A view of the demolition in the Tel ez-Zater region after Israeli forces withdrew from the area following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Jabalia, Gaza on December 22, 2023.
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The UN Security Council has called for increased humanitarian assistance for Gaza, but the UN chief said the way Israel conducts its military operation creates “enormous obstacles” to aid distribution inside the battered enclave.
After days of fighting to avoid a threatened US veto, the Security Council on Friday passed a resolution urging measures to allow “safe, unimpeded, and expanded humanitarian access ” in Gaza and “conditions for a sustainable cessation” of fighting.
The resolution was scaled back from earlier drafts that called for an immediate end to the 11-week war and a dilution of Israeli control over aid shipments, clearing the way for a vote in which the United States, Israel’s main ally , avoided.
Read more about the Israel-Hamas war:
Washington has repeatedly supported Israel’s right to self-defense following an October 7 attack on Israel by Gaza’s ruling Hamas militants, which killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages back to the enclave.
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s UN ambassador, said the Security Council should focus more on freeing the hostages and that focusing on “assistance mechanisms” was unnecessary because Israel was allowing “the delivery of help in the necessary measure.”
Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority split on the proposal, with the former saying it was “not enough” to meet the needs of the devastated enclave and defying international calls for an end to “the aggression of Israel.”
The authority’s foreign ministry welcomed the resolution as a step that would help “end the aggression, ensure the arrival of aid and protect the Palestinian people.”
The United States and Israel, which have vowed to eradicate Hamas, oppose a ceasefire, arguing that it would allow the Islamist militant group to regroup and re-arm.
US President Joe Biden’s administration, however, has been increasingly critical of the mounting death toll and the worsening humanitarian crisis as Israel continues its ground and air offensive.
Palestinians and children wait in line to meet their water needs from mobile tanks due to heavy damage to the city’s infrastructure during an Israeli air strike in Rafah, Gaza on December 23, 2023.
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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the way Israel is conducting its operation “creates enormous obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian assistance” in Gaza, where the United Nations says aid available is 10 percent only what is needed.
Israel says 5,405 aid trucks – carrying food, water and medical supplies – have entered Gaza since the war began.
The latest casualty update from Gaza’s health ministry said 20,057 Palestinians were killed and 53,320 wounded in the Israeli offensive that devastated large swaths of the enclave and displaced most of the population of 2.3 million.
Israel says 140 of its soldiers have been killed since it launched the ground incursion on Oct. 20.
Night airstrikes, shelling
Air strikes, artillery bombardment and fighting were reported across Gaza until Friday night, as hopes dimmed for an imminent breakthrough in talks with Egypt aimed at getting warring Israel and Hamas to agree. to a new truce.
The Israeli military has ordered residents of Al-Bureij, in central Gaza, to move south immediately.
The directive signaled a new focus of ground attack that destroyed the north of the enclave and made a series of incursions in the south.
Some residents packed donkey carts and left. But there was no immediate sign of large numbers from Al-Bureij joining the hundreds of thousands who fled elsewhere.
“Where should we go? There is no safe place,” Ziad, a medic and father of six, told Reuters by phone.
“They are asking people to go to (the central Gaza city of) Deir Al-Balah, where they are bombing day and night.”
An Israeli air strike on a house in the Nusseirat refugee camp killed three people including a journalist for Hamas’ Aqsa TV channel and two relatives, health officials and Hamas media said.
The reporter’s death will bring to at least 69 the number of journalists killed in the conflict, according to a tally by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In the south, at least four civilians were killed in an air strike on a car in Rafah, a Palestinian rescue worker said. A boy, his face covered in blood, and a girl, were brought in, the video showed. There was no immediate Israeli comment.
“Israel’s indiscriminate attack on Gaza has turned the north of the Strip into a pile of rubble,” medical charity MSF said in a post on X.
“At the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, the dead and wounded continue to arrive almost daily… No one is safe.”
The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said at least 18 Palestinians were killed and dozens more wounded in an air strike on a house in Nuseirat, central Gaza, on Friday night.
Israel’s military expressed regret for the civilian deaths but blamed Iran-backed Hamas for operating in densely populated areas or using civilians as human shields, a charge the group denies.
The Hamas-affiliated Shehab news agency reported heavy shelling and air strikes on Jabalia al-Balad and Jabalia refugee camp, in northern Gaza, and said Israeli vehicles were trying to advance from the western side of Jabalia to amidst the sound of gunfire.
WAFA reported that Israeli shelling destroyed a water desalination plant in Jabalia of Al Amal Hospital.
Biden said Friday that he and his wife, Jill, were “saddened” by the news that Gad Haggai, a 73-year-old American-Israeli, was believed to have been killed by Hamas in its attack on Israel in October 7.
Haggai’s wife, Judith Weinstein, is still being held hostage in Gaza, according to Israeli media outlet Haaretz.
