Israeli forces recover body of French-Israeli hostage in Gaza

Elya Toledano was among estimated 240 hostages taken during Hamas attacks on 7 October

The Israeli army has recovered the body of the French-Israeli hostage Elya Toledano, who was kidnapped and taken to Gaza by militants during the 7 October attacks.

Toledano, who turned 28 in captivity, was among an estimated 240 people taken hostage during the Hamas attacks in southern Israel. A resident of Tel Aviv, he was at the Nova music festival along with his friend and fellow French-Israeli Mia Schem, who was released under a truce agreement at the end of November.

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Israel says it will open new aid crossing into Gaza Strip

Announcement follows pressure from allies in US to alleviate humanitarian crisis in besieged territory

Israel has said it will open a new aid crossing into the Gaza Strip in the face of pressure from allies in Washington to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory and wind down its wide-scale bombings and armoured ground operations against Hamas.

The Kerem Shalom crossing between Gaza and Israel, previously used for goods and aid deliveries, would reopen to process humanitarian supplies, the office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Friday.

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Australia denounces Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in occupied West Bank

Government joins more than a dozen countries to say settlers are ‘terrorising’ Palestinians in ‘unacceptable’ violence

The Australian government has warned that violent acts by Israeli settlers are “terrorising Palestinian communities” in the occupied West Bank, joining with western allies to denounce an “environment of near complete impunity”.

Two days after voting in favour of a UN general assembly resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, the Australian government has strengthened its objections to violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

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Biden in a bind as Netanhayu ready to flout any US attempt to rein in Israel

Israel PM has defied US calls for restraint in Gaza and told domestic audience he will not compromise

US efforts to show it retains significant influence over the Israeli government were dealt a double blow on Thursday when the Israeli defence minister said it would take months to complete the task of rooting out Hamas, and a leaked US intelligence assessment revealed up to 45% of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions that Israel has dropped on Gaza since 7 October have been unguided “dumb bombs”.

The predictions of a months-long campaign were delivered on camera by Yoav Gallant to a stony-faced Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, who had arrived in Israel to convey a message that its campaign needed to change – and preferably be wrapped up in weeks. They were later reinforced by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Neyanyahu, who said Israel would not stop until complete victory.

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Georgia teacher accused of threatening to kill student over Israeli flag, police say

Teacher arrested after allegedly saying he would ‘cut’ student’s ‘head off’ after she told him she was offended by his Israeli flag

A school teacher in the US state of Georgia was arrested after allegedly threatening to behead a student who expressed taking offense over his Israeli flag, according to authorities.

Benjamin Reese’s arrest at the middle school named after the town of Warner Robins occurred on after a student approached and told him she was offended by the Israeli flag hanging in his classroom, the local news station WMAZ reported, citing a police account of the case.

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Israel tells US it needs ‘months’ to defeat Hamas

Defence minister addresses US national security adviser as Biden administration presses for end to war

Israel will fight on until “absolute victory against Hamas”, the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told a senior official from the Biden administration, as another minister said the war could last “more than several months”.

Netanyahu’s comments were made to Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, during a visit to Israel hours after its defence minister, Yoav Gallant, told Sullivan that many more months were needed to defeat Hamas in Gaza.

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IDF censures its soldiers filmed mocking call to prayer in Jenin mosque

Israeli military says soldiers have been removed from duties after incident in West Bank city

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have condemned the behaviour of several of their soldiers who were filmed singing and mocking the Islamic call to prayer over the loudspeaker of a mosque in the city of Jenin.

The incident came during three days of raids in the occupied West Bank, during which Israeli troops have killed 12 Palestinians, including one youth shot dead at a hospital, according to Palestinian officials and international health charities.

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Israel-Gaza war live: White House says it wants Israel’s war in Gaza to ‘end as soon as possible’ and be of lower intensity

Spokesperson adds ‘we’re not dictating terms … about how long it has to be’ as Jake Sullivan says Israel being urged to lower intensity of military operations

A pro-Palestinian group temporarily hacked into the Israeli army website on Wednesday.

