Israel-Palestine live: Netanyahu rejects Hamas ceasefire proposal, vows ‘total victory’

UN chief Philippe Lazzarini said on Monday that in around four months of war, at least 100,000 people in Gaza have been killed, wounded or are currently missing. 

He said that the number equates to about five percent of the population.

“In addition, around 17,000 children are unaccounted or separated from their families,” he added.
 

The UN chief appointed on Monday an independent review group to assess Unrwa following accusations from Israel that around a dozen staff were involved in the 7 October attack on Israel.

According to Reuters, the review group will be led by the French foreign minister. 
 

A nine-year-old child in Gaza, Lama Abu Jamous, who has started reporting on Israel’s war on Gaza, has interviewed children who have been forcibly displaced from their homes. 

In video footage shared online, she asks them about conditions in the tents, particularly as temperatures drop. 
 

France’s Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne called for an end to Israeli settler violence and a ceasefire in Gaza on Monday in Jerusalem. 

The comments came following a meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We must also prevent any risk of escalation, to avoid any flare-up in the West Bank,” he said. 

“It is of utmost importance to refrain from any action, decision or statement that might spark violence. Settler violence must stop in the Palestinian territories, which we condemn,” he added.

He also said that violent Israeli statements are becoming “more and more frequent” in Israel, and are being “shared by political leaders”.

“There can in no circumstance be any transfer of Palestinians, neither from Gaza nor from the West Bank,” he said. 

He highlighted the humanitarian situation in Gaza, saying that Palestinians are being besieged and deprived of basic aid by Israel, saying that “nothing can justify such tragedy”. 
 

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is at a crossroads and should choose between his path or that offered by opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz. 

"There is a path for the small cabinet, the path of the [existing] conception, which has proven its mistakes time and again - and there is the path of [his party] Otzma Yehudit, a path of crushing Hamas and stopping giving them fuel," Ben Gvir said at a party meeting, according to Haaretz. 

"I hope that the prime minister of Israel will decide and choose the path of Otzma Yehudit, not the path of Lapid and Gantz," he added. 

Ben Gvir also doubled down on his criticism of the US, urging President Joe Biden's administration to "stop pressuring" Israel.

Israeli officials are planning to replace the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) in the Gaza Strip with other organisations, Israeli news site Ynet reported on Sunday. 

The plan, drawn up by the foreign ministry, aims to remove Unrwa from the so-called "day after" reality in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave.

The main alternative is the World Food Programme (WFP), according to Ynet, with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) also in consideration. 

The proposal will be presented to the political-security cabinet for approval, the report added. 

Read more: Israel planning to replace Unrwa in Gaza with USAID or WFP, says report 

Israeli forces have killed at least 113 Palestinians in air strikes across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Monday. 

This brings the death toll since 7 October to at least 27,478 with almost 67,000 wounded and 7,000 missing, who are either believed to be dead and buried under rubble. 

Over 70 percent of victims are children and women, according to health officials.

Amnesty International said Monday it recorded a "shocking spike" in unlawful Israel killings of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since October. 

In four cases investigated by the group that took place in October and November, Israeli forces used unlawful lethal force, killing a total of 20 Palestinians, including seven children.

“Under the cover of the relentless bombardment and atrocity crimes in Gaza, Israeli forces have unleashed unlawful lethal force against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, carrying out unlawful killings and displaying a chilling disregard for Palestinian lives," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s director of global research, advocacy and policy.

"These unlawful killings are in blatant violation of international human rights law and are committed with impunity in the context of maintaining Israel’s institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination over Palestinians.” 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Saudi Arabia as part of his latest tour of the Middle East.

It begins the top US diplomat's fifth trip to the region since war broke out on 7 October, and comes just days after three American troops were killed in Jordan.

Blinken will also visit Egypt, Qatar and Israel this week, and is expected to discuss Egyptian and Qatari-mediated negotiations for a deal to release captives held in Gaza.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) is visiting three Gulf countries this week, days after several key donors to the organisation paused funding. 

Israel has alleged that 12 out of the 30,000 employees at Unrwa were involved in the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October. Since then, at least nine countries including the US, UK and Germany, have suspended financing the agency. 

Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of Unrwa, met with United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi on Monday.

"We discussed the important role played by Unrwa in preserving the stability in the region and delivering humanitarian aid to #PalestineRefugees, particularly in the #GazaStrip where 2 million people depend on the Agency for survival," Lazzarini wrote on X. 

The agency chief is due to visit Kuwait and Qatar later this week, a UN spokesperson told Reuters. 

Unrwa was established in 1949 - a year after the Nakba (or catastrophe) in which 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes during the creation of Israel - to provide healthcare, education and humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. 

In Gaza, it runs 183 schools, 22 health facilities and seven women's centres, among several other facilities. 

Israeli forces have shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian boy at a military checkpoint near the entrance to al-Eizariya town, east of occupied East Jerusalem.

The Palestinian news agency, Wafa, reported that witnesses saw Israeli forces shoot the boy, Wadih Shadi Owaisat. He was later left to bleed to death, allegedly for attempting to carry out a stabbing attack.

Owaisat was reportedly shot at point blank range. 

Israeli naval gunfire hit a food convoy waiting to move into northern Gaza, said Thomas White, the director of Unrwa affairs in Gaza, in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday. 

"Thankfully, no one was injured," said White. 

"We CANNOT deliver humanitarian aid under fire. Safe and sustainable humanitarian access is URGENTLY needed everywhere including to the North of Gaza," said the Unrwa post. 

US President Joe Biden has issued an executive order targeting Israeli settlers who have attacked Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, with the White House imposing financial sanctions and visa bans against four individuals.

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the overwhelming majority of West Bank settlers were “law-abiding citizens”, and that the Israeli government “takes action against law-breakers in every place, and therefore there is no place for exceptional steps on this measure”. 

As a Palestinian residing in the occupied West Bank and suffering on a daily basis from settler crimes, I strongly disagree. I consider Biden’s executive order to be a minor step in light of the terrifying scale of crimes committed by Israeli settlers.

Firstly, it must be emphasised that the US decision diverts attention to the settlers, while ignoring the settlements themselves. It thus gives the false impression that only a small number of settlers are terrorising Palestinians. 

In fact, the settlements are themselves illegal, and all settlers residing in them are violating international law. Biden’s executive order deliberately ignores the Israeli government, which is responsible for establishing the settlements and encouraging settlers to reside in them - even aiding their crimes and protecting them.

Read more: US sanctions should target all settlers and the Israeli state

The Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Monday that "time is running out" to reach a diplomatic solution in the south of Lebanon, as tensions flare between the two countries, with daily cross-border fire.

"Israel will act militarily to return the evacuated citizens" to its northern border area if no diplomatic solution is reached to end the violence, Katz told his visiting French counterpart Stephane Sejourne, according to a statement issued by the Israeli foreign ministry.

The Royal Jordanian Air Force alongside the Dutch Air Force have made humanitarian aid drops in the vicinity of the Jordanian Field Hospital 77 in northern Gaza, according to the Jordanian army.

“The aid that was dropped contained relief, humanitarian and medical materials by means of special boxes equipped with parachutes guided by the GPS system, with the aim of delivering them to the specified locations and within the necessary timings,” the army said in a statement.