Israel broadens Gaza assault ahead of UN Security Council aid vote
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Follow topic:
GAZA/CAIRO – Israeli forces signalled they were widening their ground offensive with a new push into central Gaza on Dec 22, as the United Nations Security Council was expected to vote on a resolution calling for more desperately needed aid to enter the Gaza Strip.
As hopes faded this week for an imminent breakthrough in talks in Egypt aimed at getting warring Israel and Hamas to agree to a new truce, air strikes, artillery bombardments and fighting were reported across Gaza.
Israel’s military on Dec 22 ordered residents of Al-Bureij in central Gaza to move south immediately, indicating a new focus of the ground assault that has already devastated northern Gaza.
Negotiations continued on Dec 21 a US veto
The vote by the Security Council was put off again until Dec 22, despite the US saying it could now support an amended proposal.
Israel launched the war to crush Hamas and other militant groups after Hamas led an attack on Israel on Oct 7
Since then, humanitarian aid has trickled only through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, and it involved a complicated monitoring system in which truck convoys first travel to Israel for inspection, then return to Egypt to cross into Gaza through Rafah.
The health authorities in Gaza say some 20,000 people have been killed in the enclave since the start of the war, and the UN has warned of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Most of the enclave’s 2.2 million people have been forced to flee their homes, and in a report released on Dec 20, the World Food Programme said one in four households faces extreme hunger.
It warned of a risk of famine in Gaza within six months and reiterated its call for a humanitarian ceasefire, as well as for more emergency food aid.
A report by a UN-backed body said the entire population of Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A humanitarian pause from Nov 24 to Dec 1 helped to increase aid deliveries to Gaza. It also led to the release of more than 100 hostages held by Hamas.
In exchange, 240 Palestinians were freed from Israeli jails.
But in a statement on Dec 21 that dampened hopes of a breakthrough, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a smaller group also holding hostages in Gaza, rejected any deals involving exchanges of hostages and Palestinian prisoners, “except after a full cessation of aggression” by Israel.
Israel targets new area
In the latest accounts of fighting on Dec 22, residents reported Israeli tank shelling of eastern areas of Al-Bureij, the subject of the latest military evacuation order.
Israeli forces have previously engaged with Hamas gunmen on the edges of Al-Bureij, but have yet to thrust deeper into the built-up area, which grew out of a camp for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war.
The Hamas-affiliated Shehab news agency reported heavy shelling and air strikes in northern Gaza. Air strikes were also reported in Khan Younis and Rafah in the south.
Medics and Hamas media said the Hamas-appointed director of the police station in Khan Younis was killed along with his family members in a strike on their house.
An Israeli air strike targeted the house of Dr Munir Al-Bursh, director of the Gaza Health Ministry, medics said. He was wounded and one of his daughters was killed, the medics added.
The Israeli military, in a statement, said its air force destroyed a long-range missile launch site in Juhor ad-Dik in central Gaza from which, it said, “recent launches into Israeli territory were carried out”.
Violence has surged in the occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority dominated by Hamas rival Fatah has limited self-rule.
Around the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem, which for weeks saw limited access to the mosque for women and the elderly, there were calls for worshippers to attend Friday prayers outside in defiance of orders.
Islam’s third-holiest site, built on ground revered by Jews who know it as Temple Mount, has long been at the heart of tensions between Jews and Muslims.
Some mosques in East Jerusalem closed their doors on Dec 22 and urged people to go to Al-Aqsa and pray at the gates of the mosque “to break the siege”.
The police fired smoke to disperse small groups of young people who gathered near the Old City and at mosques in East Jerusalem, but they also distributed footage showing worshippers arriving calmly.
For journalists, the first 10 weeks of the war have been the deadliest recorded, the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report on Dec 21. Most of the journalists and media workers killed – 61 out of 68 – were Palestinian, it said.
More shipping companies avoid Red Sea
Governments worldwide fear the Gaza war could broaden in the region as Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Israeli forces have exchanged fire and Houthi militants of Yemen, also Iran-backed, have attacked ships in the lower Red Sea, increasing the risks of trade disruption.
Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd and Hong Kong’s OOCL said on Dec 21 that they would avoid the Red Sea,
The attacks on ships prompted the establishment last week of a US-led force to safeguard commercial traffic in the Red Sea.
A total of more than 20 countries have agreed to participate, the Pentagon said on Dec 21, although the total would suggest that at least eight of the countries who have signed up have declined to be publicly named. REUTERS