The group, calling themselves Anonymous Jo, left a message on the homepage of the website warning of further attacks against Israeli forces.

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Israeli ministers block Mossad head’s effort to restart Gaza hostage talks

Relatives of the abductees say they are shocked, as reports say David Barnea was stopped from visiting Qatar

Israel’s war cabinet has blocked a planned visit to Qatar by the head of the country’s foreign intelligence service that was aimed at kickstarting negotiations over a new hostage release deal.

According to several reports, David Barnea, the head of Mossad, had wanted to travel to Qatar but was blocked by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other cabinet ministers.

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Australia considers US request to send warship to Red Sea as Houthis target shipping lanes

US navy request comes as Iran-aligned militia wade into the Israel-Hamas conflict, attacking vessels in commercial shipping lanes

The United States has asked Australia to send a warship to the Red Sea amid ongoing attacks on commercial shipping from Iran-backed militia.

The request, made recently, came from the US navy which wants the vessel to join an international taskforce, of which Australia is one of 39 member nations.

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Gaza a ‘living hell’ after heavy winter rains drench makeshift tents

Conditions deteriorate amid floods, escalating food shortages and waves of disease

Heavy winter rains have lashed Gaza, washing out tents and flooding some areas, as the head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees described deteriorating conditions in the coastal strip as a “living hell”.

Amid escalating shortages of food, spreading waves of communicable disease and the near collapse of Gaza’s health system, the winter storm turned large areas to mud and drenched many of those sleeping in makeshift plastic tents.

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Gulf states press for two-state roadmap after UN vote on Israel-Gaza war

UAE and Qatar say they will not again fund Gaza reconstruction without Israeli concession, as US isolation grows

Gulf states are capitalising on the resounding vote at the UN general assembly in favour of calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza by warning the US they will not once again fund the reconstruction of Gaza unless Israel agrees to a published roadmap to a two-state solution.

In Israel the general assembly vote was dismissed as a further sign of anti-Israeli bias at the UN. But with the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, due to visit the region, pressure is building on Israel to show greater flexibility about what will constitute a military victory and how Gaza will be administered once the war ends.

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Gaza: Israeli commanders among nine soldiers killed in Hamas ambush

Senior officer from Golani Brigade dies after failed attempt to rescue injured troops in Shejaiya area

Two senior Israeli commanders and seven other soldiers have been killed by Hamas in a complex ambush in the Gaza City suburb of Shejaiya, an area that has seen intense urban fighting in recent days.

The latest Israeli combat deaths came amid fears of a rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza as heavy winter rains lashed the region and after reports by aid agencies of dwindling food stocks for the vast number of Palestinians who have been displaced to southern Gaza.

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Benjamin Netanyahu accused of ‘evil’ campaigning at time of war

Members of his own party among those critical of Israeli PM’s efforts to improve his dire ratings

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been accused of breaking with convention by campaigning while his country is at war after a series of controversial statements in recent days.

A number of senior Israeli political figures have been making moves before what are seen as inevitable elections when the war is over, but Netanyahu’s efforts to improve his dire ratings with the Israeli electorate – many of whom blame him for catastrophic intelligence failures in the run-up to the Hamas attack on 7 October – are regarded as the most blatant.

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Israel reports its heaviest combat losses in six weeks – as it happened

This blog is now closed. See all our Israel-Gaza war coverage here

The Times of Israel is reporting a little more detail on the incident in the Red Sea earlier, which caused the UK maritime trade operations (UKMTO) agency to issue a warning. [See 7.46 GMT]

Citing US officials, it reports that two missiles fired from Yemen missed a commercial tanker near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. It also reports that a US navy vessel shot down a drone that was heading towards it.

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War has left Gaza economy at almost total standstill, says World Bank

Washington-based development organisation providing $20m for citizens suffering ‘multidimensional poverty’

The economy of Gaza has ground to an almost total standstill as a result of the war between Israel and Hamas that has left about 85% of workers without jobs, the World Bank has said.

