Live: Major clashes break out near Bethlehem after Israeli raid

The US plans to appoint a two-star American general to oversee an international stabilisation force in Gaza, although it has provided no hard deadline for when the force will deploy or details about who will participate. 

According to a report by Axios, Major General Jasper Jeffers, special operations commander for US Central Command, could be tapped. He previously oversaw the ceasefire in Lebanon, which has seen regular Israeli attacks on the country. 

The US also weighed naming former United Nations Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov to serve as the "Gaza Board of Peace's" envoy inside the enclave. The US invited Germany and Italy to join the board. 

Israel launched new raids across the occupied West Bank on Thursday, according to Arabic media reports. 

The sound of explosions were reported in the village of Sila al-Harithiya northwest of Jenin, according to Al Jazeera Arabic. 

Israeli soldiers also raided the village of Koobar near Ramallah in the centre of the occupied West Bank. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to say on Thursday when the US would unveil phase two of its Gaza ceasefire plan.

Leavitt said the US will make the announcement “at the appropriate time”.

“There is a lot of quiet planning going on behind the scenes right now for phase two of the peace deal, and the United States will make those announcements public at the appropriate time,” she said. 

Trump said earlier this week that the phase of his plan for Gaza, which includes an international stabilisation force, would be announced in early 2026. 

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip face "another layer of misery" as Storm Byron bears down on the enclave, the United Nations Agency for Palestinians said on Wednesday. 

"People who had already lost everything and need everything face another layer of misery. More hardship for displaced families living in makeshift shelters with rain bringing floods, damage and additional health threats," Unrwa said.

The agency said its teams are working to support people wherever they can, by pumping away sewage and floodwater, clearing garbage, distributing tarpaulins, winter clothes and blankets, and providing medical care.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Wednesday that only a trickle of tents and shelters has been allowed into the Gaza Strip.

The NRC said that the United Nations and international aid groups have only been able to bring 15,600 tents into Gaza since the October ceasefire. 

“At least 761 displacement sites hosting around 850,000 people are at risk of flooding,” NRC said. 

“International aid organisations remain blocked from bringing in relief, and nearly 4,000 pallets of shelter materials have been rejected," the NRC said. 

"Gaza urgently needs heavy machinery, tools and shelter items to prevent catastrophic flooding," the statement added. 

Nemo, the Swiss singer and winner of the 2024 Eurovision contest, has returned his trophy in protest against Israel's participation in the contest.

"I no longer feel this trophy belongs on my shelf," Nemo wrote in a statement on Thursday. 

"Eurovision says it stands for unity, inclusion, and dignity for all. Those values made this contest meaningful to me. But Israel's continued participation, during what the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry has concluded to be a genocide, shows a clear conflict between those ideals and the decisions made by the EBU," the statement added, referring to the Eurovision contest. 

"The contest was repeatedly used to soften the image of a state accused of severe wrongdoing, all while the EBU
insisted Eurovision is 'non-political.'" the statement added. 

"When entire countries withdraw over this contradiction, it should be clear that something is deeply wrong...That's why I've decided that I'm sending my trophy back to the EBU headquarters in Geneva," the statement said. 
 

The Israeli military shot at a Palestinian doctor in Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, wounding him, according to the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry. 

Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said the doctor was shot in the thigh after leaving the home of a family in mourning. He was taken to Jenin’s Ibn Sina Hospital.

Israeli soldiers have launched attacks on Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank. 

Hamas have criticised threats by far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir to destroy the tomb of Palestinian nationalist leader Ezzedine al-Qassam, for whom Hamas names their armed wing.

Ben Gvir posted a video on X showing him accompanying security forces as they dismantled a prayer tent next to the grave of Qassam, who was a prominent Palestinian leader in the armed uprising against the British and Zionism in 1930s Palestine.

"The tomb of arch-terrorist Ezzedine al-Qassam in Nesher must be removed. And yesterday at dawn, we took the first step," Ben Gvir wrote on X.

