Here’s how things stand on Tuesday, December 5, 2023:
Latest developments
- In a post on X on Monday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked Israel to withdraw an order calling on the agency to remove its medical supplies from southern Gaza in 24 hours, before their ground operation expands to the area.
- The Israeli authority responsible for civilian affairs in Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank responded to Tedros’s tweet claiming they did not issue that order and had already clarified that with United Nations representatives in writing.
- Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said there would be more relentless attacks on southern Gaza than the operation in northern Gaza, reported Hamdah Salhut, Al Jazeera correspondent in occupied East Jerusalem, on Tuesday.
- Telecommunication services have once again been cut off in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian telecom company Paltel said on Monday.
- Israel extended its travel warnings to include some 80 countries amid rising anti-Semitism.
- Israel has assembled a large system of pumps that may be used to flood Hamas tunnels under the Gaza Strip, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday citing US officials.
Human impact and fighting
- Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis continued overnight while hospitals in the south struggled to cope with the mounting number of patients and causalities, according to reports from Al Jazeera Arabic and the UN children’s fund.
- UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said in a video from the hospital posted to X on Monday that staff at Nasser Medical Complex in the south have been working for 36 hours straight.
- An Israeli attack on the Sheikh Radwan area of Gaza City killed an unconfirmed number of people on Tuesday, according to Al Jazeera Arabic and Palestinian news agency Wafa.
- Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, where an estimated 10,000 people are sheltering, has continued to face intense Israeli attacks over the past day.
- Hisham Awartani, one of the Palestinian college students shot in Vermont, is paralysed from the chest down.
Diplomacy
- As Israeli families put pressure on their Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring back captives still in Gaza, he met his war cabinet on Monday.
- The United States Department of State announced that the special envoy for Yemen, Tim Lenderking, will meet with leaders in the Middle East this week to discuss security in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
- US Senator Bernie Sanders is opposing a Biden administration bill to send Israel more than $10bn for its military stock. He called the proposal “absolutely irresponsible” and said the US “should not be complicit” in the Netanyahu government’s “immoral” activities.
- More than 45 religious and civil society groups in Canada sent an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday, calling on him to take a stronger stance against Israel’s war on Gaza and push for a permanent ceasefire.
- Trinidadian diplomat Dennis Francis, the president of the UN General Assembly, reiterated his call for a “longer-term humanitarian ceasefire” in a post on X on Tuesday.
- Netanyahu invited newly-elected Argentinian President Javier Milei to Israel on Monday and appreciated his campaign decision to move Argentina’s embassy to Jerusalem. Most countries maintain their Israel embassies in Tel Aviv because of the disputed status of Jerusalem. Israel has illegally occupied East Jerusalem since 1967.
