Israel-Palestine live: US and Israel air differences over Gaza strategy

The US has blamed Iran for enabling a series of attacks claimed by Yemen’s Houthis on commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea over the weekend.

“We have every reason to believe that these attacks … were fully enabled by Iran,” White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said on Monday.

Sullivan added that Iran had supplied the weapons used by the Houthis to launch attacks in the Red Sea.

A US warship also came under attack over the weekend as it moved to defend the commercial shipping vessels.

On Monday, the Pentagon said the Houthis may not have necessarily sought to target the warship, which responded to the attacks by shooting down drones and missiles launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen.

Sullivan said that the US was conferring with allies after the attacks.

The Houthis have warned that they will target Israeli-linked ships, but Sullivan said the US didn’t believe all three vessels were tied to Israel.

The number of Palestinian civilians being killed by Israel is “rapidly increasing” a UN official said on Monday, as he warned that "false claims" were being spread that the UN plans to build additional shelters in Rafah.

“The number of civilians killed is rapidly increasing. Civilians, including men, women, children, older persons, the sick and people with disabilities are the most to suffer,” Unrwa commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement. 

Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians has crammed people into what is less than one-third of the Gaza Strip’s 365 square km territory.

Israel’s recent order for Palestinians to move from Khan Younis to Rafah forced an additional 60,000 people to uproot to Unrwa shelters, Lazzarini added.

“The order created panic, fear and anxiety,” he said. “[Palestinians] need everything:  food, water, shelter, and mostly safety. Roads to the south are clogged.”

Lazzarini also said that “claims that the UN has thousands of tents and plans to open new refugee camps in Rafah are false”.

“We have said it repeatedly. We are saying it again. No place is safe in Gaza, whether in the south, or the southwest, whether in Rafah or in any unilaterally so-called ‘safe zone’”

The UN is “extremely alarmed” by the resumption of fighting between Hamas and Israel, according to Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN secretary general Antonio Guterres. 

“The UN continues to appeal to Israeli Forces to avoid further action that would exacerbate the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza and to spare civilians from more suffering,” the spokesman added.

He said the UN considers "nowhere safe" for Palestinians to flee as the Israeli military "orders them to evacuate" as it expands operations in southern Gaza.

About 80 percent of Gaza's population is now displaced as a result of Israel's bombardment of the besieged enclave. 

The secretary general reiterated the need for “unimpeded and sustained” humanitarian aid flow into Gaza, along with an unconditional ceasefire and the release of all hostages.

The UN is also concerned about rising violence in the occupied West Bank where settler attacks against Palestinians have soared, the spokesman added. 

The US said Monday it had seen some improvement by Israel in narrowing targets in its Gaza offensive, issuing a guarded approval, if Israel were to accelerate its offensive into southern Gaza.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller added that "the numbers of displaced persons will hopefully be lower in southern Gaza than it was in the north". 

President Biden has repeatedly said he doesn’t want to see a forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, which Arab states have said is a red line. 

"We've seen a much more targeted request for evacuations" than in the earlier campaign in the north, Miller, added, ”so that is an improvement on what's happened before.”

Miller said that the US was urging Israel to take additional steps to protect civilians, but said that civilian casualties were “sadly true in all wars”.

The most notable sign of criticism came when Miller said that Israel had stopped allowing fuel into Gaza early on Friday after the breakdown of the truce.

"We had some very frank conversations with them about the need for fuel to come in and saw some fuel going in Friday," he said.

"We saw additional fuel go in Saturday, but it's at the level of fuel that we were at before the pause began," he said. 

"We've made clear we want to see it back up not just to the level of fuel that went in during the pause, but actually higher."

The Israeli military says it has been striking Hamas rocket launchers, weapons warehouses and other sites belonging to the group, as it pushes its military offensive deeper into southern Gaza.

“We pursued them in northern Gaza. We now pursue Hamas in southern Gaza, too. We will operate with maximum force against Hamas terrorists and infrastructure while minimising harm to civilians,” Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said.

In a series of social media posts on X, accompanied by footage of a drone strike, Hagari said Israeli forces shot Hamas fighters who attacked them from a tunnel shaft and a separate Hamas fighter using a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).

