Live: Israel strikes Gaza, as it launches fresh raids in occupied West Bank

Israel is conducting such extensive surveillance at a new US command centre in southern Israel that US forces and allies have expressed concern, according to a report in The Guardian on Monday.

The Israeli military has been openly and covertly recording meetings and discussions at the Civil-Military Coordination Centre (CMCC) in the town of Kiryat Gat, which is 12 miles from the Gaza frontier, the report says.

The US commander of the CMCC, Lieutenant General Patrick Frank, summoned his Israeli counterpart to tell him that “recording has to stop here”, according to sources briefed on disputes about the recordings.

Staff and visitors from other countries - who were not identified in the report - have also expressed concern about Israel’s intelligence-gathering inside the CMCC.

At least two Palestinians were killed and several others injured on Monday evening by Israeli strikes on Gaza, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa. 

The report said one Palestinian was killed as a result of shelling on Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. A Palestinian woman was also killed by an Israeli drone strike in Halawa camp in Jabalia, in northern Gaza. 

An Israeli drone attack targeting the tents of displaced people in Gaza City also wounded a score of Palestinians. 

Israel has continued to launch strikes on Gaza in defiance of a two-month-old ceasefire. 

The chief of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees denounced the Israeli authorities' seizure of assets from its East Jerusalem compound on Monday, which police told AFP was part of a debt-collection operation.

"Today in the early morning, Israeli police accompanied by municipal officials forcibly entered the Unrwa compound in East Jerusalem," Philippe Lazzarini said on X.

With trucks and forklifts, the authorities took "furniture, IT equipment and other property", and the compound's United Nations flag was replaced with an Israeli one, Lazzarini added.

Lazzarini has been declared persona non grata by Israeli authorities, who banned his agency from operating inside the country early this year.

The compound in occupied East Jerusalem has been empty of Unrwa staff since January, when the Israeli law banning its operations took effect after a months-long battle over its work in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier on Monday, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres issued a statement strongly condemning the Israeli authorities' "unauthorised entry" into the East Jerusalem compound.

"This compound remains United Nations premises and is inviolable and immune from any other form of interference," he added, urging Israel to "immediately take all necessary steps to restore, preserve and uphold the inviolability of Unrwa premises and to refrain from taking any further action".

US President Donald Trump wants Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to attend meetings in Florida at Mar-a-Lago when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is there, according to a report by Channel 12.

The report does not say whether Sisi will meet with Netanyahu, a move which would make him the first Arab leader to do so since 7 October 2023.

The report said that Trump wants Sisi in Florida in order to hash out "a strategic Gaza-related arrangement".

Trump's peace plan for Gaza has stalled, with no international stabilisation force deployed. Israel has consistently violated the ceasefire by striking Gaza and choking aid into the enclave.

Hamas has yet to disarm, which is one of the elements of Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza.

The report added that Trump wants to announce the transition to the second phase of the Gaza plan before Christmas.

According to Channel 12, that includes a "civil administration model" for Rafah. The southern region of Gaza, which is occupied by Israeli troops, has been discussed as a spot for so-called temporary safe communities for "pre-screened" Palestinians. 

Arab and Muslim states are opposed to partitioning the Gaza Strip. 

Israeli soldiers stormed the neighborhood of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem on Monday, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa. 

The report said that Israeli troops occupied several rooftops in the area, turning them into military posts. They also opened "indiscriminate" fire in the neighborhood. 

Israeli soldiers also stormed Kafr Malek village, northeast of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, the report added. 

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is not being considered for membership on a “board of peace” for Gaza chaired by US President Donald Trump, The Financial Times reported on Monday.

Blair's name was dropped under pressure from several Arab and Muslim states, the paper reported.  

The status of "Board of Peace" is unclear. Although the idea received much media coverage, few details have ever emerged about it. Other elements of Trump's Gaza peace plan, like an international stabilisation force, appear to have stalled. 

One person in Blair's office who spoke with the FT said that only "serving world leaders" will be on the so-called board, and a smaller executive board will function under it, which will include Blair, along with Jared Kushner, the US President's son-in-law and Trump adviser Steve Witkoff. 

Neither Witkoff nor Kushner has visited Israel in recent weeks. Most of their overseas travel has been geared toward negotiations with Russia and Ukraine. 

Several Palestinians were injured on Monday in an Israeli shelling that targeted a house in the al-Bassa area of Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. 

The shelling is part of Israel's consistent violation of a nearly two month old ceasefire in Gaza. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet US President Donald Trump on 29 December to discuss the next steps of the Gaza ceasefire, an Israeli government spokesperson said on Monday.

On Sunday, Netanyahu said that he will be discussing with Trump the second phase of a US plan to end the war in Gaza later this month. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect in October.

Wide gaps remain on key issues yet to be discussed under Trump's plan to end the war, including Hamas disarmament, the governance of post-war Gaza and the composition and mandate of an international security force in the enclave.

"The Prime Minister will meet with President Trump on Monday December 29. They will discuss the future steps and phases and the international stabilisation force of the ceasefire plan," government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian said in an online briefing to reporters.

The prime minister's office said on 1 December that Trump had invited Netanyahu to the White House. Israeli media have since reported that the two leaders may meet in Florida.

Costa Rica and Israel signed a free trade agreement on Monday, culminating a process that began in 2023, Costa Rica's Ministry of Foreign Trade said in a statement.

The head of the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees denounced Israel's seizure of assets from its compound in occupied East Jerusalem on Monday.

"Today in the early morning, Israeli police accompanied by municipal officials forcibly entered the Unrwa compound in East Jerusalem", Philippe Lazzarini said on X.

With trucks and forklifts, the authorities took "furniture, IT equipment and other property", and the compound's United Nations flag was replaced with an Israeli one, Lazzarini added.

Lazzarini has been declared persona non grata by Israeli authorities, who banned Unrwa from operating inside the country early this year.

Israeli police told AFP in a statement that the seizures were "carried out by the Jerusalem municipality as part of a debt-collection procedure".

"Police are present to secure the municipality's activity," the statement said.

But Roland Friedrich, Unrwa director for the West Bank and east Jerusalem, rejected that assessment.

"There is no debt because the United Nations - and Unrwa is part of the United Nations and is a UN agency - is not required to pay any kind of taxes of that kind under international law and under the law that Israel itself has adopted," he said.

Under a 1946 convention, the UN and its assets must not be taxed by host countries.

The compound in occupied East Jerusalem has been empty of Unrwa staff since January, when the Israeli law banning its operations took effect.

"Whatever action taken domestically, the compound retains its status as a UN premises, immune from any form of interference," Lazzarini said.

The death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to 70,365, the majority of whom are women and children, since the start of Israel's genocide in October 2023.

The Palestinian health ministry said the number of people wounded by Israeli forces during that time had risen to 171,058.

At least five new names were added to the death toll, three of whom were killed by Israeli forces over the past 24 hours, and two whose bodies were recovered from under rubble.

Since the ceasefire agreement on 11 October, at least 376 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and 981 wounded. A further 626 bodies have been recovered. 

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir turned up to a Knesset National Security Committee session on Monday wearing a bright yellow pin shaped like a gallows noose, as lawmakers debated a proposed bill that would introduce the death penalty for Palestinians accused of resisting the Israeli occupation.

The gesture, designed to provoke, came as Ben Gvir and other members of his extremist Jewish Power party attended the hearing ahead of the bill’s second and third parliamentary readings, despite mounting legal and ethical objections to the proposal.

Ben Gvir publicly championed execution as an acceptable tool of state violence. “One of the options by which the law will enforce a death penalty for terrorists,” he said, according to Haaretz. “Of course, there is the option of the gallows, the electric chair, and there is also the option of anesthesia.”

A day earlier, the committee’s legal advisers warned that the bill raises serious constitutional problems, casting doubt on its legality and compatibility with even Israel’s own legal framework.

Ben Gvir dismissed those concerns, boasting about alleged support from within the medical community. “Since it was announced that doctors would not want to help with the law, I have received a hundred calls from doctors saying, ‘Itamar, just tell me when’,” the minister said.

Israel has confirmed the launch of work on a new border wall with Jordan, extending its expanding militarisation of surrounding areas and of the occupied West Bank. 

In the first stage, Israeli authorities will construct two separate stretches, each around 80 kilometres long, along the north-eastern section of the Israel-Jordan frontier, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

Officials estimate the project will cost about more than $1.7bn and form part of what it claims is a wider “multi-layered” security structure expected to run roughly 500 kilometres, from the southern occupied Golan Heights down to north of Eilat, further entrenching Israel’s securitised and colonial expansion across the region. 

Iran has begun the trial of a dual national holding European citizenship, accused of “intelligence cooperation and espionage in favour of the Zionist regime (Israel),” the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Monday.

The Alborz provincial attorney general said the individual entered Iran about a month before Israel and the US launched strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities during the 12-day conflict in June. They were arrested on the fourth day by the elite Revolutionary Guards.

“Sophisticated spy and intelligence items and equipment were discovered in their villa in Karaj,” the attorney general added, noting that the charges carry penalties for “waging war against God” and “corruption on earth,” offences often punishable by death.