The vote in the Security Council of the United Nations on the situation in Gaza, scheduled for tonight, has been postponed until tomorrow to allow the continuation of negotiations on the text of the resolution, AFP learned from diplomatic sources.
The United Arab Emirates, at the source of a new draft resolution aimed at ending hostilities to allow access to humanitarian aid, requested a delay in the vote.
The session where the vote will be held should be held tomorrow at an as yet undetermined time, AFP sources specify.
(Beta)
Hamas official Osama Hamdan reiterated the group's position on Monday that any hostage exchange negotiations are off the table until Israel stops its war on Gaza, Reuters reports.
"We are open to initiatives by Qatar and Egypt on a hostage exchange that would stop the war in Gaza," Hamdan told a news conference in Beirut.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said this evening that the US has not set a deadline for Israel to end the current intensive phase of the offensive in Gaza.
At a press conference in Tel Aviv, Austin said he discussed the goals and objectives of Israel's war and how to reduce civilian casualties in talks with his Israeli counterparts.
Austin and other US officials have repeatedly expressed concern about the high number of civilian casualties, but he said the US had not made direct demands.
"It's an Israeli operation. I'm not here to dictate terms or conditions," the Pentagon chief said.
Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Galant said the country will not hesitate to act against the Lebanese extremist organization Hezbollah if calm is not restored along the sensitive border with Lebanon.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas extremists in Gaza on October 7, the pro-Iranian Hezbollah has carried out a series of rocket attacks in the north, prompting Israeli strikes.
Tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to evacuate from border settlements.
The cross-border exchange of fire has heightened fears of a wider regional conflict.
At a news conference in Austin tonight, Galant said Israel expects Hezbollah to respect a 2006 ceasefire that requires the Lebanese extremist organization to stay away from the border.
"If such a process is not applied diplomatically, we will not hesitate to act," said Galant.
(Beta)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today at a meeting with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Tel Aviv that Israel is waging a "civilizational war against barbarism" and that the goal of that war is "total victory" over Hamas.
"We think that it is not only our war, but in many ways your war, because you lead the forces of civilization in the world. This is a battle against the Iranian axis, the Iranian axis of terror, which is threatening now near the Bab el-Mandeb strait. It is a threat to the freedom of navigation of the entire world," Netanyahu said in Tel Aviv.
Israel's prime minister thanked Austin for the presence of US naval forces in the Red Sea during attacks by Iran-backed Yemeni Houthi rebels on foreign ships.
Austin reiterated that US support for Israel is "unwavering".
"I know that Israel is a small country and I know that all Israelis are affected by the great evil committed by Hamas. So I am here to grieve with you for the innocent victims that you lost on October 7. And I am also here with the families of those who still detained in Gaza, including US citizens," Austin said.
The US Secretary of Defense pointed out that no one should test America's commitment to Israel, neither an individual group, nor a state.
"In the Red Sea, we are leading the naval force to maintain the fundamental principle of freedom of navigation," added the head of the Pentagon, stressing that Houthi attacks on merchant ships must stop.
He called for an end to the support that, according to him, Iran provides for those attacks.
"Iranian support for Houthi attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea must stop," said a joint statement after the meeting between Austin and Netanyahu.
Austin also announced that the US would continue to send equipment needed to defend Israel, "including key ammunition, tactical vehicles and air defense systems," Israeli media reported.
"We will continue to support Israel's mission to find and release all hostages. And I am here to discuss how best to support Israel on its path to lasting security, and that means addressing the immediate needs first," Austin said, calling for an increase in humanitarian aid. supplies to the Gaza Strip to alleviate the suffering of the residents in the war.
"We must provide increased humanitarian aid to the nearly two million people displaced in Gaza, and we must distribute that aid better," the US minister said, according to Agence France-Presse.
In addition to Netanyahu, he also met with other members of the War Cabinet who are leading the war against Hamas.
Austin arrived in Israel as France, Britain and Germany joined calls for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas, and he was expected to press for the Israeli military to reduce the intensity of its offensive in Gaza.
(Beta)
Israel will gradually move to the next phase of operations in the Gaza war in which the local population may be able to return to the north of the coastal strip, the country's Defense Minister Yoav Galant said today.
"I can tell you that soon we will be able to distinguish between different areas in Gaza," Galant said at a joint press conference with American counterpart Lloyd Austin in Tel Aviv.
Galant said this would allow Israel to start working on returning the local population "perhaps to the shever" of Gaza rather than the south.
Several people were killed and several wounded in an Israeli airstrike on the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, eyewitnesses said today.
