Heavy rains flood tent camps in Gaza



Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that heavy rains have flooded dozens of tents in central Deir el-Balah and in southern al-Mawasi. The rains, accompanied by thunderstorms and plummeting temperatures, are adding to the misery of displaced Palestinians across the Gaza Strip.

UN agencies estimate that some 1.6 million people in Gaza are living in makeshift shelters that do not protect them from the cold of winter, with nearly half a million in flood-prone areas. Authorities in Gaza, meanwhile, say some 110,000 out of the 135,000 tents that people are sheltering in the Strip are worn out and not fit for use.

_{A displaced Palestinian man removes water at a tent camp, following heavy rains in Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, December 30}

Civil defence receives hundreds of distress calls after flooding in Gaza

The agency says it received hundreds of distress calls from displaced people whose tents and shelters were flooded by rainwater.

“Our crews can only evacuate citizens from their damaged shelters to other places that are mostly unsuitable to shelter, and they remain in the open – under the rain and bitter cold,” it said on Telegram.

“We appeal to people of conscience to rush to save these families and help them move to suitable shelters that protect them from rainwater,” it added.

The statement added that displaced people in the refugee camps in central Gaza City, al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, Rafah and western Deir el-Balah, in particular, need help.

UN agencies estimate that some 1.6 million people in Gaza are living in makeshift shelters that do not protect them from the cold of winter, with nearly half a million in flood-prone areas.

More heavy rains, thunderstorms forecast

The Palestinian Meteorological Department is forecasting more rain and thunderstorms across the territory throughout the day today, with temperatures expected to remain cold to very cold, according to the Wafa news agency.

The forecast comes as emergency workers reported flooding across south and central Gaza following heavy rainfall overnight.

Wafa, citing the Meteorological Department, said weather conditions will improve on Wednesday, with clouds expected to begin clearing.

Israel bombs sewage pumping station in Gaza City

The municipal authority in the northern city is warning of a “health and environmental disaster” after Israeli forces bombed and damaged a sewage pumping station in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, according to local media.

The authority said the damage to the station has resulted in sewage levels rising in the streets of Gaza City.

The attack is the latest Israeli assault on Gaza’s critical infrastructure. Israeli forces have destroyed water plants, power stations as well as hospitals and schools across the Gaza Strip during its 14-month-long war on the enclave.

Israel continues to ‘systematically hinder’ humanitarian access to Gaza, UN says

The UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) is warning that Israel is continuing to dismantle the “very means of people’s survival” across Gaza, and “systematically” hindering humanitarian access to the Palestinian enclave.

The agency said Israel allowed UN agencies on Sunday to deliver food, water and basic medical supplies to critical patients who had been forced to flee Kamal Adwan Hospital and take shelter at the non-functional Indonesian Hospital.

But this mission was “exceptional” because Israel has denied all other attempts to access the area over the past three days.

“OCHA emphasizes that it should not require breaking a siege to help survivors in critical need. Aid workers must be granted safe and unhindered access to assist people wherever they are,” it said.

“OCHA stresses that humanitarian access remains systematically hindered across the Gaza Strip. In the past three days, over 60 per cent of the 42 UN-coordinated movements were denied, interfered with or impeded on the ground,” it added.

Hamas appeals to UN, Muslim nations for aid to help with cold weather in Gaza

The Palestinian group has asked for “relief supplies and tents to protect hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians from the cold and the disastrous effects” of Israel’s attacks on the enclave.

Hamas’s statement said: “The humanitarian and legal duty of the international community and the UN requires urgent action to provide relief to our people in the Gaza Strip, who have been subjected to a Zionist crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

The group’s appeal comes after the authorities in Gaza announced that at least seven Palestinians have died of hypothermia in Gaza, including six babies.

Israel continues to strictly restrict the entry of aid into the enclave, including winter supplies.

‘Global silence and abandonment’ as Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital destroyed

The sound of tanks rumbling through the streets outside of Kamal Adwan Hospital woke everyone up. They were already on edge after enduring months of direct Israeli attacks. Then came the loudspeakers ordering everyone to evacuate – the sick, the wounded, medical staff and displaced people seeking shelter – early on Friday morning.

Izzat al-Aswad, a patient at the hospital, told Al Jazeera that he heard Israeli forces summoning Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital director, over their loudspeakers. Dr Abu Safia came back and told people in the hospital they had been ordered to evacuate. A little later, al-Aswad said Israeli soldiers demanded that all the men strip down to their underwear to be allowed to leave.

Shivering, frightened, many of them injured, the men were ordered to walk to a checkpoint the Israelis had set up about two hours away, al-Aswad recounted by phone. At the checkpoint, they gave their full names and had their photographs taken. Then a number was scrawled on their chest and neck by a soldier, indicating they had been searched.

Some of the men were taken for interrogation.

“They beat me and the men around me,” al-Aswad said. “They hit the injured people like me directly on our injuries.”

