PalTel: all telecom services cut in Gaza City and north Gaza StripThere are reports that communications have been cut in northern Gaza.
Telecomms company PalTel posted to its Facebook page:
We regret to announce that all telecom services (landline, cellular and internet) in Gaza City and north Gaza Strip have been lost due to the disconnection of main elements of our network in light of the ongoing aggression. Our technical teams are working relentlessly by all available means to restore the services.
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The US is asking Israel to allow more fuel into Gaza after the country, reluctantly it seems, lifted a post-truce blockade in place before the weekend.
State department spokesperson Matthew Miller briefed reporters on the situation at a recently concluded press conference:
The Israeli government was not early on Friday allowing fuel to go in. We had some very frank conversations with them about the need for fuel to come in and saw some fuel going in Friday.
We saw additional fuel go in Saturday, but it’s at the level of fuel that we were at before the pause began. We’ve made clear we want to see it back up not just to the level of fuel that went in during the pause, but actually higher.
Last week, Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of government media office in Gaza, said “the wheel of life has stopped turning”, referring to a collapse in the health system and other essential services because of a scarcity of fuel.
He said 1,000 trucks of fuel were needed daily to sustain basic life-supporting functions.
Hello, it’s Richard Luscombe in the US taking over from my colleague Gloria Oladipo. I’ll be here to guide though the next few hours of developments in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The United Nations secretary general António Guterres urged Israel to “avoid further action that would exacerbate the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza and to spare civilians from more suffering”, a UN spokesperson said on Monday.
“The secretary general reiterates the need for unimpeded and sustained humanitarian aid flow to meet the needs of the people throughout the Strip. For people ordered to evacuate, there is nowhere safe to go and very little to survive on,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
The US state department has said that it’s too early to assess if Israel is heeding US calls to protect civilians during their airstrikes in Gaza, Reuters reports.
State department spokesperson Matthew Miller that Israel’s targeted evacuations amid airstrikes are an improvement compared to earlier attempts to evacuate an entire city during bombardment.
But displaced Palestinians have said that Israeli officials are attempting to evacuate them to places that are currently under fire.
Airstrikes in Gaza’s southern regions has killed and injured dozens of Palestinians, according to media on the ground.
At least 15,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, the territory’s health ministry reports.
Israel is investigating reports from US researchers that some investors knew of the 7 October attack on Israel before hand and used the information for profit, Reuters reports.
From Reuters:
Research by law professors Robert Jackson Jr from New York University and Joshua Mitts of Columbia University found significant short-selling of shares leading up to the attacks, which triggered a war nearly two months old.
“Days before the attack, traders appeared to anticipate the events to come,” they wrote, citing short interest in the MSCI Israel Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that “suddenly, and significantly, spiked” on Oct. 2 based on data from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
“And just before the attack, short selling of Israeli securities on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) increased dramatically,” they wrote in their 66-page report.
The Israel Securities Authority told Reuters it was aware of the allegations and was conducting an investigation.
Read the full article here.
Qatar has expedited its pledge to provide the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees with 65.7m qatari ralis (£14.3m) over the next two years, according to a press release on social media.
In a letter posted to X, the Qatar government said it fufilled the pledged sum ahead of schedule “in order to support the brotherly Palestinian people and [provide] all forms of support to them”.
Patrick Wintour
John Bolton, the former Republican US national security adviser, has proposed to the UK’s foreign affairs select committee that the Gaza Strip be split into two territories, with Gaza north of the Wadi Gaza River valley administered by Israel and an area to the south run by Egypt.
Bolton added that he would abolish the UN relief works agency, UNRWA, which he said had “developed an institutional culture of sustaining the refugee status of Palestinians”.
His proposal would involve large numbers of Palestinians leaving Gaza permanently. Bolton said his it would mean Palestinians were no longer stuck in the eternal hell of Gaza, a place he described as a terrorist state.
Bolton said it was clear that the refugees from Gaza would not be able to be resettled in Israel, since that was not consistent with Israel’s security needs. He added that Israel had made it clear it was not even going to provide work visas. As a result, he said, they should be resettled in third countries.
“This is not forcible population removal but doing what we did after world war two – we find other countries that will accept refugees and give them asylum. They have to be put in places where they are part of a functioning economy. Otherwise they do not have the dignity of providing for themselves,” he said.
Bolton, who acted as national security adviser to Donald Trump, warned that if the current population was allowed to stay in Gaza they would be in an “Orwellian situation where there is no future and the Palestinian people will become victims once again”.
He described his plan as an interim solution and claimed it was legal since there was an unresolved mandate for Gaza dating to the League of Nations, and the previous responsibility of the British had not been clearly handed to anyone else.
Bolton’s plan is based on the presumption that Gaza and the West Bank will not form a state as part of a wider two-state solution. His proposal echoes proposals circulating in the Israeli government.
Washington has ruled out such a proposal but as Gaza becomes slowly uninhabitable due to Israeli bombardment, the US could reluctantly change its policy to seek homes for Palestinians away from Gaza.
Here’s more information from the Guardian’s Archie Bland about US officials continue to warn Israel about protecting Palestinian life as Israel continues its offensive in Gaza.
Israel arguably has a higher tolerance for international condemnation of its actions than almost any other country,” [Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh in Jerusalem] said. The only country with the leverage to seriously affect its actions is the United States. And in the last few days, US public statements have taken on a new tone.