In an assessment of the economic impact of the two-month-long conflict, the Washington-based development organisation said Gaza was operating at only 16% of its productive capacity and was in “deep recession”.

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Israeli military kills six in Jenin, Palestinian officials say – as it happened

This blog is now closed. See all our Israel-Gaza war coverage here

Reports are coming in from the Reuters news agency that three Palestinians were killed on Tuesday during an Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin – that’s according to the Palestinian health ministry.

An Israeli drone attack killed the three Palestinians and injured others, medical sources say, adding that the Israeli raid included the city of Jenin and its refugee camp.

Between the afternoons of 10 and 11 December, 208 Palestinians were killed and another 416 were injured, according to the [Hamas run] Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza. Heavy Israeli bombardments from air, land, and sea across Gaza continued, especially in the central part, including Al Maghazi and An Nuseirat Refugee Camps, as well as in parts of northern Gaza. Meanwhile, intense ground operations and fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups continued, especially in Khan Younis, Jabalya, and the northern parts of Gaza Strip. Additionally, air strikes have reportedly targeted residential homes in the western and central parts of Rafah, areas designated as safe for displaced Palestinians by the Israeli army. The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups into Israel also continued.

Limited aid distributions are taking place in Rafah governorate. In the rest of the Gaza Strip, aid distribution has largely stopped over the past few days, due to the intensity of hostilities and restrictions of movement along the main roads, except for limited fuel deliveries to key service providers and a one-off high-risk mission on 9 December to Al Ahli hospital.

On 11 December, as of 22:00, 100 trucks carrying humanitarian supplies entered Gaza from Egypt, the same volume recorded on most days since the resumption of hostilities on 1 December. This is well below the daily average of 500 truckloads (including fuel) that entered every working day prior to 7 October. The ability of the UN to receive incoming aid has been significantly impaired over the past few days by several factors. These include a shortage of trucks within Gaza; the continuing lack of fuel; telecommunications blackouts; and the increasing number of staff who were unable to travel to the Rafah crossing due to the intensity of hostilities.

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Injured Palestinians face potentially fatal delays in treatment, say aid agencies

Fears raised as WHO says ambulance staff detained at gunpoint, stripped and beaten by Israeli troops

Palestinians who have been injured during the war in Gaza are facing potentially fatal delays both in getting treatment within the coastal strip as well as in being evacuated abroad, caused by Israeli bureaucracy and military checkpoints, the UN and aid organisations say.

The delays come amid a claim by the World Health Organization (WHO) that Palestinian ambulance staff involved in a recent high-risk evacuation were detained at gunpoint, stripped and beaten by Israeli soldiers.

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‘I no longer feel at home here’: German Muslims frustrated by Israel backing

Many say Germany’s historical responsibility for Nazi crimes makes it hard for people to criticise Gaza strategy

Lobna Shammout was initially only vaguely aware of the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October, because she had been celebrating her 40th birthday. “The breaking news was crashing my phone, I thought ‘please, not today’,” the Palestinian-German said. “When I finally checked … each newsflash was worse than the one before.”

In the following weeks, as Israel launched an all-out assault on Gaza in retaliation for the attacks, which killed 1,200 people, Shammout has waited anxiously for news of her relatives and friends in Gaza. Some have been killed, among the estimated 15,000 Palestinians who the Hamas-run health ministry says have lost their lives.

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New Jersey Arab Americans go on strike over Gaza: ‘The administration isn’t listening’

Paterson residents describe ‘anger, sadness, desperation’ after US vetoes UN resolution calling for ceasefire

A general strike called after the US blocked a UN resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza took hold across New Jersey’s Arab American communities on Monday, in the latest expression of opposition to Israel’s devastating military offensive in the Palestinian territory.

Along Palestine Way in the city of Paterson, dozens of business owners, community leaders and families with young children, swathed in keffiyeh scarves against the cold, heeded the call from Palestinian leaders to show, in symbolic, political and economic terms, deepening anger and distress about an Israeli military operation that began after a Hamas cross-border attack on 7 October.

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