Activists fear Abu Safia may meet same fate as Adnan al-Bursh, the Palestinian surgeon who died in Israeli custody

As we’ve been reporting, doctors and activists across the world are demanding that Israel release the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital who was arrested along with hundreds of others in a raid on the medical facility last week.

Many on social media are worried that Abu Safia may meet the same fate as Dr Adnan al-Bursh, the director of al-Shifa Hospital, whose death at the Israeli Ofer Prison triggered allegations of torture.

Al-Bursh, one of Gaza’s most prominent doctors, was arrested during an Israeli raid last December and died four months later. Witnesses told the Israeli human rights organisation, HaMoked, that they saw Ofer Prison guards dragging al-Bursh and dumping him in the prison yard.

He was naked from the waist down, bleeding and unable to stand. He died moments later.

At the time, the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, said al-Bursh may have been “raped to death”.

Now, activists are calling on the world to save Abu Safia from a similar fate.

“After Dr. Adnan al-Bursh died in Israeli prisons, amid reports suggesting he may have been raped to death, and with every medical professional subjected to torture for no apparent reason other than their commitment to duty in Gaza’s hospitals, is the world waiting for another story about the death of Dr. Adnan Abu Safiya in Israeli prisons?” asked Maha Hussaini, a Palestinian activist.

Israeli forces raid occupied West Bank towns, 6 arrested: Reports

Live bullets were fried when Israeli forces and local Palestinians clashed during a military raid on Anabta town, located east of Tulkarem, in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

No casualties were reported during the violence on Monday night, which began when Israeli military vehicles stormed into the centre of the town and conducted patrols, Wafa said.

Israeli soldiers also raided al-Khader town, located south of Bethlehem, where they took up positions in two neighbourhoods and were reported to have used sound bombs. There were no reports of casualties, according to Wafa.

Six young Palestinians men were also arrested by Israeli forces in the Aqabat Jaber refugee camp, south of Jericho, Wafa reported.

Israeli forces carry out more raids in occupied West Bank: Report

The army has arrested four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Qalqilya, according to the Wafa news agency.

Elsewhere in the city of Tulkarem, three Palestinians were arrested by the Israeli forces, while another person was taken in the town of Beitunia, west of Ramallah. They were arrested during Israeli raids, the agency said, adding that their homes were also searched.

Wafa reported earlier in the morning that six young Palestinian men were also arrested in the Aqabat Jaber refugee camp, south of Jericho.

Main events on December 31st

• Two rockets have been fired from central Gaza into southern Israel, with one intercepted and the second landing in an open area, the Israeli military said.
• Gaza’s babies and newborns are particularly vulnerable as cold weather and flooding hit the Strip, where “people have no real shelter”, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, told Al Jazeera.
• UNICEF has warned of the “immense” need for warm clothes and blankets in Gaza as seven infants have died of hypothermia in recent days.
• Israeli attacks have killed at least seven people and left others wounded in separate strikes in Jabalia and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.
• The United Nation’s high commissioner for human rights in the Palestinian territory has accused Israel’s military of carrying out the “systematic destruction of hospitals in the Gaza Strip”.
• Israeli fighter jets have carried out attacks on locations in southern Lebanon, Israel’s Public Broadcasting Corporation reports.
• The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has marked the end of 2024 by honouring the 258 team members killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s war on the territory.

Gaza’s 2024: A year of war and misery

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/31/gazas-2024-a-year-of-war-and-misery

Palestinians in Gaza are entering the new year as defenceless and beleaguered as the last.

Israel’s war on the enclave continued into 2024, killing 23,842 people and wounding 51,925 during this year alone, driving the grisly official death toll to 46,376, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

“This last year has been very dark for us. How can I describe it in any other way? It’s been more than torturous,” said Eman Shaghnoubi, 52, from Deir el-Balah in Gaza.

Shaghnoubi, who has six boys and two girls, said that her children are struggling to survive in the cold and that her small tent does not protect the family from the pouring rain.

“My children sleep on soaked bedding at night,” she told Al Jazeera.

Shereen Abu Nida, 40, also said that she and her four children are coping with hardship due to the terrible living conditions brought on by the war. Worse still, her husband was abducted by Israeli forces about a year ago, leaving her to care for her children alone.

“I have had to go through this whole year alone, all by myself,” she said, her voice quivering.

_{Eman Shaghnoubi stands with her children inside their modest tent which has been soaked by the rainfall in Deir el-Balah, Gaza}

Campaigners says Israeli forces confiscated 198 bodies of Palestinians killed in 2024: Report

Israel’s military is holding the bodies of 198 Palestinians killed throughout 2024, a figure that represents just one-third of all of the bodies of slain Palestinians held by Israeli authorities in morgues and “numbered graves”, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reports.

The National Campaign for the Retrieval of Palestinian and Arab War Victims’ Bodies and the Disclosure of the Fate of Those Missing told Wafa that a total of 641 Palestinian bodies, documents by the group, are being held by Israel. That figure does not include the confiscation and withholding of bodies of Palestinians killed in Gaza, the campaign group said.

