Regional actors need to push the US to ‘rein in’ Israel in Gaza
Middle East powers such as Turkiye and the Gulf states need to pressure the US to force Israel to return to and abide by the ceasefire before Trump gets distracted by other issues, according to Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer in international security at King’s College London.
“This is where regional powers need to say, ‘Hey, this is slipping away whilst you are looking elsewhere. You need to throw your weight behind this, and you need to rein in Israel,'” he told Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, Israel would like to maintain the current status quo in terms of directly occupying more than 50 percent of Gaza with the rest, a “rump” Gaza state, under Israeli siege.
“This is exactly what Israel wants – for this status quo that is supposed to be temporary to become permanent,” he said. “This is not a way to resolve the conflict. It’s a way to perpetuate the conflict and grievances to make further conflicts inevitable.”
Private Israeli contractors profit from demolition work in ruined Gaza
Private Israeli contractors carrying out demolition work in the ruins of Gaza are “profiting from a crime”, a Palestinian human rights defender says.
Israeli contractors have been getting paid upwards of $1,000 a day for carrying out the demolition work, according to Israeli reports, with some posting their handiwork on social media.
“They are feasting on this crime. They are profiting from a crime, and in legal terms, they’re aiding and abetting a crime,” Tahseen Elayyan of the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq told Al Jazeera.
On top of the demolition work, some of the contractors have been adding to the rubble in Gaza by taking construction waste and debris left by the Israeli army in Israeli communities next to Gaza and dumping it on top of Gaza’s ruins.
“They have the intent to make Gaza unliveable, and this contributes to the bigger crime [of] genocide,” Elayyan said.
Death toll from latest Israeli attacks on Gaza rises to 104
The Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that Israeli attacks across Gaza since last night have killed at least 104 Palestinians, including 46 children, and wounded at least 253.
Since the ceasefire was agreed on October 10, at least 211 Palestinians have been killed and 597 wounded in Israeli attacks, while 482 bodies have been recovered, the ministry said.
Israel’s war on Gaza has now killed at least 68,643 people and wounded 170,655 since it began in October 2023, according to the ministry’s latest figures.
Israel kills another journalist in Gaza in campaign to ‘suppress’ reporting from Strip
Among the 100 people killed in Gaza in the latest Israeli attacks was a journalist [Mohammed al-Munirawi] and his wife. They were sheltering in a tent [in Nuseirat in central Gaza].
It brings the total number of journalists killed since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza to 256 [according to figures from the Government Media Office in Gaza] in an attempt by the Israeli military to suppress any criticism or any voices that document the atrocities and violations of human rights across the Gaza Strip.
It seems like in every wave of attacks, the Israeli military does not miss an opportunity to kill a Palestinian journalist reporting on the ongoing genocidal attacks across the Strip.
