US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said today that the world must put pressure on Hamas, not just Israel, at a time of growing international criticism of Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
"There seems to be a silence about what Hamas could, should, must do if we want to end the suffering of innocent men, women and children," Blinken said at a press conference, Agence France-Presse reported.
He assessed that it would be good for the world to unite in this.
Blinken emphasized that ending the war between Hamas and Israel "as soon as possible" is a priority of the administration of US President Joseph Biden in the coming year.
That goal was marked number four on the list of priorities set by the US Secretary of State at the year-end press briefing.
"Clearly that conflict needs to pass and it will pass into a phase of less intensity. We expect to see and want to see a transition to targeted operations, with fewer forces really focused on dealing with the Hamas leadership, the tunnel network and several other different things," Blinken said, Israeli media reported.
He assessed that when that happens, "damage to civilians" will also decrease, but he announced that the US will continue to help Israel, so that what happened on October 7, when the war started, would never happen again.
In addition, he announced that the Biden administration will work quickly to end the war "by reducing the loss of civilian life and suffering, returning hostages home safely, preventing the conflict from spreading, and breaking the devastating cycle of violence and moving toward sustainable lasting peace."
Referring to efforts to reach another agreement on the release of hostages from Gaza, he said that Israel wants it, but that the problem is Hamas, which changed the terms of the earlier agreement.
President Biden, meanwhile, said that an imminent deal on the hostages is not expected at this time, but pressure is being put on to get it done.
(BETA)
The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip announced this evening that 7 people have been killed in Israeli military operations since the start of the war on October 20.000.
Among the dead were at least 8.000 children and 6.200 women, and 52.600 people were wounded, reported Agence France-Presse.
Palestinian extremists, led by Hamas, killed about 1.200 people, mostly civilians, in attacks on southern Israel. The most victims were on the first day of the war, October 7.
The Israeli army announced that 134 soldiers were killed in the ground offensive in Gaza, reports AP.
Israel says that about 7.000 Palestinian extremists have been killed in the war, but has not provided evidence of this.
The country blames Hamas for the large number of civilian casualties, claiming it uses them as human shields.
(BETA)
An Israeli military dog recorded with a body-worn camera a call for help from one of the three escaped hostages in Gaza, who were then, five days later, on December 15, mistakenly killed by Israeli soldiers, additional details from the investigation showed.
It is seen as the latest indication of how far the hostages went to alert Israeli soldiers of their identities before they were killed by them, believing them to be Palestinians.
According to the investigation, on December 10, the reconnaissance unit of the Golani Brigade encountered a group of Hamas operatives who opened fire from a building.
During the shooting, a dog from the Okec unit was sent to the building, which later turned out to be where hostages were being held.
The dog was killed by "Hamas" soldiers, who were then killed by soldiers from the Golani Brigade, which allowed the three Israelis Alon Shamriz, Yotam Haim and Samar Talalka to escape from captivity.
During that confrontation, a camera placed on the dog's chest or back (presumably, because it was not specified) recorded the voice of the hostage, apparently Shamriz, shouting "help".
Five days later, the three hostages tried to approach Israeli soldiers, wearing a white flag and naked to the waist, to show that they were not armed, and the soldiers shot and killed them.
The escaped hostages had earlier left messages written on food scraps saying "SOS" and "3 hostages, help" in Hebrew on another building, but soldiers believed that bombs had been planted there and that Hamas was trying to trick them into entering.
In addition, the soldiers who fired did not know about those messages, which hinted that the hostages might be nearby, because they were not informed about it by the advance guard.
The hostages are not visible in the video. The camera on the dog was only examined on December 18, when his body was found, Israeli media reported.
(BETA)
Intensive talks are underway, mediated by Qatar and Egypt, on a possible second Gaza ceasefire that would see Hamas return some hostages in exchange for Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters today.
While the number of people to be freed is still being discussed, Israel insists that women and infirm male hostages be included, the source said, adding that Palestinians jailed for serious offenses could also be on the list.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out attacks on more than 300 targets in the Gaza Strip over the past day, The Times of Israel reports.
Dozens of Hamas operatives were killed and the terrorist group's infrastructure was targeted, according to the IDF statement.
In southern Gaza, members of the 55th Brigade raided Hamas sites in Khan Younis, where a large weapons cache was found.
Today, the IDF also carried out airstrikes on a number of Hezbollah locations in southern Lebanon.
As the Times of Israel reports, military sites where Hezbollah members operate, as well as other infrastructure, were targeted.
(Beta)
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh arrived in Cairo today to hold talks with Egyptian officials, mainly about the developments in the war with Israel in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian group said, Reuters reports.
The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said yesterday that the war in Gaza is a "moral defeat" for the international community and called on Israel and Hamas to reach a new ceasefire agreement.
"I am talking about a moral defeat because every new day of this situation represents a day in which the international community has shown that it is not capable of ending such a high level of suffering, which will have an impact on generations not only in Gaza," said the president of the International Red Cross (ICRC). Mirjana Spoljarić to journalists in Geneva after visiting the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Trying to avoid another veto by the United States of America (USA), the Security Council of the United Nations (UN) tonight, for the second time in two days, postponed the vote on the draft resolution of the Arab states, which calls for some form of pause in the fighting in the Gaza Strip in order to deliver humanitarian aid. .
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