha Wafi.

Gaza displacement 

Those who are not killed by Israeli bombardment are at significant risk of dying from disease, malnutrition, and starvation amid the displacement of the majority of Gaza’s population.

According to UNOCHA, nearly 85% of people in Gaza have begun 2024 in a state of displacement.

To make matters worse, UNOCHA added that most of those displaced in Gaza are “squeezed into extremely overcrowded spaces” and that “the spread of diseases has intensified, putting a strain on an already overwhelmed health system that is struggling to meet immense needs.”

The UNICEF Chief Catherine Russel has warned that as the attacks continue to escalate with no ceasefire in sight, Palestinian children are running out of time.

“As the threat of famine intensifies, hundreds of thousands more young children could soon be severely malnourished, with some at risk of death,” she said.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has said that three months of the war in Gaza have led to “mass displacement, mass human losses and injuries, and mass destruction.”

“Unbearable suffering made worse by constant dehumanization and promotion of hate speech going unchecked,” he continued on X. 

Nasrallah: ‘We are not afraid of war’

On Wednesday evening, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah held a televised speech where he blamed Israel for the attack that killed senior Hamas official Saleh al-Aruri along with five other Hamas members in Beirut.

Although Israeli politicians have praised the assassination and many global leaders assume Israel is responsible, they have yet to take responsibility for the attack. 

Still, U.S. leaders have defended the move, claiming Israel has the “right and responsibility” to target Hamas leaders. 

However, Michael Lynk, a Canadian law professor and former UN expert, said that such assassinations may violate international law.

“Legally, assassinating anybody is generally considered to be extrajudicial assassination, which is contrary to international law,” Lynk told Al Jazeera. “The expectation in a modern world, supposed to be ruled by the rule of law, is that you capture people and you would only assassinate those to present an imminent threat,” Lynk said, according to Al Jazeera. 

Nasrallah said the attack was not only a “blatant Israeli aggression” but a “major, dangerous crime about which we cannot be silent.”

The Hezbollah chief also highlighted that Israel has still not met its military goals inside Gaza, despite the “image of victory” it sought to create by attacking Lebanon. 

“They were trying to present an image of victory with the treacherous assassination of Sheikh Saleh. But in Gaza, where is it?”

Nasrallah went on to link together different people killed by Israeli and U.S. attacks in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, saluting “all of those martyrs who fell on the road to Jerusalem.”

Still, he made it clear that while the “resistance groups” share a vision for the future of the region in opposition to the Israeli occupation, there is no centralized command, and each group operates according to its own strategic vision and local agenda.

For example, the “Red Sea battle” carried out by Yemen’s Ansar Allah (commonly known as “Houthis”) is not happening at Iran’s demands, he said, before praising the “qualitative, effective, grand step” taken by the group in the Red Sea. 

Nasrallah, who said the Palestinian cause had almost been forgotten, was revived by Hamas’s attack on October 7 in southern Israel. 

“The Israelis now have clarity that they are facing a people that will not forget its land or its history or its present or its sanctities,” Nasrallah said, asserting that Israel has collapsed “humanely, morally, legally,” and is now viewed around the world as a country that kills and starves children and civilians. 

Nasrallah also accused Israel of hiding its military’s real casualty number in both Gaza and Lebanon. 

“On our Lebanese front, they don’t release the number of dead and injured, and they’re in the thousands.”

“If the enemy thinks about waging war against Lebanon, then our fighting will be with no ceiling, with no limits, with no rules. And they know what I mean,” Nasrallah said, reiterating that the killing of al-Aruri will not go without punishment.

“We are not afraid of war. We don’t fear it. We are not hesitant. If we were, we would have stopped at the front,” Hezbollah concluded, stating that he will speak more in-depth about Hezbollah’s battle with Israel during another speech on Friday. 

Regional escalations

Just before Nasrallah’s speech, Hezbollah announced that it carried out nine attacks targeting Israeli positions across the Lebanon border, including with rocket launches, according to Al Jazeera.

Although the group has regularly targeted Israeli military installations since Israel’s war on Gaza began, Wednesday’s attack marked an increase in their military activity following the killing of al-Aruri.

“Igniting the West Bank and Lebanon is the goal of the extremist agenda of the Israeli government, which continues to destroy Gaza to prolong the life of its political leadership and drag the West into a regional war,” said the Jordanian Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi.

“Israel’s crimes in Palestine and Lebanon are a rendition of this agenda that involves carrying out killing and destruction. Everyone will pay the price for violating international law and not curbing this extremism,” Sadadi continued. 

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby has said that the US is increasing its military assets in the waters of the Middle East to protect its forces, allies, and international trade, according to Al Jazeera.

“To accomplish these goals we have established and will continue to maintain a significant force presence in the Middle East,” Kirby told reporters.

Kirby added that the Pentagon currently has over 4,000 troops and 50 aircraft in the eastern Mediterranean.

“The United States does not seek conflict with any nation or actor in the Middle East, nor do we want to see the war between Israel and Hamas widen in the region, but neither will we shrink from the task of defending ourselves, our interests, our partners or the free flow of international commerce,” Kirby said.