Qassam's grave is situated near Haifa in what is now northern Israel and has been a target for vandalism over the years.

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi called Ben Gvir's threat "an unprecedented level of transgression against sanctity and desecration of holy sites, and a violation of the sanctity of graves".

"Targeting the grave of al-Qassam... is not merely an attack on a grave, but rather an attempt to erase the memory of a nation and remove a testament to our ongoing struggle," he said in a statement.

"Extremism has become an official, declared policy, requiring international action to curb this barbarity."

Four bodies and 10 injured Palestinians were brought to hospitals across the enclave in the past 24 hours, according to Gaza's health ministry.

The ministry said in a statement on Telegram that 383 Palestinians have been killed, 1,002 people have been injured, and 627 bodies have been recovered since the ceasefire began in October.

Since the war began in October 2023, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed 70,373 people and injured 171,079 others, the ministry added.

In a recent New York Times column, one of former President Barack Obama’s closest advisers, Ben Rhodes, offered a long-overdue and merciless analysis of how badly the US Democratic Party has mismanaged the Gaza tragedy - and more broadly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past decade.

He summarised the Biden administration’s policy after 7 October 2023 as the “hug Bibi” strategy, referencing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The assumption was that “smothering Mr. Netanyahu with unconditional support would give the U.S. leverage to influence his actions”. 

Never has an assumption been more wrong.

Netanyahu, a true master in deceiving the Washington establishment, bamboozled a US administration once again. He took everything from President Joe Biden without conceding anything; the notorious US leverage was thus absent in Gaza.

Read more: 'Hug Bibi' strategy: Ben Rhodes shows how Democrats lost the plot on Gaza Opinion by Marco Carnelos

Three buildings collapsed on their residents in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, southeast of Gaza City, due to a storm, Al Jazeera Arabic and local sources reported.

Gaza’s Civil Defence urged residents not to stay in buildings at risk of collapse and warned they could be brought down by the storm.

#صورة| انهيار شقة الصحفية ابتسام مهدي في حي تل الهوا جنوب غرب مدينة غزة. pic.twitter.com/HmLV6FHuma

— المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام (@PalinfoAr) December 11, 2025

The Trump administration is planning to appoint an American two-star general to command the International Stabilization Force in Gaza, Axios reported on Thursday, citing two US officials and two Israeli officials.

A United Nations Security Council resolution, adopted on 17 November, authorised a Board of Peace and countries working with it to establish a temporary International Stabilization Force in Gaza.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, who visited Israel this week, told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials that the Trump administration is going to lead the ISF and appoint a two-star general as its commander, Axios said.

Israel said on Thursday that Hamas "will be disarmed" as part of the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza, after a top leader from the group suggested a weapons freeze.

"There will be no future for Hamas under the 20-point plan," the Israeli official told AFP, adding that the group will be disarmed and Gaza will be demilitarised.

Hamas's Khaled Meshaal told Qatari news channel Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the group is open to a weapons "freeze", but rejects the demand for disarmament put forward in US President Donald Trump's plan for Gaza.

Gaza’s Government Media Office rejected the US envoy's claim that 600 trucks were coming in daily since the ceasefire deal in October, saying that no more than 234 trucks of aid per day have arrived in the enclave since then.

The US ambassador Mike Waltz’s claim represents a “blatant attempt to exonerate the [Israeli] occupation from the crime of the blockade and starving the civilian population”, the office said in a statement.

The government office said that the prevention of trucks entering Gaza, as stipulated in the ceasefire deal, is a means of "adopting a systematic economic strangulation policy aimed at keeping the Gaza Strip on the brink of famine".

The media office also said that Israel is blocking dozens of essential items, including basic food, medical supplies and spare parts, from entering the enclave.

Israeli shelling in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza killed at least one woman and injured others, Al Jazeera reported, citing ambulance and emergency services in the Strip.

The attacks were carried out outside the Israeli army’s areas of control, the report said.