Live: Palestinian death toll in Gaza nears 26,000
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"You are sitting here making reports, how is that possible?" one protester shouted.
Jordan’s foreign minister slammed the Israeli government’s “radical racist agenda” saying it’s defying the world in its refusal to accept a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
“The only way out of this misery is a two-state solution,” Ayman Safadi told reporters at an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday.
“They are defying the whole international community and it is about time the world took a stand.”
US intelligence agencies estimate that Hamas has lost only 20-30 percent of its fighters since the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza on 7 October.
The estimates, the first since the war, fall short of Israel's stated goal of "destroying" the Palestinian group, which was the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip before Israel's latest invasion.
According to the intelligence report cited by the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, Hamas is still capable of fighting Israeli troops and launching rockets into Israel "for months".
The report indicates that Israeli officials believe around 16,000 Hamas fighters have been wounded, with approximately half of them unlikely to return to the battlefield. However, US estimates suggest a range of 10,500 to 11,700 fighters, with the possibility of many returning to active duty.
The US newspaper reported that the Biden administration has therefore reduced their expectations for the war and urged Israel to change war tactics to carry out targeted operations against Hamas leaders.
Read More: US estimate shows Hamas death toll much less than Israel's aims
The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Monday that the Israeli military is attacking its ambulance centre, preventing first responders from reaching the wounded in Khan Younis as it intensifies its ground assault.
Nine months since Riyadh and Tehran restored ties after years of animosity, Saudi Arabia has assumed a new role as an intermediary between Iran and the United States, three sources in Iran told Middle East Eye.
High-ranking officials in Riyadh have been instrumental in relaying messages between the countries and reducing tensions over Israel's war on Gaza.
The process began in November, when Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian attended an emergency summit in Riyadh on the Gaza war attended by leaders from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and Arab League countries.
An Iranian insider familiar with the matter told MEE that Amirabdollahian carried with him a message for the US to give to Saudi officials. It was a response to one recently received from Washington.
The Saudis then conveyed this message to senior officials in Washington, the source said.
Read more: Iran and US use Saudi Arabia to swap messages and cool Gaza tensions
The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip "could not be worse", European Union chief diplomat Josep Borrell said on Monday, adding that "certainly Israel's way it tries to to destroy Hamas is wrong."
"From now on I will not talk about the peace process, but I want a two-state-solution process," Borell told journalists ahead of an EU foreign ministers' meeting.
The search for two US Navy Seals who went missing after boarding a boat thought to be carrying advanced Iranian weapons in the Arabian Sea, near the coast of Somalia, has been called off.
The boat boarded by the Seals was described earlier this week as "conducting illegal transport of advanced lethal aid from Iran to resupply Houthi forces in Yemen."
Centcom said in a statement that the status of the missing Navy Seals had been "changed to deceased".
The operation was "the first seizure of lethal, Iranian-supplied advanced conventional weapons (ACW) to the Houthis since the beginning of Houthi attacks against merchant ships in November 2023," the Tuesday statement said.
The world is in a “watershed” moment in the Gaza conflict with a “genocide unfolding.” said the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, responding to a tweet by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“It’s time to ask for justice for ALL. Hostages MUST be released immediately. And so the thousand Palestinian prisoners arbitrarily detained by Israel,” she wrote on X.
Good morning readers of Middle East Eye,
We are on day 108 of the Israeli war on Gaza and the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has passed another grim milestone with at least 25,000 Palestinians deaths recorded by hospitals, 10,600 of them children and 7,200 women.
At least 62,681 people are also wounded in the Strip, many go without proper health care treatment.
More than 8,000 missing who are believed to be dead and buried under rubble.
Here are the major developments from the last few hours:
- Israel has killed 94 professors during its war on Gaza, rights group says
- At least 10 Palestinians, including children, have been killed amid Israeli air attacks, shelling and gunfire in Khan Younis in southern Gaza
- The Palestinian and Israeli foreign ministers are expected to separately meet with the European Union’s 27 foreign ministers in Brussels today
- The US military says two Navy Seals who went missing in a raid on an Iranian dhow supplying weapons to the Houthis have now been declared dead
- Malaysia’s FM to back Palestine becoming UN member state in New York
Two US Navy SEALs who went missing in the Gulf of Aden earlier this month have not been located and their status has been changed to deceased, military officials said on Sunday.