Al-Jazeera television broadcast footage of Shifa hospital in Gaza City after the attack, showing lifeless bodies on the ground. Two people who took refuge in the hospital confirmed that the strike happened in a statement to The Associated Press.
Asad Abu Radwan, an eyewitness to the attack, said he counted five dead and helped several wounded to take shelter inside. The Israeli military has yet to comment on reports of the attack.
The Israeli army also bombed the Shifa hospital at the beginning of the war against Hamas. Israel accuses Hamas of hiding a large command center in and under the hospital, which the Palestinian armed group and hospital employees deny.
After raiding the hospital in November, the Israeli army discovered that there was a hideout of extremists in a tunnel under the hospital.
Due to the surrounding conflicts, hundreds of patients and tens of thousands of displaced people barely survived in the hospital for days with little food, water and medicine.
Most of the people were then evacuated and the hospital almost stopped functioning as it was surrounded by Israeli forces.
A few weeks after the invasion of the Israeli army, the hospital again became a shelter for people who fled their homes.
The World Health Organization (WHO), which is trying to restore the work of that health facility, which it visited on Friday, said that the emergency department is "bloodshed", that there are hundreds of wounded people, and that some are being helped on the floor with little or no help. painkillers.
The WHO said thousands of people are sheltering in hospital despite having very little food and water.
(Beta)
Human Rights Watch (HRW) accuses Israel of deliberately starving the population and describes this method of warfare as a war crime.
The New York-based human rights organization said today that Israeli forces are "deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food and fuel while willfully obstructing humanitarian aid and blatantly destroying agricultural areas."
On December 14, the UN Food Agency announced that 56 percent of households in Gaza were starving, and two weeks ago this was the case in 38 percent of households.
HRW stated that after the attacks by Palestinian extremists from Gaza on southern Israel, in which about 1.200 people were killed, senior Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Yoav Galant, publicly stated that their "goal is to deprive civilians in Gaza of food, water and fuel." .
Other Israeli officials conditioned the provision of humanitarian aid on the release of about 240 hostages taken by Palestinian extremists to Gaza, HRW said.
Starvation of civilians is a war crime under international humanitarian law.
During the first two months of the war, humanitarian aid arrived through only one border crossing from Egypt, and thus the amount of food and other necessities that could reach the inhabitants of that enclave on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea was very limited.
Under pressure from the US, Israel opened a second border crossing in Gaza last week.
The amount of aid entering the territory is still more than half of pre-war levels, although needs have increased and conflict is hampering delivery in many areas.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said today that Israel does not limit the amount of humanitarian aid.
"We know that civilians in Gaza are suffering. This is because of Hamas' strategy and tactics and because Hamas is stealing international aid meant for civilians," the spokesman said.
(Beta)
The Ministry of Health in Gaza announced today that 19.453 people have been killed and 52.286 injured since the start of Israeli attacks on October 7, Reuters reports.
The Health Ministry of Hamas in the Gaza Strip announced today that 110 Palestinians have been killed since last night in Israeli strikes on Dazhbaliya, in the north of the Palestinian enclave.
In a short statement, the Ministry of Health announced that 50 "martyrs, in the houses of Jabalija" were killed in the strikes, making a total of 110 people dead in that city since yesterday.
According to the latest balance sheet of the ministry, published on Friday, 7 people have died in Gaza since the start of the war with Israel on October 18.800.
(BETA)
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that they had shot down more than 7 drones and missiles since the start of the conflict on October 100.
"The threats were shot down by fighter jets and other means of air defense," the statement said.
Conflict between Israel and Hamas - 73th day.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched new attacks across the Gaza Strip last night, killing a large number of Palestinians, the Gaza Health Ministry announced.
"In yesterday's Israeli attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip, 90 Palestinians were killed," the Palestinian Ministry of Health said in a statement, Reuters reports.
24 people were killed in an Israeli rocket attack on a family home, according to Hamas Aqsa radio.
"We believe that the number of dead under the rubble is huge, but there is no way to find and extract the victims due to the intensity of Israeli fire," said a spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in a telephone conversation with a Reuters reporter.
In Deir el Balah, in central Gaza, local medical workers confirmed that 12 Palestinians were killed and dozens more wounded.
In Rafah, in the south of the Palestinian enclave, at least four people were killed in an Israeli attack on a family home.
"People rushed to rescue those trapped under the rubble. The sound of the explosion was as strong as an earthquake," an eyewitness who lives nearby told Reuters.
An Israeli tank shell hit the maternity building at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, killing a 13-year-old girl, said Ashraf Al-Kidra, spokesman for the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Bonus video:
