New Year’s Eve rally for Palestine in Sweden’s snow-covered Stockholm


_{Hundreds of people gathered in the driving snow in Sweden’s Stockholm on New Year’s Eve in a show of solidarity with Palestinians and to call for Israel to end its war on Gaza}

Tens of thousands march in support of Palestinians in Istanbul


_{Demonstrators hold a banner and Palestinian and Turkish flags as they attend a rally in solidarity with the Palestinian people, at the Galata Bridge}

Latest Gaza ceasefire talks have stalled: Report

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas have “hit an impasse in recent days”.

Citing “Arab mediators”, the WSJ said the two sides were considering a 60-day ceasefire during which up to 30 Israeli captives held in Gaza would have been released.

In exchange, Israel was to set Palestinian prisoners free and allow greater humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, the mediators said.

But the talks have now stalled.

“Mediators said Israel insisted that it receive only living hostages in any exchange and refused to approve the release of some of the Palestinian detainees sought by Hamas,” the WSJ said.

Hamas also demanded the ceasefire be a “path to an end to the war”, it added.

Israel conducted 1,400 air strikes in Gaza in December

The data from the Israeli military included strikes from fighter jets, helicopters and drones and underscored the ongoing intensity of Israel’s operations in Gaza. The air strikes, which the military says were conducted in support of ground operations, averaged about 45 a day.

At least 1,170 Palestinians were killed during December in the enclave, according to the Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

The military says the strikes targeted “terrorist cells”, underground tunnels and infrastructure, observation posts and sniper positions.

Media reports, including from the Israeli +972 Magazine and the New York Times, have shown that Israel has changed its rules of engagement to allow for the increased killing of civilians during strikes, and takes little care to avoid harm to Palestinians living in Gaza.

‘Huge price to pay after the end of this genocide’

Sami al-Arian, director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University, says the international community’s failure to halt Israel’s bloody attack on Gaza will have lasting repercussions for global rules and norms.

“The international community hasn’t been doing anything, it’s really quite toothless. It doesn’t have any means or any thoughts to do anything to force Israel to do anything. It has zero leverage. Israel is controlling the situation for a long time because none of the actors – with very few exceptions such as the Houthis in Yemen – are willing to actually force Israel to follow international law,” al-Arian told Al Jazeera.

“The United States is always ready with its veto. The other powers don’t do anything about it, they just shrug and look the other way. The victims of this genocide, the victims of these war crimes – the Palestinians – are paying a heavy price because of this impotence. This international order has lost its meaning, and I think there will be a huge price the world will have to pay after the end of this genocide.”

Israel sees net departure of citizens for a second year

More than 82,000 Israelis moved abroad in 2024 and only 33,000 people immigrated to the country, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics says.

It was the second year in a row of net departures – a rare occurrence in the history of the country, which was founded by immigrants from Europe and actively encourages Jewish immigration.

Many Israelis, looking for a break from the war, have moved abroad, leading to concerns about whether it will drive a “brain drain” in sectors like medicine and technology.

Last year, 15,000 fewer people immigrated to Israel than in 2023. Another 23,000 Israelis returned after long periods abroad.

More than 1,500 tents flooded, unusable in Gaza after days of rain

The Palestinian Civil Defence says floodwaters rose to more than 30cm (12 inches) in the affected tents, leaving displaced Palestinians exposed to the cold and causing damage to their belongings and mattresses.

The emergency service says the tents – located in areas including northern Gaza City, southern Khan Younis, as well as in central Deir el-Balah – were rendered unusable because of the flooding.

It says there were hundreds of other tents where the floodwaters were below 30cm.

As world celebrated New Year, Gaza suffered: Aid worker

The director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, Amjad Shawa, has spoken to Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah, describing the disconnect between the global celebrations beckoning in the New Year and the dire situation in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are seeking refuge from freezing rains, flooding and mud.

“As the world was [celebrating] last night, 2025, the coming New Year, our people, our families – who are staying in tents in a freezing rainy winter – they spent all the night in order to save their children and to collect rest of their belongings,” he said. “It was a very tough night, a very difficult one for the families.

