Live: Palestinian death toll in Gaza nears 26,000

The European Union has added Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to its “terrorist” sanctions blacklist over the 7 October attacks on Israel.

While Hamas is already designated as a terrorist organisation by the EU, the new decision means that Sinwar’s assets in EU member states will be frozen. 

The decision also means that no economic resources can be made available to him from EU states, according to Israeli media. 

“The decision comes as part of the European Union’s response to the threat posed by Hamas and its brutal and indiscriminate terrorist attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023,” an official statement from the Council of the European Union said.

In December, the Council added Hamas military leaders Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa to the list.
 

Saudi Arabia's top diplomat indicated on Tuesday that the kingdom would recognise Israel if the Palestinian issue is resolved. 

Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud was asked at a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos whether Saudi Arabia could take this step as part of a wider agreement after a resolution of the Palestinian conflict, to which he replied "certainly".

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released a video showing the dire situation facing Palestinian refugees who have been displaced by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. 

“Some people have not eaten in days, the children have no winter clothes, there’s no medical care. Most products are not available on the market and when they are available, they are very expensive,” said Olga Cherevko from the OCHA team.

“Shelter is a huge need and of course food, and most of all peace.”

Keir Starmer has officially dropped the Labour Party's promise to recognise Palestine as a state unilaterally, and will now only do so as a result of a two-state solution with Israel.

The Labour leader told the Jewish Chronicle that the party was "committed to the two-state solution" and that "recognition has to be part of a process, and an appropriate part of the process".

The U-turn comes after Labour's National Executive Committee passed policy in October stating that they would “work alongside international partners to recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel, as part of efforts to contribute to securing a negotiated two-state solution”.

Wayne David, the Labour Party's shadow Middle East minister, said the move was a departure from "T-shirt politics."

Read more: Keir Starmer dumps Labour party policy to recognise Palestinian statehood

At least 4,368 Palestinian students have been killed by Israel in Gaza since 7 October, the Palestinian education ministry said on Tuesday. 

In the last three and a half months, another 7,819 have been wounded as a result of Israel's brutal assault on the beseiged Strip. 

In the occupied West Bank, 41 students were killed and 282 others wounded. At least 85 students were arrested by Israel in the same time period.

In the Gaza Strip, 231 teachers and administrators were killed and 756 injured.

According to the ministry, at least 281 government schools and 65 schools affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (Unrwa) were bombed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, resulting in 83 of them being severely damaged and seven completely destroyed.

A UK-based advocacy group has filed a criminal complaint against senior UK politicians, including ministers, alleging their complicity in war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip.

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) said on Tuesday it handed over hard drives and evidence dossiers to the Metropolitan Police's War Crimes Unit last week.

“This is just the first tranche of our evidence and the first list of suspects… we will add further offences and further categories of suspects including commentators who continue to support war crimes," Tayab Ali, director of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians and head of international law at Bindmans LLP, told a press conference.

“Each account not only serves as evidence but also as a solemn reminder of the human cost of this conflict. We will accept nothing less than a thorough and impartial investigation into these allegations."

Read more: Complaint filed alleging UK ministers' complicity in Israeli war crimes

“Hamas is far from being defeated, and if anyone thinks that there will be an alternative to its rule in the Gaza Strip, it simply won’t happen,” Gideon Sa’ar told Israel’s Army Radio on Tuesday. 

Sa’ar's comments come as Hamas resistance to the Israeli assault continues in all parts of Gaza, despite a three-month military campaign that has left more than 24,000 Palestinians dead, most of them women and children. 

Iraq’s summoned its ambassador to Tehran back to Baghdad for consultation in response to Iran’s missile attacks in the north of the country.

The ambassador, Naseer Abdul Mohsen, was summoned “for the purpose of consultations against the backdrop of the recent Iranian attacks on Erbil, which led to the fall of a number of martyrs and wounded”, it said.

Iran’s foreign ministry said earlier that it “respects Iraq’s territorial integrity” but won’t hesitate to use its “legitimate and legal right” to act against those threatening its national security.

The number of Palestinians killed by Israel has risen to 24,285, Gaza’s health ministry said on Tuesday

At least 61,154 others have been wounded since the start of Israel’s attacks on 7 October. 

