Israel demolishes more buildings in military-controlled Gaza: Analysis


_{Satellite images show new destruction in the Shujayea neighborhood of Gaza City}

Satellite images reviewed by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency show that the Israeli military has continued to demolish buildings in areas of Gaza it has occupied since a ceasefire with Hamas went into effect.

The Palestinian group has decried such demolitions as a violation of the ceasefire deal, which went into force on October 10. Legal experts and United Nations officials have said throughout the war that the destruction of civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Al Jazeera, but officials have previously said such actions have been done within the ceasefire’s framework and were in response to active threats.

Israel has remained in control of about 58 percent of Gaza since the ceasefire began, withdrawing behind the so-called “yellow line” that divides coastal Gaza from its border regions.

Satellite images showed the latest demolitions took place between November 5 and December 13, with most concentrated in the Shujayea and the Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City.

The images also appeared to show demolitions in the southern city of Rafah as well as the apparent destruction of agricultural facilities east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

In an email to Al Jazeera, Adil Haque, a professor of law and armed conflict at Rutgers Law School, explained that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, “any destruction by an Occupying Power of private property is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations”.

“The exception is extremely narrow. The destruction must be absolutely necessary, not merely convenient or advantageous,” Haque said. “And the absolute necessity must arise from military operations, that is, from combat or direct preparations for combat.”

“With a general ceasefire in place, and only a few sporadic exchanges of fire, it is not plausible that such significant destruction of civilian property has been rendered absolutely necessary by military operations,” he added.

Violations continue

The Sanad analysis further found that Israel appears to have created a new advanced military outpost in Tal al-Za’atar in northern Gaza, with new tents and equipment added between November 5 and December 13.

Before its creation, there were 39 active Israeli military points inside the enclave, according to Sanad.Israeli military operations have devastated Gaza throughout the war, with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reporting last month that 282,000 housing units have been destroyed in the enclave, where about 1.5 million Palestinians remain displaced.

About 93 percent of schools have been destroyed or damaged throughout the war, with 63 percent of hospitals remaining out of commission as of December 9.

A UN Human Rights Council independent commission in September repeatedly cited attacks on civilian infrastructure, particularly medical facilities, in finding that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

ICC rejects Israeli bid to block Gaza war crimes investigation

The appeals chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has rejected one of Israel’s legal challenges seeking to block an investigation into its actions in the genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, dealing a blow to Israel’s efforts to derail the case.

In their decision issued on Monday, judges refused to overturn a lower court decision allowing the ICC prosecutor to investigate alleged crimes in Israel’s war on Gaza following the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The decision clears the way for the continuation of the court’s Palestine investigation, which led to the issuance of arrest warrants in November last year for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Israel does not recognise the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and has repeatedly denied committing war crimes in Gaza.

The ICC had also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas leader Ibrahim al-Masri, but later withdrew it after credible reports of his death.

The appeal focused on whether the ICC prosecutor was required to issue a fresh notification to Israel before investigating events that took place after October 7, 2023. Israel argued that the post-October 7 assault on Gaza constituted a new situation, triggered by additional referrals submitted to the court by seven other countries since November 2023, including South Africa, Chile and Mexico.

Judges rejected that argument, ruling that the original notification issued in 2021 – when the ICC formally opened its investigation into alleged crimes in occupied Palestine – already covered later events.

They said no new notification was required, meaning the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant remain valid.

The ruling comes as Israel’s assault on Gaza continues to exact a devastating toll. Since a ceasefire took effect on October 11, 2025, at least 391 Palestinians have been killed and 1,063 wounded, and 632 bodies recovered, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

Since October 7, 2023, the ministry says, at least 70,663 Palestinians have been killed and 171,139 injured.

US said to rebuke Netanyahu for hit on Hamas general, amid broader anger over Gaza

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-said-to-rebuke-netanyahu-for-hit-on-hamas-general-amid-broader-anger-over-gaza/

The White House sent a stiff rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Israeli strike on senior Hamas commander Raad Saad on Saturday, two US officials told a US outlet.

“The White House message to Netanyahu was, ‘If you want to ruin your reputation and show that you don’t abide by agreements, be our guest, but we won’t allow you to ruin President Trump’s reputation after he brokered the deal in Gaza,'” one of the US officials told Axios on Monday.

The US told Netanyahu that Israel violated the ceasefire with the strike, the report said.

The officials told the US outlet that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, top envoy Steve Witkoff, and Middle East adviser Jared Kushner are fed up with Netanyahu. “Steve and Jared are pissed by Israeli inflexibility around several Gaza-related issues,” said one of the Americans.

...

The reported allegations by the administration came two weeks before Netanyahu and Trump are scheduled to meet at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

An Israeli official told Axios that the White House is indeed displeased, but sent a relatively restrained message that “certain Arab countries” saw the assassination as a violation of the ceasefire. The officials added that it was Hamas that had violated the ceasefire by carrying out attacks on soldiers and trying to smuggle weapons into Gaza.

But the White House felt that Israel was unnecessarily angering potential Arab partners and would not move on from the war in Gaza to a new era of peace-making, according to US officials who spoke to Axios.

Over the last two years, Netanyahu has become “a global pariah. He should ask himself why [Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-] Sissi refuses to meet him and why, five years after the Abraham Accords, he still hasn’t been invited to visit the UAE,” a US official said. “The Trump administration is doing a lot of hard work to fix it. But if Netanyahu doesn’t want to take the steps that are needed to de-escalate, we are not going to waste our time on trying to expand the Abraham Accords.”

A government official told The Times of Israel on Friday that the premier is actively seeking a sit-down with Sissi, but Cairo still fears that Israel has not ruled out efforts to push Palestinians southwards in the Strip toward Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula — a possibility it considers a red line and a national security threat.

The White House is also upset over settler violence in the West Bank, according to a senior US official. “The US doesn’t ask Netanyahu to compromise Israel’s security. We ask him not to take steps that are perceived in the Arab world as provocations,” the official told Axios.


The only reason the US does anything to reign in Netanyahu is to protect Trump's deals with the Arab states...

Israel Humiliates Trump With Ceasefire Break

Israel Weaponises Bondi Beach Atrocity - ALL Violence Must Be Opposed

Antony Loewenstein on the Hanukkah Massacre in Sydney & the Muslim Food Vendor Who Saved Lives

At least 15 people were fatally shot during a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney's famed Bondi Beach this Saturday, and at least another 42 people were injured, marking Australia's worst mass shooting in nearly three decades. Victims included a 10-year-old girl, two rabbis and a Holocaust survivor who died while shielding his wife from bullets.

The attack that happened in Australia has had so much conflicting information, people have no clue what to believe anymore.

For example the shooter (the son):
- He was Pakistani Muslim migrant
- He was Israeli IDF and just come back from Gaza
- He was born in Australia

The hero:
- Syrian Muslim
- Lebanese Christian

The Guardian cleared some of it up

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/15/pakistani-man-living-in-australia-describes-nightmare-of-being-labelled-as-bondi-attacker

....

Akram was not alone in being caught up in false and malicious reports that spread across social media after the shooting. One X post with more than 8m views incorrectly claimed the shooter was an IDF soldier, while another claimed the shooter was a Lebanese man of Palestinian descent.

Meanwhile, the man who tackled one of the shooters and took his gun from him has been confirmed as 43-year-old father-of-two, Ahmed al-Ahmed. But on X users falsely claimed the hero was actually a 47-year-old IT worker, with a British name.

The posts linked to a website called “thedailyaus.world”, which was registered on Sunday in Iceland to a registration company, according to WHOIS records, so it is unclear who operates the site.

This misinformation was repeated by X’s AI chatbot, Grok, which responded to users falsely claiming the wrong man “heroically tackled and disarmed a gunman during a terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, getting shot twice but preventing more deaths”.

Timothy Graham, an associate professor at Queensland University of Technology, said the fact the Grok post had not had a community note applied to it in the 10 hours after it was posted showed how X’s fact-checking system failed on deeply-divided content during such an event.

On some posts identifying al-Ahmed, users submitted community notes claiming another man was the perpetrator and linking to the site in Iceland, but those notes were not published on any posts seen by Guardian Australia.

Some accounts did correctly name al-Ahmed, but they incorrectly claimed he was a Maronite Christian, when he is Syrian Muslim.

There were also false claims that Muslims had set off fireworks in Bankstown in western Sydney in celebration of the attack. The fireworks were in nearby Padstow and were part of a Christmas carols event.

Contributing to the pile-on, one user labelled the Bonnyrigg home address of the alleged shooter as a mosque on Google Maps. The label has since been removed.

This shit is only going to get worse with AI bots spreading disinformation. That Grok can so easily be misled should be a warning for all. And this site in Iceland put up yesterday to spread disinformation is extremely suspicious, adding to the false flag claims.




Here's some (maybe fact checked) news

What we know so far about the Bondi Beach attack on a Hanukkah event

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/bondi-beach-attack-9.7015801

• 15 killed, at least 38 others treated in hospitals after 2 shooters fire on Hanukkah celebration at Australia's most popular beach.
• 1 suspect dead, another in a coma. Were father and son, investigators say.
• Attack was act of terrorism, says Australian government.
• Shooter amassed 6 guns legally, PM says.

Suspects attacked Jewish beachside gathering

Little is known about the suspects in the attack on Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach, but there was widespread shock when officials said that the two men pictured firing weapons in social media videos were related.

The 50-year-old father, who was killed, arrived in Australia in 1998 on a student visa, authorities said, and was an Australian resident when he died. Officials wouldn’t confirm what country he had migrated from.

His 24-year-old Australian-born son, who was shot and wounded, is being treated at a hospital.


The target was a Hanukkah celebration where hundreds had gathered to celebrate the first day of the eight-day Jewish holiday. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it an act of antisemitic terrorism.

Albanese said that Australia’s main domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Agency, had investigated the son for six months in 2019. The Australian TV network ABC reported that the agency had examined the son’s ties to a Sydney-based Islamic State group cell. Albanese did not describe the associates, but said the spy agency was interested in them rather than the son.

Police said the father held a firearms licence and that he was a member of a gun club, which suggests he was a target shooter.

Victims include rabbis, 10-year-old girl

Among the 15 victims were a rabbi who was a father of five, a Holocaust survivor and a 10-year-old girl, according to interviews, officials and local media reports.

The identities of the victims haven't been formally revealed by authorities but some information has begun to emerge. Here's some of what we know so far about the victims:

• Eli Schlanger, 41, was assistant rabbi at Chabad Bondi, which put on the event.
• Peter Meagher, a retired policeman and longtime rugby volunteer, was struck down while working as a freelance photographer at the event.
• French national Dan Elkayam, 27, played soccer with Rockdale Ilinden Football Club.
• Matilda, 10, a primary school student described as a “bright, joyful, and spirited child."
• Reuven Morrison, described as "a member of the Chabad community."
• Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman, 87, who reportedly died shielding his wife.
• Rabbi Yaakov Levitan served as secretary of the Sydney Jewish religious organization Beth Din.
• Tibor Weitzen, 78, who migrated to Australia from Israel in 1988.
• Marika Pogany, 82, "a dedicated volunteer."

Praise for a man who tried to help

One dramatic clip broadcast on Australian television showed a man appearing to tackle and disarm one of the gunmen, before pointing the man’s weapon at him, then setting the gun on the ground.

The man was identified by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke as Ahmed al-Ahmed. The 43-year-old Syrian-Muslim fruit shop owner and father of two was shot by the other gunman and is recovering in hospital.

Sadly people will believe the lies still, which is scary as you pointed out as with AI bots things will continue to get worst across future events in the world.

Only way to clear this nonsense up is to get  the man a 60mins interview and tell the world about himself. Sad we have come to this.

That won't help either, people have made up their minds long before any correction can get through the noise.

It's nothing new:

Jonathan Swift wrote in The Examiner on 9th November 1710, “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.”

The Portland Gazette of 5th September 1820 has, “Falsehood will fly from Maine to Georgia, while truth is pulling her boots on.”

Later used by Mark Twain, Winston Churchill.


And nowadays with the internet distance doesn't matter anymore and time for any corrections is extremely limited. Hence Trump can lie all he wants, fact checks are ignored, come too late. 

AI could also be used for real time fact checking, yet those building AI seem to have other plans :/ 

Reports from mid-to-late 2025 suggest bots generate more than half of all web traffic, a significant increase from human-driven traffic.

We're already being replaced... 

Bondi Beach attacks: Triple setback for Netanyahu; Trump omits hero’s identity

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has rejected Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that there was a link between the Bondi Beach attacks and the recognition of Palestinian statehood by Australia. Another former PM, Malcolm Trumbull, too told Netanyahu to stay out of Australian politics. Elsewhere, the International Criminal Court has rejected Netanyahu’s appeal in the ongoing Gaza investigation. Rifat Jawaid analyses the situation and asks why Donald Trump couldn’t pronounce the Bondi Beach hero’s name, ethnicity and religious background.

How to Kill People and Get Away With It *Using AI*

Bondi gunmen inspired by ISIS, travelled to Philippines, Australia police say

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/australia-police-say-bondi-gunmen-had-homemade-isis-flags-in-vehicle/

Two alleged gunmen who attacked a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach had travelled to the Philippines before the assault, which killed 15 people, and appeared to be inspired by Islamic State, police said on Tuesday.

The attack on Sunday was Australia’s worst mass shooting in nearly 30 years, and is being investigated as an act of terrorism targeting the Jewish community.

The death toll stands at 16, including one of the alleged gunmen, identified by police as Sajid Akram, 50, who was shot by police. The man’s 24-year-old son and alleged accomplice, identified by local media as Naveed Akram, was in critical condition in hospital after also being shot.

Authorities probing Philippines trip

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/16/bondi-beach-attack-police-focus-visit-philippines

Australian police said on Tuesday both men had travelled to the Philippines last month and the purpose of the trip is under investigation.

Philippine immigration officials said both men travelled to Manila and onward to Davao in the south of the country on November 1 and left on November 28, just weeks before the Bondi shooting.

The father travelled on an Indian passport, while the son was on an Australian passport, officials said, adding it was not conclusive they were linked to any terrorist group or whether they received training in the country.

“Early indications point to a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State, allegedly committed by a father and son,” Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said at a news conference.

“These are the alleged actions of those who have aligned themselves with a terrorist organization, not a religion.”


Islamic state-linked networks are known to operate in the Philippines and have wielded some influence in the south of the country. They have been reduced to weakened cells operating in the southern Mindanao island in recent years, far from the scale of influence they wielded during the 2017 Marawi siege.

It is not yet known what the two men did in the Philippines but for many years, security officials and analysts have described time spent overseas in the company of committed and experienced militants as the “X-factor” that can transform an amateurish ambition into a competently executed attack.

One suggestion – that they sought to have a final blowout holiday – appears unlikely. Examples of this among such attackers are vanishingly rare. A second is that the pair sought military training from the small number of active extremist factions in Mindanao. This is more plausible but would involve two inexperienced men from Australia surmounting formidable logistic and other challenges.

Often the purpose of military training overseas is not to impart skills but to build a sense of camaraderie and to instil determined purpose. We know from dozens of past plots – those in Paris in 2015, the 7/7 attacks in London 2007, those of 9/11 in 2001, for example – that this is often the crucial element.

But this can be done in different ways: through intensive instruction by some charismatic and respected individual in the militants’ twisted version of religion, for example, rather than military skills. Being isolated, especially far away from familiar habitats and people, allows rapid indoctrination, particularly if the ground has been prepared by systematic consumption of online propaganda.


Police also said the vehicle which is registered to the younger male contained improvised explosive devices and two homemade flags associated with ISIS, a militant group designated by Australia and many other countries as a terrorist organization.

The father and son allegedly fired upon hundreds of people at the festival during a roughly 10-minute killing spree at one of Australia’s top tourist destinations, forcing people to flee and take shelter before both were shot by police.

Videos have emerged of the younger shooter preaching Islam outside train stations in suburban Sydney. Authorities are still trying to piece together how he went down the path of violence.

...

Ahmed al Ahmed, the 43-year-old Muslim father-of-two who charged at one of the gunmen and seized his rifle, remains in a Sydney hospital with gunshot wounds. He has been hailed as a hero around the world, including by U.S. President Donald Trump.

A GoFundMe campaign set up for Ahmed has raised more than A$1.9 million (US$1.26 million).

Thousands of Australians queued outside blood donation centers across the country to donate blood, responding to calls from medical agencies.



Tougher gun laws

Australia’s gun laws are now being examined by the federal government, after police said Sajid Akram was a licensed gun owner and had six registered weapons.

Akram received his gun license in 2023, not 2015 as had been earlier stated, police said on Tuesday.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said gun laws introduced by the previous conservative Liberal-National coalition government following the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania needed to be re-examined.

I read somewhere else that he only had hunting rifles. Don't you need to reload those? How do two people manage to kill 15 and wound another 28 in 10 minutes with hunting rifles? (How do you kill a person at all is a bigger mystery to me, sick individuals)

From the BBC:

Looking at footage, NR Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, said “two sporting shotguns” used in the mass shooting may have been a specific type of Stoeger M3000 M3K straight-pull model.

According to Jenzen-Jones, straight-pull sporting shotguns are a commonly-owned weapon as they offer a relatively fast-firing action under current firearms law in Australia.

Experts from the open-source intelligence firm Janes said another rifle used by one of gunmen during the attack was highly likely to be a Beretta BRX1 - a gun designed for hunting large game.

Both weapons can be legally held under New South Wales and Australian firearm licensing laws, external.

Better re-examine those sporting licenses....

Linking Bondi attack to pro-Palestine marches is dishonest, dangerous

Independent author and journalist Anthony Lowenstein, speaking from Sydney, has condemned the anti-Semitic attack in Bondi Beach during Hanukkah but said he was angered by its swift political weaponisation.

He criticised Australian and Israeli officials for linking the attack to pro-Palestine protests, arguing this falsely conflates anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

ISIS / IS State is not against Jews in particular, it's basically the same doctrine as the extreme version of Christianity and Judaism, to bring about the apocalypse, end-time prophecies, kill all non believers. Which includes Muslims that aren't true believers, not adhering to fundamentalist Sharia law. Christians and Atheists are fair game as well, just as extremist Settlers in the West Bank attack Christian churches as well, or rather make no distinction between Christian Palestinians, Muslim Palestinians or atheists, activists. Us vs them mentality. Where them is everyone that's not Us. Hence no remorse over collateral deaths...

It's a sick 'ideology' on all three sides of the Abrahamic religions. Whether the Bondi beach attack was actually inspired by this 'ideology' is unclear. But it does seem the attackers were recruited by IS State militants in the Philippines. How they got there is still a mystery.


It's a never ending cycle. Religion gets abused to keep people divided, which leads to extremism, which leads to using extremist religious beliefs to recruit terrorists, which leads to politicians pointing at religions as the cause further dividing people.

Pro Palestine marches have nothing to do with all this, nor does anti-semitism have anything do with anti genocide protests. But those in power would rather see Palestinians disappear to further control over the ME so anti-semitism and islamophobia are stoked up to undermine any criticism of Israel's actions. And as a side effect, extremist terrorist organizations get more recruits. Action, re-action.


There are still the other questions as well, why were the attacker's names searched up on Google from Tel Aviv days before the attack. AI now says it has been debunked, this article still raises questions.

https://www.wionews.com/world/bondi-beach-attack-google-trends-naveed-akram-search-anomaly-1765861479778

So was there a search interest for Naveed Akram in Tel Aviv?

At the outset, when we tried to seek evidence for search data on the keyword "Naveed Akram", in Google Trends, we could not find any evidence of the search. Here is the genuinely interesting part: What does not appear in usual search results can be found using a VPN. Which means Google Trends is showing different historical data based on the user's location, which would be unprecedented. So, below are the four screenshots we collected when searching for Naveed Akram from different regions, such as Romania, Canada and Japan.

False flag no, egged on or knew about it and didn't tell is another possibility. Just as more and more evidence points to Israel knowing about Oct 7 and telling soldiers to stand down before the attack, then taking many hours to respond. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7825rk8j9o

Whether the Bondi Beach attack is linked at all to what's happening in Israel-Gaza is of course unclear. The only thing that is clear is that Israel is politicizing the terrorist attack to blame Pro Palestinian marches for the rise in anti-semitism.