“It wasn’t an easy mission to get these people out from this mud, from this rain, from these freezing conditions, and already we lost seven – six of them children, infants who have died because of the freezing conditions.”


_{Palestinians sheltering in tents in the Mawasi area struggle with rain and cold weather as tents were flooded by torrential downpour in Khan Younis, southern Gaza on Wednesday}

Palestinian children continue to face threat from harsh weather

Children continue to die in Gaza as winter temperatures drop and rain pounds the war-torn Palestinian territory.

In southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, Mahmoud al-Fasih said he found his infant daughter, Sila, “frozen from the cold” in their small tent near al-Mawasi beach, where they were displaced from Gaza City.

He rushed her to the hospital in the area – which Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone” – but she was already dead.

Dr Ahmad al-Farra at Nasser Hospital said the three-week-old baby arrived at the hospital with “severe hypothermia, without vital signs, in cardiac arrest that led to her death”.

Israel bombs Al Jazeera correspondent’s home in Gaza

Al Jazeera Arabic is reporting that Israeli forces have attacked the home of its correspondent Rami Abu Taima in southern Khan Younis, wounding several members of his family.

Israel destroys vehicle, building in southern Lebanon air strikes

The Israeli military claimed the vehicle was being used by Hezbollah members to transport weapons from an arms depot in southern Lebanon.

Aerial video footage released on social media announcing the attack showed three people placing several innocuous-looking items, covered in white cloth, inside a white van during the daytime. The video did not show the presence of weapons.

A second clip then showed two missile strikes on which appeared to be the vehicle and a nearby building.

The Israeli military added on social media that it was “committed to the understanding reached between Israel and Lebanon”, in an apparent reference to its much-violated ceasefire with Hezbollah.

Israeli forces are “deployed in southern Lebanon and will work to eliminate any threat to the State of Israel and its citizens,” the military added.

That's not a ceasefire...

Israeli opposition leader derides ‘extremist and deranged government’

Yair Lapid says if an election is called, “most of the coalition members” would not return to the government after Netanyahu had to leave his hospital bed to vote in a decisive budget law.

“We saw what happened here yesterday. A pale and weak prime minister and Ben Gvir makes fun of him in front of the nation … The one who needs to apologise to the citizens of Israel for the past two years and for not returning the kidnapped is the prime minister,” Lapid wrote on X.

“The one who needs to apologise to us is his extremist and deranged government. The one who needs to apologise to us is every member of the coalition who knows that he is giving his hand to the most terrible and failed government in Israeli history.”

Israeli forces demolish house near Bethlehem – again

Israel’s army has knocked down a Palestinian home in al-Walaja village, northwest of Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reports.

Khader al-Araj, head of al-Walaja Village Council, said Israeli troops escorted a bulldozer into the village, which tore down a house belonging to a woman named Nisreen Khaled Abu Rizeq.

Five people have been displaced. It wasn’t the first time her home was destroyed. Al-Araj said Israeli forces previously demolished Abu Rizeq’s house on July 15, 2024.

Palestinian Authority suspends broadcast of Al Jazeera

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said that the temporary ban was a result of Al Jazeera broadcasting “inciting material” and “interference” in Palestine’s internal affairs. The PA has been angered by Al Jazeera’s coverage of clashes between PA security forces and local resistance fighters in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.

Here’s the full statement that was issued on the Palestinian Authority’s suspension of Al Jazeera:

The competent ministerial committee made up of the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Interior, and the Ministry of Communications has decided to temporarily stop the broadcast and freeze all the work of its journalists, employees, crews and channels affiliated with it, until its legal status is rectified. This is due to Al Jazeera’s violation of the laws and regulations in force in Palestine.

This decision came after Al Jazeera insisted on broadcasting inciteful materials and reports characterised by being misleading, inciting sedition, and interference in Palestinian internal affairs.

Main events on Januari 1st

Syria in 2024: A year that changed everything in a war-torn nation

The fall of the longstanding Assad regime that ruled Syria for more than 50 years became a global turning point in 2024. Syria’s war had faded from the headlines but it resurfaced as a lightning offensive overthrew Bashar al-Assad and restored hope to many in the last month of the year.

