White House says it is not seeking wider conflict in the Middle East after US helicopters sink Houthi boats
The White House said Sunday it is not seeking a wider conflict in the Middle East after US helicopters sank three Houthi boats in the Red Sea after coming under fire. The helicopters sank the boats and killed those aboard, marking the first occasion since tensions broke out earlier this year that the US has killed members of the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel group — which has been targeting commercial and merchant vessels in the Red Sea.
The US has so far avoided directly striking the group inside Yemen as it seeks to avoid escalating the crisis further. But a National Security Council spokesperson said Sunday that the US would continue acting in its own self defense.
“We don't seek a conflict wider in the region and we're not looking for a conflict with the Houthis. The best outcome here would be for the Houthis to stop these attacks, as we have made clear over and over again,” the spokesperson, John Kirby, said on ABC News.
Sure sending a 20 coalition fleet into the Red Sea is not seeking wider conflict at all. Fighting the fallout of the genocide you're backing without any indications to solve the cause and only letting it escalate further and further is not seeking wider conflict at all.
Also disgusting 20 countries come together to protect global trade (which can still find other routes) but continue to stand by genocide. The double standards couldn't be more at show. 2.3 million people dying and starving, eh, any 'threat' to the economy, mobilize a fleet!
And if it's up to Netanyahu, the 'war' or rather systematic destruction and ethic cleansing of gaza will go on for many more months.
Facing pressure, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says he will not resign from office
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Saturday that he will not resign from office after facing criticism for failing to anticipate the October 7 attacks. Netanyahu was pressed about taking accountability during a news conference.
"Your question about the willingness to resign — that comes back again and again ... The only thing I intend to resign from is Hamas. That’s what I’m going to resign from. That’s what I’m dealing with and nothing else," Netanyahu said.
Winds have been shifting against the prime minister as Israel’s war in Gaza drags and as Hamas continues to hold hostages. Multiple opinion polls suggest national favor toward Netanyahu and his governing coalition is collapsing, despite continued overwhelming support in Israel for the war on Hamas.
A long war lies ahead: Netanyahu also said during the news conference on Saturday that Israel’s war against Hamas "will continue for many more months."
"My policy is clear: We are continuing to fight until the goals of the war have been achieved, especially the elimination of Hamas and the release of all our hostages," the prime minister said, according to a translated transcript of his comments released by his office.
Israel’s war against Hamas is at its “highest level and will continue for months,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday, according to Israel’s Army Radio. His comments come as the death toll in Gaza rose to nearly 21,700 since Israeli military operations began on October 7, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza.
At least 165 people have been killed over the past day, and 250 others wounded, ministry spokesperson Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra said Saturday. The ministry has confirmed the deaths of at least 21,672 people, and the injury of at least 56,165, since Israel's offensive in the enclave began, according to the spokesperson. About 70% of the war's victims are children and women, Al-Qudra said.
Far-right Israeli minister calls for resettlement after war
A far-right Israeli minister says he is in favour of Israeli resettlement of the Gaza Strip after the war. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told Israel’s Army Radio that there will be an exodus of Palestinians “and we will live in the Gaza Strip”. “We will not allow a situation in which two million people live there. If there are 100,000 to 200,000 Arabs living in Gaza, the discussion about the day after will be completely different,” Smotrich was quoted in a post by the channel on X.
Gazans displaced to Rafah tell CNN of sky-high food prices and acute overcrowding
Palestinians displaced inside Gaza have described cramped living conditions, sky-high prices for food, children going hungry and poor sanitation. 
CNN spoke by phone with several people trying to survive in Rafah, in the south, which tens of thousands have fled to despite it already being the most densely populated part of Gaza.
“The way I am getting by is by begging here and there and taking help from anyone,” said Abu Misbah, a 51-year-old building worker trying to support a family of 10. Vegetables and fruit were unaffordable, he said. His children asked for oranges, but he was not able to buy them. “We never (been) through this situation before; we were a middle-class family,” he said. “Now, since the war, we are buying dates — which we used to find everywhere for free. We want a solution to our miserable suffering.”
Umm Omar, 50, is also displaced in Rafah, and lives in a tent. During the truce, his family had briefly returned home only to find all the windows and solar panels broken, and the kitchen destroyed. “We are nine people in a tent of two meters by one meter,” she said. “We have bought this camping tent ourselves; no one helped us or provided it.” Omar said the group was getting by on canned food, and estimated that most foods were at least four times as expensive as before the war. Medication is also hard to find.
“Life is difficult and humiliating; the word humiliating is not even close to describing it,” she told CNN.
In recent days, large groups of civilians desperate for food have been seen surrounding aid trucks coming into Gaza in a desperate scramble for help. The United Nations has warned that the humanitarian situation in southern Gaza is deteriorating. It warned that the volume of aid entering the enclave “remains woefully inadequate.”
UNRWA says 1.4 million Palestinians now living in its facilities
A spokeswoman for the UN agency providing aid and relief to Palestinian refugees says “the facilities in the north are becoming crowded by the hour … They are absolutely full and so people have started taking refuge in areas outside these facilities, including in parks, in the open, many are sleeping in their cars.”
“Our facilities, yes they have been hit. We have recorded 180 hits on our facilities, some were directly hit and as a result of these hits, at least 300 people who were sheltering in these facilities got killed and around a thousand were injured,” Juliette Touma said.
‘Literally unbelievable’: Tens of thousands arrive in Rafah
Gemma Connell, an official with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) who has been working in Gaza, says tens of thousands of people fleeing to Rafah during Israeli attacks often arrive with no possessions or anywhere to sleep.
“I just am so fearful that the amount of deaths that we’ve been seeing is going to increase exponentially both because of this renewed offensive, but also because of these conditions which are literally unbelievable,” she told Reuters news agency.
The UN agency said earlier that over the past few days, an estimated 100,000 people arrived in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town on the border with Egypt, after intense new Israeli ground and aerial attacks around the central town of Deir el-Balah and the southern city of Khan Younis.
Closing out 2023 with some horrific statistics
Number of Palestinians killed in 2023 largest since the Nakba
The Palestinian death toll this year is the largest Palestine has witnessed since the 1948 Nakba.
The Central Bureau of Statistics says at the end of 2023 the number of people killed in the occupied territories stands at 22,404, including 22,141 since October 7. At least 98 percent were in the Gaza Strip, including about 9,000 children and 6,450 women.
The number of people killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7 reached 319, including 111 children and four women.
More than 100 journalists were also killed, according to the Health Ministry, while the number of missing persons in Gaza is more than 7,000 people, 67 percent women and children.
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