The SEALs were reported missing after boarding an Iranian vessel in an 11 January operation near the coast of Somali, the US Central Command said on X.
“We mourn the loss of our two Naval Special Warfare warriors, and we will forever honour their sacrifice and example. Our prayers are with the SEALs’ families, friends, the US Navy, and the entire Special Operations community during this time,” CENTCOM Commander General Michael Erik Kurilla said in a statement.
The US has carried out a string of strikes against Houthi targets in response to Houthi attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea that have disrupted global trade and raised fears of supply bottlenecks.
US Central Command forces on Saturday struck a Houthi anti-ship missile that was aimed into the Gulf of Aden and prepared to launch, the US military said.
Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war will shortly be closing for the evening.
Here are the day’s key developments.
Israel has killed at least 25,105 Palestinians in Gaza since the start of the war on 7 October, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Sunday. In the same period, at least 62,681 Palestinians have been wounded.
About 178 Palestinians had been killed and 293 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
Palestinian group Hamas said on Sunday that its 7 October attacks in southern Israel were a "necessary step" against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
But the group admitted in a 16-page report about the attack that "some faults happened… due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza".
US intelligence agencies estimate that Hamas has lost only 20-30 percent of its fighters since the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza on 7 October.
The estimates, the first since the war, fall short of Israel's stated goal of "destroying" the Palestinian group, which was the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip before Israel's latest invasion.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected conditions presented by Hamas to end the war and release hostages that would include Israel's complete withdrawal and leaving Hamas in power in Gaza.
Other news from Sunday included:
- Two Hezbollah members were killed in a suspected Israeli drone strike on a vehicle in southern Lebanon.
- A strike on Damascus targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Syria spy chief and blamed on Israel killed 13 people, a war monitor said in an updated toll. "The death toll has risen to 13," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights of Saturday's strike.
- The Israeli army said that it was investigating the explosion of the Israa University in Gaza following widespread condemnation and questions from the Biden administration. Last week, footage widely shared on social media showed a large blast at the university campus.
- Around 1,000 people from Gaza have been treated in a French field hospital aboard a ship off the coast of Egypt, its captain said, providing care for some as health infrastructure in the war-devastated enclave collapses.
- Support for Israel around the world has plummeted dramatically since its assault on Gaza began, a new survey has found. According to figures published in Time magazine, the percentage of people viewing Israel positively after subtracting the percentage viewing it negatively, dropped an average of 18.5 percentage points globally between September and December. Out of 43 countries surveyed on all six continents, support for Israel dropped in all but one.
Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal of a Palestinian state.
"Netanyahu’s dangerous views, denying Palestinian statehood, are not just ‘disappointing’ but must be condemned in the strongest possible terms," Yousaf wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
"For those who want to see peace in the region, we must see meaningful progress on a two-state solution."
A strike on Damascus targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Syria spy chief and blamed on Israel killed 13 people, a war monitor said Sunday in an updated toll, AFP reported.
"The death toll has risen to 13," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights of Saturday's strike, revising earlier death tolls.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) confirmed it lost five members in the strike it blamed on Israel, its regional arch-foe.
The British-based monitor, which has a vast network of sources inside Syria, said the deaths include "five Iranians, including three IRGC leaders, four Syrians working with the Iranians, one Syrian civilian, two Lebanese, and one Iraqi national".
Iranian news agency Mehr, quoting an anonymous informed source, said "the Revolutionary Guards' Syria intel chief" and his deputy were among those "martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel".
Meanwhile, here are some images of Gaza on Sunday sent to us by our Middle East Eye colleague Mohammed al-Hajjar.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected conditions presented by Hamas to end the war and release hostages that would include Israel's complete withdrawal and leaving Hamas in power in Gaza.
"In exchange for the release of our hostages, Hamas demands the end of the war, the withdrawal of our forces from Gaza, the release of all the murderers and rapists," Netanyahu said in a statement. "And leaving Hamas intact."
"I reject outright the terms of surrender of the monsters of Hamas," Netanyahu said, according to Reuters.
As Israeli planes resumed bombing Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters the Israeli leader's refusal to end the military offensive in Gaza "means there is no chance for the return of the (Israeli) captives".