At the start of 2024, the World Health Organization estimated that more than 65 percent of the population required humanitarian assistance. An earthquake in February 2023 that devastated northern Syria had further exacerbated the crisis without spurring additional international support.

Food prices had doubled in 2024 compared with 2023, and the local currency had devalued to one-15th of its 2020 value.

Israel attacked Syria in 2024, destroying entire buildings in Damascus and other provinces, targeting high-ranking Iranian and Hezbollah officials, and causing repeated shutdowns of Aleppo and Damascus airports.

Peaceful protests continued in the south and northwest of the country, with activists in Sweida protesting against poor living conditions and calling for the fall of the Assad regime.


_{Hundreds gather, raising revolutionary flags and chanting anti-regime slogans on the 13th anniversary of the start of the popular protests against the Syrian regime, on March 15}

Al-Assad’s regime and its allies continued to bombard opposition-held areas, killing and injuring civilians.

The continuing threat from the regime in the northwest prompted Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and a coalition of armed opposition groups to launch “Operation Deterring Aggression” on November 27, making rapid advances in western Aleppo and capturing the city within two days.

The advance continued through southern Idlib, Hama, Deraa, and Homs until, on December 8, it reached Damascus as Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia.

_{Civilians stand on a tank left by al-Assad's forces in Damascus, taking commemorative photos to celebrate the opposition forces' victory, on December 8}

Celebrations erupted across Syria, despite Israel taking advantage of the situation to strike security sites and weapon depots and launch an incursion into Syria by creeping across the boundary line in the Golan Heights.

As the HTS fighters advanced, they threw open the doors to al-Assad’s prisons, setting thousands free and underlining the sheer number of people who have disappeared in his “human slaughterhouses”.

Efforts began to locate some 130,000 prisoners and forcibly disappeared persons, but as thousands of families found out, the search will be long and gruelling.

Thousands more internally displaced people who had to flee the country hoped to return to their homes, but the destruction al-Assad wrought was so extensive that some people could not even identify where their homes had stood.


_{People wander through the destroyed Qaboun neighbourhood in the capital, Damascus, to visit their homes from where they were displaced by regime forces, on December 10}

Uncertainty and fear of the future remain prevalent among Syrians, but there is a consensus that the future holds promise compared with the past.


_{People walk through the neighbourhoods of Aleppo to visit its famous landmarks after the fall of the regime, on December 20}

As the world transitions from one year to the next, Syrians transition from 1970 to 2025 as they put the al-Assad years behind them.

_{A man celebrates New Year's Eve holding the revolutionary flag in Umayyad Square, Damascus, on December 31}

Israeli forces set fire to homes in south Lebanon

The Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) is reporting that Israeli soldiers torched a number of houses in the town of Aitaroun in Bint Jbeil, “in a continued violation” of a truce that went into effect at the end of November.

The NNA said Israel forces also bombed homes in the town of Aita al-Shaab as ground troops launched a “combing operation in the town”.

Israel has carried out near-daily attacks on Lebanon, despite agreeing to the ceasefire with Hezbollah. The truce deal stipulates that Israel must withdraw from south Lebanon in 60 days and says Hezbollah must move north of the Litani River.

But Israel now claims that Hezbollah’s extensive weapons in the south and their efforts to rebuild may lead them to “reconsider” the timeline for withdrawal.

Israeli defence minister: Conscription law a ‘historic turning point’

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz says a draft law to conscript ultra-Orthodox Jews into the army who had previously been exempt is not a “moral issue”.

“The new conscription law, upon its completion, will bring about a historic turning point and the recruitment of tens of thousands of additional ultra-Orthodox members for significant service in the IDF [Israeli army] for the first time,” Katz wrote on X.

“In contrast to the policy that was recently implemented, which failed and actually led to a decrease in the number of ultra-Orthodox members serving in the IDF.”

Last year, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant issued thousands of enlistment summons to the ultra-Orthodox community, but it was met with mass protests.