He also said that Israeli soldiers called in a drone strike that killed three Hamas fighters.

A rocket fired by Hamas likely hit an Israel military base where many of the country’s nuclear-capable missiles are based, according to a report by The New York Times.

According to a New York Times’ visual investigation, the Hamas rocket struck Sdot Micha base in central Israel, sparking a fire that spread close to missile storage facilities and other sensitive weaponry.

The strike on the base occurred over several hours on 7 October during Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, with the intensity of the barrage overwhelming Israel’s Iron Dome Defence system.

The report is likely to intensify concerns about the risk of regional escalation, as Washington and Arab states work to contain the fighting in Gaza. Since Israel launched its invasion of the Strip, Hamas’s rocket strikes have decreased.

Military strikes on bases containing nuclear weapons are exceptionally rare, given the catastrophic risk they could pose to civilians on both sides of any conflict. According to a database kept by the University of Maryland, there have been only five known strikes on bases containing nuclear weapons in history. 

Sdot Micha base is clearly visible on publicly accessible satellite imagery, but it's unclear whether Hamas knew the military base likely contained nuclear weapons. 

The Hamas strike caused a fire that took Israeli firefighters deploying aircraft hours to contain. The fire approached within 1,000 feet of the Jericho missile facility where declassified US government documents say missiles are equipped to carry nuclear warheads.

Israel has never officially acknowledged having nuclear weapons, but it is widely believed to have at least a limited amount of nuclear missiles, according to leaked documents.

Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades have completely or partially destroyed 28 Israeli military vehicles in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, according to its spokesman, Abu Obaida.

The al-Qassam Brigades have deployed anti-fortification and anti-personnel weapons against Israel at close range, Abu Obaida said.

Hamas has previously showcased its fighters targeting Israeli military vehicles in videos where fighters emerge from rubble and tunnels carrying anti-personnel weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

In a statement, Abu Obaida also said that Hamas was using mortar shells against Israeli soldiers and claimed responsibility for a series of rocket barrages at Israeli cities.

Doctors Without Borders has reported an influx of wounded Palestinians since the breakdown of a fragile truce in Gaza last week.

“Since the fragile truce in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, collapsed on 1 December, aerial and ground attacks by Israeli forces have resulted in hundreds of people killed and injured,” Doctors Without Borders, which supports two hospitals in the Gaza Strip, said on Monday. 

Israel has stepped up its bombardment on Gaza City in the centre of the Strip and Khan Younis in the south, resulting in a rising number of civilian casualties.

In the last 48 hours, Doctors Without Borders says over 100 dead Palestinians and over 400 injured have arrived at Al Aqsa hospital in central Gaza alone. 

“We hear bombing around us, day and night,” Katrien Claeys, an official with the group in central Gaza said.

“We see patients with signs of infection and necrotic tissue, as they have not received a change of wound dressing in days and sometimes weeks,” she added.

Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, where Israel has turned for the next stage of its offensive, has been overrun with injured Palestinians.

“The hospital has been receiving multiple severely injured patients nearly every hour,” Chris Hook, a Doctors Without Borders coordinator in Khan Younis said.

“With the situation as it is in the hospital – there is no available space anymore – it really is a terrible situation. Everyone is genuinely worried about what will come next,” he added.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) will hold an emergency meeting on 10 December with the Palestinian envoy who is seeking improved medical access to Gaza.

The UN health agency said on Monday that it had received requests from 15 countries to hold the session, which will be chaired by Qatar.

The Palestinian ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ibrahim Khraishi, said the meeting would focus on Gaza, but also cover attacks on the health sector in the West Bank.

He added that he would call for an end to Israeli targeting of the health sector and for more medical aid to be sent to the strip.

Israeli air strikes and dwindling fuel supplies to the besieged enclave have crippled most of Gaza's hospitals. The few that remain operational are overwhelmed with the number of wounded arriving. 

According to a WHO database, there have been 427 attacks on healthcare facilities in Palestinian territories since the Israeli assault began on 7 October.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) posted on X that Israeli airstrikes are even targeting areas in Gaza where Palestinians are being encouraged to flee, including the Rafah crossing.

