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Israelis are marking the Jewish festival of Hanukkah in a more solemn fashion than usual this year. Here are some photos.
It’s past 9am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. Here’s a summary of the latest developments:
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has backed the UN secretary general in his decision to invoke article 99 of the UN charter. Borrell says: “The #UNSC [UN security council] must act immediately to prevent a full collapse of the humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has invoked a rarely used clause in the UN charter to warn that the conflict “may aggravate existing threats to international peace and security”. Guterres, in a letter to the security council, said he expects “public order to completely break down soon due to the desperate conditions” in Gaza as the territory comes under constant bombardment by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In response, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, said Guterres “reached a new moral low” and once again called for the UN chief to resign.
Associated Press has published a poll which shows Democratic views on how President Joe Biden is handling the conflict have rebounded slightly. The poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows 59% of Democrats approve of Biden’s approach to the conflict, a rise from 50% in November.
Israeli forces have surrounded the Gaza house of top Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, Benjamin Netanyahu has said. “It’s only a matter of time before we get him,” the Israeli prime minister said on Wednesday. The IDF said Sinwar, who Israeli officials have described as the architect of the 7 October attacks, is hiding underground. A senior Netanyahu adviser described the operation as a “symbolic victory”.
Israeli forces and Hamas are fighting house-to-house battles along the length of the Gaza Strip. As the IDF have been fighting their way through badly bomb-damaged urban areas in northern and southern Gaza, Hamas has increasingly relied on improvised bombs to inflict casualties and slow down the assault. The focal points of the fighting over the past two days have been the Jabalia refugee camp and the Shuja’iyya district in northern Gaza, and Khan Younis and Bani Suheila in the south.
Israeli forces have surrounded Khan Younis are now operating “in the heart” of the southern Gaza city, the IDF said on Wednesday. The IDF called on residents of Khan Younis to flee for safer areas on Wednesday morning, noting that there would be a pause until 2pm in the bombardment of Rafah, immediately to the south on the Egyptian border. Residents reported that the IDF dropped leaflets quoting a verse in the Qur’an on the area. The UN and aid agencies say nowhere in Gaza is safe any more.
The United States has discussed with Israel its timeline for military operations in Gaza and “how this falls into a longer-term strategy for addressing this issue that goes beyond just military means”, the White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has told Reuters in a telephone interview. “We have talked to them about timetables. I don’t want to share that because Israel has already kind of telegraphed precisely the location of its ground operation and I don’t want to be the one telegraphing timetables.”
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