While Israeli forces have returned the remains of 325 slain Palestinians to Gaza, there is “no accurate information available” as to the total number of bodies in the possession of Israeli authorities, Wafa said, quoting the group.

Child rights organisation Defense for Children International said in December that the bodies of 39 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces have been withheld from their families since 2016. The figure had reached 45 children’s bodies confiscated by Israeli forces but six of those had been returned to their families.

“Israeli authorities’ practice of confiscating and withholding Palestinian bodies is a violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” the organisation said.

“For families, the practice amounts to collective punishment in violation of international humanitarian law,” it added.

Know their names – Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2024/12/31/know-their-names-the-palestinian-journalists-killed-by-israel-in-gaza

As the conflict in Gaza enters its 15th month, more than 45,400 people have been killed and 108,000 injured.

The war has been particularly marked by the challenges of reporting from a war zone in effect sealed off to reporters from outside Gaza, where reporting has been impossible at times — and far too often, deadly.

Despite these challenges, Palestinian journalists have continued to report the horrors of the war, serving as the world’s eyes and ears during one of the deadliest conflicts of the 21st century.

From October 7, 2023, to December 25, 2024, at least 217 journalists and media workers had been killed in Gaza. Five more were killed on December 26 when an Israeli air strike targeted a news van near al-Awda Hospital. These most recent killings of journalists underscore the perilous environment in which media professionals are operating in Gaza.

Simply put, this has been the worst conflict for journalists — ever.

Israel’s army has killed 1,091 babies in Gaza, media office says

Israeli forces have killed 1,091 Palestinian infants since October 7, 2023, including 238 born and killed during the ongoing war, Gaza’s Government Media Office says.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed at least 17,400 children in Gaza, according to Palestinian officials. That is one child killed every 30 minutes. Thousands more are missing under the rubble, presumed dead.

Israeli settler violence reached record levels in 2024

OCHA is reporting that 2024 saw the highest number of Israeli settler attacks in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since the agency began keeping records nearly two decades ago.

About 1,400 such incidents – including physical assaults, arson attacks, raids on Palestinian communities and the destruction of fruit trees – have resulted in Palestinian casualties, damage to property, or both, it said.

This amounts to nearly four incidents per day.

Of the 4,700 people who were internally displaced across the West Bank this past year, about 560, or 12 percent, cited settler violence and access restrictions as the main reasons that forced them out of their homes or communities, OCHA added.

UN reports ‘abysmal’ conditions at new displacement sites in Gaza City

Israel’s siege and relentless attacks on North Gaza – including Jabalia, Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya – have forced the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Many of them sought refuge in Gaza City.

OCHA, the UN’s humanitarian agency, says those in Gaza City had fled on foot without any personal belongings and are now “struggling to meet even their most basic needs”.

UN agencies conducted a needs assessment at four makeshift displacement sites that are currently hosting more than 1,900 families in Gaza City, and found “abysmal water and sanitation conditions”, it said.

The survey also found that:

UN aid chief says ‘almost zero access’ to besieged north Gaza despite 140 attempts

Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, said survivors of the “horrific destruction” in northern Gaza, which has been under months of Israeli siege and bombardment, must be reached.

In a post on social media, Fletcher said Israeli authorities have given “almost zero access” to the north of Gaza despite more than 140 attempts by the UN over two months to reach the area’s “besieged civilians”.

Access to survivors was all the more urgent “especially now last hospitals have been taken out”, he said.

Monitor says Israeli military war crimes suspect holidaying in Thailand

Last New Year’s Eve, Israeli soldier Omri Nir posted a photograph on social media posing inside a Palestinian home in Gaza – his assault rifle in one hand as he sat in an armchair.

This New Year’s Eve, the soldier is celebrating in Thailand, according to the Hind Rajab Foundation which is pursuing international legal cases against Israeli soldiers documented to have committed war crimes in Gaza.

A case has been filed against Nir at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “grave violations of international law” for his actions in Gaza and a formal request has been sent to Thai authorities to arrest him, the foundation said.

Nir is accused of demolishing civilian homes and occupying and damaging a school, and evidence has been provided to the ICC, it said.

“The evidence includes videos, testimonies, and records linking Nir directly to these acts, making a strong case for his accountability under the Rome Statute,” the foundation said in a statement.

Founded in honour of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was killed by Israeli tanks in the enclave last year, the group has in recent weeks filed cases with the ICC against Israeli soldiers found travelling in Argentina, Chile, France, Sri Lanka, and an earlier case in Thailand.

Trump again warns: ‘Better let’ Israeli captives in Gaza ‘come back soon’

US President-elect Donald Trump has again cautioned that the remaining Israeli captives held in Gaza must be freed soon.

Speaking briefly to reporters as he attended a New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump said, “We’re going to see what happens”, when asked about the possibility of a ceasefire in Gaza.

Regarding the Israeli captives, he said: “I’ll put it this way: They better let the hostages come back soon.”

Last month, Trump warned in a post on social media that “there will be hell to pay” if the captives held in Gaza were not released by the time he takes office on January 20.

“Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!” he wrote.