EXPLAINER
The Al Jazeera journalist’s son was killed by an Israeli missile and the Al-Aqsa hospital was evacuated. Here’s the latest.
This is how things stand on Monday, January 8, 2024:
Latest updates
- The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza was partially evacuated as a result of increasing Israeli military activity. The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus aware on Sunday
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government is dealing with a “plague of leaks” and proposed that ministers attending security meetings undergo a polygraph test.
- There are growing divisions within the Israeli government. Three National Unity Party ministers, including Benny Gantz, boycotted a meeting, Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut reported.
- Israel has signaled that it is willing to end its bombing in northern Gaza, saying it has “dismantled” Hamas in that part of the Gaza Strip. However, it appears that intense military operations will continue in the rest of the enclave.
- The WHO canceled a mission to al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza for the fourth time since December 26 after the UN agency did not receive security guarantees.
Today, @WHO canceled a planned mission to Al-Awda hospital and the central pharmacy in the north #Loop for the fourth time since December 26 because we did not receive guarantees of security and deconfliction.
The mission planned to move urgently needed medical supplies to sustain… pic.twitter.com/6v09rPbBb1
— WHO in the occupied Palestinian territory (@WHOoPt) January 7, 2024
Human impact and struggle.
- According to the Gaza Health Ministry, up to 73 Palestinians were killed and 99 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza in the last 24 hours.
- Palestinian media reported that at least eight people were killed after an Israeli airstrike hit a house in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah.
- Hamza Dahdouh, the eldest son of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, was killed in an Israeli missile attack on a vehicle in Khan Younis.
- Journalist Mustafa Thuraya also died in the attack. The missile hit the vehicle near al-Mawasi, a supposedly safe area to the southwest.
- The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said on Sunday that 142 of its employees have been killed by ongoing Israeli airstrikes in Gaza since the war broke out on October 7.
Diplomacy
- A large group of people gathered outside the US embassy in Stockholm on Sunday to protest Israel’s continued attacks on Gaza.
- On a diplomatic visit to the Middle East, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with leaders of Qatar and Jordan.
- Jordan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had agreed with the United States to reject the forced displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, a proposal repeatedly put forward by Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.
- Former UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told Al Jazeera that a decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) could put “enormous pressure on the Americans to achieve a proper ceasefire” as Israel and South Africa head to The Hague later this week.
- Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri criticized Arab and Islamic countries that have not yet expressed official support for South Africa’s call to initiate genocide proceedings against Israel before the ICJ.
- German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock arrived in Israel on Sunday to meet with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Foreign Minister Israel Katz.
foreign minister @ABaerbock He has arrived for his fourth visit to Israel since the Hamas terrorist attacks. She has come to meet with the president. @Isaac_Herzog and his fellow minister @Israel_katzfamilies of hostages and experts on the sexual crimes committed on July 10. pic.twitter.com/yFGyocz2HP
– Steffen Seibert (@GerAmbTLV) January 7, 2024
Raids in the West Bank
- There are reports of raids underway in Dheisheh camp in Bethlehem, Arroub camp, north of Hebron, Dura and Yatta, south of Hebron, and Qabalan, south of Nablus.
- Al Jazeera’s Arab colleagues have reported that Israeli forces arrested a doctor and a nurse while attacking several locations in the adjacent cities of Ramallah and el-Bireh in the occupied West Bank on Sunday night.
- An attack by Israeli settlers on Sunday injured a man in the northern Jordan Valley region, just northeast of the occupied West Bank. local sources told Palestinian news agency Wafa.