According to the ministry, Israeli forces committed “15 massacres against families” in the Gaza Strip, killing 158 people and injuring 320 others during the past 24 hours.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told an audience at Davos in Switzerland, that “there is no magic formula to return to what was before 7 October without a real solution to the two-state solution”.

He also said:

• Ending the war, releasing Palestinian hostages and prisoners, as well as the situation in the West Bank must be quickly addressed
• The situation in the West Bank is no less bad than Gaza, and we do not see a real reaction from the international community towards this
• We wonder what the international community would have been like regarding statements calling for genocide if they had come from other quarters
• There are politicians who believe that the situation in Gaza can be ignored, and the global response to the war is very disappointing in the region

Israeli war cabinet observer minister Gadi Eisenkot has accused the country's leaders of "lying to themselves", saying they need to reach an agreement with Hamas in order to secure the release of captives still held in Gaza.

Eisenkot, whose son and nephew were both killed in fighting in Gaza, told the five-member cabinet that "we have to stop lying to ourselves, to show courage, and to lead to a large deal which will bring home the hostages," the Times of Israel reported on Monday.

"Your time is running out, and each day that passes endangers their lives," the retired general said.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant responded by telling Eisenkot that only continued pressure on Hamas would lead to another release of captives.

Read more: Israeli war cabinet member calls for 'grand deal' to secure release of captives in Gaza

According to Israeli defence officials, the occupied West Bank is "on the brink of an implosion", the country's left leaning daily Haaretz reported on Tuesday. 

The Israeli army, said Haaretz, attributed the cause of increasing tensions in the West Bank to the government's failure to make decisions that would improve Palestinian's financial situations in the West Bank.

As a result the Israeli army transferred the elite Duvdevan unit from fighting in Gaza to the West Bank over the weekend, due to the army's fears of an escalation in the territory.

The Israeli army has been warning the right-wing Israeli government that a refusal to allow West Bank Palestinians to resume working in Israel and a refusal to carry out a tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority, is pushing the West Bank to boiling point.

Nearly night raids by the Israeli army and settler attacks on Palestinians has also dramatically increased tensions in the West Bank.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said missiles launched by the Revolutionary Guard last night into northern Iraq and northern Syria were intended as a counterterrorism effort to protect the Islamic Republic.

According to Kanaani, Tehran respects the territorial integrity of other countries but it has a "legitimate and legal right to deter national security threats".

France condemned the attack in the Kurdish region of Iraq, in which at least four people were killed, including a Kurdish businessman and his family members, according to local media.

"Such actions are a blatant, unacceptable and worrisome violation of Iraq's sovereignty," the foreign ministry said in Paris.

"This is an attack on the security and stability of Iraq and the Kurdish region, which leads to an escalation of tensions in the region. This must be put to an end."

One of Germany's most renowned lawyers dealing with internal law, Stefan Talmon, has come out against the country's support of Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last week.

"Rushing to make a public announcement of intervention only two hours after the close of the oral hearings on provisional measures, and before the ICJ could examine, let alone find that, prima facie, it had jurisdiction to deal with the case, was politically motivated. It seems as if the Federal Government, by hook or by crook, wanted to show its support for Israel," he said in a post on his website. 

"Against this background the rushed and unilateral action on 12 January 2024 seems ill advised. Announcing the intention to intervene before the court could even rule on the question of jurisdiction seems disrespectful towards the ICJ and may ultimately undermine the credibility and strength of Germany’s intervention," he added.

"Many states, especially in the global south, will see the German intervention as another example of double standards in international law," said Talmon. 

An Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio presenter was sacked after she shared a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on her personal social media account.

“HRW reporting starvation as a tool of war,” Antoinette Lattouf wrote in an Instagram post in December, citing the report.

Lattouf was fired following a co-ordinated campaign from Jewish lawyers who threatened ABC with legal action. 

The British newspaper the Daily Mail revealed secret WhatsApp messages from an Australian group called Lawyers for Israel who pushed for the ousting of Lattouf. 

Following the successful pressure campaign a member of the group posted "it's obviously the Israeli/Jewish lobby at work again!!!"

Lattouf's lawyer, Josh Bornstein, alleged the Lebanese-Australian broadcaster was fired on 20 December because of her “political views and race” and a court case is currently underway.