On Thursday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken was reported to have told Israel’s war cabinet that it may only have weeks to complete its plan to defeat Hamas in Gaza. In a press conference, he said that he had “underscored the imperative – for the United States – that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale that we saw in northern Gaza not be repeated in the south.” That warning was echoed by US vice-president Kamala Harris and defence secretary Lloyd Austin over the weekend.
At least 50 people were reportedly killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a school where displaced people were sheltering, Reuters reported, citing WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency.
The reported air strike hit the Daraj neighborhood in northwest Gaza.
A spokesperson from the Israeli military told Reuters they were looking into the reported attack. Reuters was unable to independently verify the report.
The latest attack comes as leaders across the globe are calling out Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians as it increases offensives across the Gaza territory.
Joe Biden told Israel aid must be linked to assurances to reduce Gaza casualtiesDemocratic US lawmakers have told US president Joe Biden that continued aid to Israel must be met with assurances to reduce casualties in Gaza, the Associated Press reported.
US senator Bernie Sanders along with other Democratic senators said they are done “asking nicely” for Israel to limit civilian deaths as Israel continues its airstrike attacks on Gaza.
It is unlikely that US lawmakers will vote down wartime aid to Israel, but pressure is building amid lawmakers, especially as US public support for Israel decreases.
Over 15,000 Palestinians have died since 7 October, the territory’s health ministry reports.
At least 300 people have been killed in Gaza, as Israeli airstrike attacks continue to target the territory since the humanitarian pause ended on 1 December, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reports.
The UN humanitarian agency also reported that aid access has been completely blocked in northern Gaza and that Israeli air raids have escalated in Gaza’s southern regions.
More than 300 people have been killed since the resumption of hostilities in #Gaza, @UNOCHA reports. Aid access to the north is now entirely blocked amid escalating bombing raids in the south.t.co/ynQnjF2rZW
— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) December 4, 2023 Summary of the day so far …It has just gone 5pm in Gaza City and in Tel Aviv. Here are the latest headlines …
Dozens of Israeli tanks have entered the southern part of the Gaza Strip near Khan Younis on Monday, witnesses have told AFP. Armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers were also seen. Moaz Mohammed, 34, said Israeli tanks were on the southern part of Salah al-Din road. “They are holding Salah al-Din road on both sides and are now cutting it between Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, firing bullets and tank shells at cars and people trying to move through the area,” he said.
Israel’s military has issued a situational update, in which it claims that “ground troops are continuing to operate in the Gaza Strip in parallel to Israeli air force strikes on approximately 200 Hamas terror targets”. Local reporters have described “a very deadly and bloody night for the Palestinians” with many believed killed.
In videos posted on X, Unicef spokesperson James Elder reported “another intense evening of attacks here in Khan Younis” late on Sunday. It was the “worst bombardment of the war right now in southern Gaza”, he said. “I feel like I am running out of ways to describe the horrors hitting children here,” he said. “I feel like I’m almost failing in my ability to convey the endless killing of children here.”
Gaza’s health ministry has issued new casualty figures, saying that 15,899 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip since 7 October. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip, says that 70% of those who have been killed are women and children. It does not distinguish in the figures between civilians and combatants. The number of deaths is likely under-counted, as the collapse of the health system in Gaza has made it difficult for statistics to be gathered, and there are more than 6,000 Palestinians considered missing within the territory.
The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross has described the suffering in Gaza as “intolerable” while visiting the territory. Mirjana Spoljaric Egger said: “The level of human suffering is intolerable. It is unacceptable that civilians have no safe place to go in Gaza.”
Telecoms company PalTel has said that Gaza is facing a communications blackout, with all telecom services (landline, cellular and internet) in Gaza City and north Gaza Strip lost due to the disconnection of main elements of the network.
Israel’s military has again said it has fired into Lebanon at the site of launches it claimed were directed into Israel. It said “a number of launches from Lebanon” had occurred, and that they had fallen in open areas, with no casualties as a result. Earlier on Monday it said that three soldiers had been “slightly injured” by fire from Lebanon at an Israeli military site.
Six hostages from Thailand kidnapped and held for weeks in the Gaza Strip by Hamas will arrive back in the kingdom on Monday. Israel believes that Hamas still holds about 137 people hostage in Gaza.
At least 60 Palestinians were arrested in the occupied West Bank overnight, Al Jazeera reported, with Israeli forces carrying out raids in the cities of Qalqilya, Jericho, Jenin and Tulkarem. At least 30 armoured vehicles were deployed in Jenin following a dawn raid, the broadcaster reported.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said that Benjamin Netanyahu will eventually be tried as a war criminal over Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza.
A court hearing in the Netherlands challenging the export of fighter jet parts to Israel that could be used in attacks on Gaza has begun.
Netanyahu has invited Argentina’s president-elect Javier Milei to Israel, and thanked him for his stated intention to move the Argentinian embassy to Jerusalem.
Benjamin Netanyahu has invited the Argentinian president-elect, Javier Milei, to Israel, and thanked him for his stated intention to move the Argentinian embassy to Jerusalem.
Reuters reported that Netanyahu’s office said the Israeli prime minister congratulated Milei on his election victory, thanked him for his support during the war, and “thanked the president-elect for his intention to move the Argentina embassy to Jerusalem, and invited him to visit in Israel.”