"No place is safe, not there and not anywhere in Gaza. A brutal war continues unabated," the agency posted on X.

Thomas White, the agency's Gaza chief added that he had "nothing" to tell the people "pleading for advice" on where to take shelter.

Google has reinstated a popular mobile phone app designed to help people boycott companies linked to Israel, days after it was removed from its Play Store. 

The No Thanks app allows users to scan the barcodes of products or enter their name to find out if the item is linked to Israel.

According to developers, the app was removed because a sentence in the description read: "Welcome to No Thanks, here you can see if the product in your hand supports killing children in Palestine or not."

On 3 December, Google reinstated the app to its Play Store with a new description reading: "Our app simplifies the process of scanning barcodes and searching for products that are listed for the boycott movement."

Read more: Google reinstates app that helps boycott Israel-linked companies

In the past two months, Palestinian journalist Yara Eid has lost 60 family members, as well as friends, colleagues and her childhood home to relentless Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

"I've lived through four aggressions in Gaza. I've seen people being killed in front of my eyes. But this aggression, this genocide, is something I've never, ever imagined," she says during an interview for Middle East Eye's Real Talk series. 

The 23-year-old grew up in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Her entire neighbourhood has been targeted by Israeli bombs since 7 October, and she does not know if her home is still standing. 

"I've lost everything. I've lost family. I've lost my home. I've lost my city. I've lost my best friend. I've lost my boss. My mentor. I've lost 60 members of my family," she said. 

Read more: Yara Eid describes losing home, best friend and 60 family members

Israeli authorities are investigating claims that investors may have known in advance of Hamas' plan to attack southern Israel on 7 October.

Research by law professors Robert Jackson Jr from New York University and Joshua Mitts of Columbia University found significant short-selling of shares leading up to the attacks.

"Days before the attack, traders appeared to anticipate the events to come," the researchers wrote, citing short interest in the MSCI Israel Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that "suddenly, and significantly, spiked" on 2 October based on data from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

"And just before the attack, short selling of Israeli securities on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) increased dramatically," they added in a 66-page report, as reported by Reuters. 

The Israel Securities Authority told Reuters: "The matter is known to the authority and is under investigation by all the relevant parties."

"Although we see no aggregate increase in shorting of Israeli companies on US exchanges, we do identify a sharp and unusual increase, just before the attacks, in trading in risky short-dated options on these companies expiring just after the attacks," the researchers said.

"Our findings suggest that traders informed about the coming attacks profited from these tragic events, and consistent with prior literature we show that trading of this kind occurs in gaps in US and international enforcement of legal prohibitions on informed trading."

Despite having no prior medical conditions, and being an athlete, Ahmed al-Yaqoubi, a Palestinian from Gaza, was diagnosed with blood cancer in February 2021.

The 28-year-old's diagnosis was a turning point in his life, as his immunity plummeted, Yaqoubi went from a normal life to needing two units of blood a week. 

Due to the severity of his condition, Yaqoubi was transferred from the al-Rantisi hospital in Gaza to the an-Najah hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus. 

"After undergoing a biopsy of my body and undergoing comprehensive tests, it became clear that the type of leukaemia I had was MDS [myelodysplastic syndrome], a rare form of leukaemia, requiring a marrow transplant,” Yaqoubi told Middle East Eye.

Since the war started on 7 October, and Israel imposed a siege on Gaza, Yaqoubi can no longer get ahold of medicine, crucial to his life prospects. 

Aseel Mousa reports from Gaza on Palestinians with rare conditions experiencing excruciating pain and deteriorating health.

Read more: Gaza siege leaves cancer patients without treatment 

Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides will visit Egypt and Jordan on Tuesday as part of an initiative to establish a humanitarian aid corridor to the Gaza Strip.

Cyprus, which lies 414km north of Gaza by sea, has offered to host and facilitate sustained aid directly into the Gaza Strip once hostilities cease.

According to Reuters, Cyprus plans to expand capacity for humanitarian relief directly to the Gaza Strip beyond limited deliveries being made through the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza