It’s now just after 3am in Gaza and Israel and this blog is closing. We’ll be back soon to bring you all the latest breaking news. In the meantime, here are the key developments:
The Israeli military claims to have killed Adil Mismah, a regional commander of Hamas’s elite Nukhba forces, in the central city of Deir al-Balah. The Israel Defense Forces said Mismah had taken part in Hamas’s 7 October attack against Israel.
A total of 21,978 Palestinians have been killed and 56,697 injured in Israeli strikes in Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Monday. The figures include 156 Palestinians killed and 246 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added. Thousands more people are believed to be buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings and tens of thousands of Palestinians have been wounded.
Israel is withdrawing some troops from Gaza to shift to more targeted operations against Hamas, an Israeli official told Reuters. The official said the withdrawal was focused on reservists – of which Israel drafted 300,000 for the war – and designed to “re-energise the Israeli economy”.
Not all of those returned from Gaza will go home, a senior Israeli official told Reuters, with some prepared for rotation to the northern border with Lebanon, where Israel is expanding its preparations for war. “The situation on the Lebanese front will not be allowed to continue. This coming six-month period is a critical moment,” the official said.
Israeli settlers killed at least 10 Palestinians and set alight dozens of homes in the occupied West Bank in 2023, making it the “most violent” year on record for settler attacks, an Israeli watchdog has said. Numerous West Bank attacks were carried out by a large group of Israeli settlers and the violence rose after Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel, said Yesh Din, a human rights group.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has collaborated with the Egyptian Red Crescent to establish the first organized camp in Khan Younis for Palestinians displaced by Israeli strikes across Gaza. The camp is initially set to hold 300 families from PRCS medical, ambulance and relief teams, with its capacity set to expand later to 1,000 tents, the PRCS said.
Some of the Israeli communities north of the Gaza Strip that were evacuated in the wake of the 7 October attack by Hamas will be able to go back in the near future as military operations progress, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Monday. According to published remarks from a briefing, Gallant said that some of the evacuated communities in areas within a range of 4-7km north of the territory would be able to return soon.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said that four of its fighters had been killed in southern Lebanon, updating the toll from three in a statement made earlier, without giving any further detail. Security sources said the first three were killed in an Israeli raid on two houses in the Lebanese village of Kafr Kila near the border where Hezbollah maintains security control.
The US aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, deployed to the eastern Mediterranean after the deadly attack on Israel by Hamas in October to deter other regional actors from escalating the conflict, will return to the US “in the coming days,” the Navy said Monday. It will be replaced by the amphibious assault ship the USS Bataan and its accompanying warships, the USS Mesa Verde and the USS Carter Hall.
Israel’s supreme court has ruled against a key component of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government’s judicial overhaul, which challenged the powers of the judiciary. A supreme court statement said eight of 15 justices had ruled against an amendment passed by parliament in July which scraps the “reasonableness” clause, used by the court to overturn government decisions which are deemed unconstitutional.
Updated
Israel will appear before the international court of justice (ICJ) in the Hague to defend itself against accusations of genocide lodged against it by South Africa last week in relation to its attack on Gaza, the newspaper Haaretz reports.
The decision was made during a meeting chaired by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and followed consultations with the justice ministry, the military and the national security council, the Israeli paper reported. Israel will now try to prevent the court from issuing an interim order seeking to halt its campaign in Gaza.
At the end of a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – and following a series of consultations between the Justice Ministry, the IDF and the National Security Council – it was decided that Israel would try to prevent the court from issuing an interim order that would seek to halt the campaign in Gaza.
In its application, South Africa said:
The acts and omissions by Israel complained of by South Africa are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.
In response, Israel’s foreign ministry accused Pretoria of spreading a “blood libel” and said its accusations lacked “both a factual and a legal basis”.
Updated
