Above photo: Palestinians grieve loved ones killed by Israeli attacks at the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City on on December 19, 2024. Hadi Daoud/APA Images.
A new report documents the mass killing of Palestinians in northern Gaza.
Meanwhile, Hamas and Israel have discussed the details of a prisoner exchange that could serve as the centerpiece of a 60-day ceasefire.
Casualties
- 45,129 + killed* and at least 107,338 wounded in the Gaza Strip, 59% of whom are women, children, and elderly.
- 822+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
- 3,962 Lebanese killed and more than 16,520 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***
- Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.
- Israel recognizes the death of 890 Israeli soldiers, policemen and intelligence officers and the injury of at least 5,065 others since October 7.****
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on December 19, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of December 19, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on December 9, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.
**** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Key Developments
Gaza
- Israeli bombings have killed 51 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip since the early dawn of Thursday alone.
- At least 15 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes on two centers sheltering civilians east of Gaza City.
- Human Rights Watch releases a report accusing Israel of deliberately depriving Palestinians in Gaza of access to clean water and of committing acts of genocide.
- The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz publishes testimonies of Israeli soldiers and officers who have served in Gaza, describing the killing of Palestinian civilians in the strip.
- Doctors without Borders say that their team’s observations in Gaza coincide with experts’ description of genocide, and accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing in the strip.
- Reuters reports that Arab and international mediators are working to achieve a ceasefire deal in Gaza and that on Tuesday both Hamas and Israel discussed the numbers and categories of prisoners to include in the first phase of a ceasefire.
Syria
- Israel decided to maintain its army on Mount Al-Sheikh, south of Syria, which it occupied following the collapse of the Al-Assad regime until the end of the winter.
- Israel has occupied around 500 square kilometers in Syria since the collapse of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, including three strategic water sources and the top of Mount Al-Sheikh, the highest summit in the region.
Yemen
- Yemen’s Ansarallah group announced launching a ballistic missile at Israel.
- An Israeli religious school in Ramat Gan in Tel Aviv suffered damage after being hit on Wednesday, by fragments of a missile from Yemen that was intercepted by Israeli air defenses, according to the Israeli army.
- The Israeli army admits that the explosive warhead of the Yemeni missile struck the school in Tel Aviv.
- Israel bombs several targets in Yemen, including the Hudaida seaport and other targets in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, in retaliation to Ansarallah’s missile attack.
- Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz says that Israel will “cut off any hand” that extends to attack it, following Israeli bombings on Yemen.
- The spokesperson of Ansarallah says that the Yemeni group will continue its operations in support Gaza and that these operations will “only stop when Israel ends its genocide and siege of Gaza”.
West Bank
- Israeli forces killed an 80-year-old Palestinian woman and a Palestinian man, 25, and wounded another elderly man during a raid into the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, on Thursday.
- Israeli forces kill four Palestinians in a drone strike on a car in Tulkarem on Thursday.
- Palestinian political and civil society figures launched an initiative to end clashes between Palestinian security forces and Palestinian fighters in the Jenin refugee camp, which has been ongoing since last Saturday.
- Israeli settlers assault Palestinians near the entrance of the village of Burqa, east of Ramallah.
- Israeli settlers storm the ‘Joseph Tomb’ religious site in the city of Nablus.
- Israeli settlers plow Palestinians’ land in the village of Al-Farisiyah in the northern Jordan Valley in an attempt to take it over.
New reports of mass killings in Gaza surface as hope for ceasefire grows
On Wednesday, the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz published an investigative report based on testimonies of Israeli army members under the condition of anonymity, describing various acts of intentional killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
According to the testimonies gathered by Haaretz, soldiers, and officers of the Israeli army’s 252nd brigade described a line north of the Netzarim corridor, the depopulated military area created by Israel cutting the Gaza strip in half south of Gaza City. According to testimonies, this line is known as “the dead bodies line”, which Gaza people “know very well.” The testimonies indicated that Israeli soldiers shoot to kill any Palestinian who crosses that line, regardless if they are civilians, and that they have orders to shoot and kill and send picture proof of the killings to their leadership, counting every case as the killing of a militant,
One of the soldiers said that at one instance the soldiers documented the killing of 200 Palestinians near the Netzarim corridor, only to realize later that only 10 of them were armed militants. Other soldiers said that they leave the dead bodies on the ground to be eaten by stray dogs, while one soldier told Haaretz that the Israeli army acts in Gaza as “an independent militia.” Testimonies also pointed out that different Israeli military units compete with each other over which unit kills more Palestinians. According to one of the soldiers, “we operate in an area without rules, and we are responsible for part of the horror lived by the population.”
The story was published as Israeli sources have described significant progress being made in the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Cairo. According to published leaks, both sides have agreed on a large number of issues regarding the first phase of a 60-day ceasefire, which would include an initial wave of prisoner exchange, where Hamas would release an unspecified-yet number of Israeli captives, especially remaining civilians, while Israel would release a number of Palestinian detainees.
According to some reports, Israel has accepted withdrawing, partially in a first phase, from the Philadelphi corridor along the border between Gaza and Egypt. Back in July and August, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu insisted on maintaining a military presence in Philadelphi, considering it a matter of national security, despite declarations from Israeli army officials that the army doesn’t need to maintain troops there. Netanyahu’s insistence on this point was a main reason for the collapse of ceasefire talks at the time.
This news came on the heels of the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch – HRW accused Israel, in a report released on Thursday, of “extermination and acts of genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
HRW’s report focused on what it described as Israel’s restriction of Palestinians’ access to clean water below the minimum quantities needed. According to HRW, Israel’s destruction of water resources and infrastructure in Gaza has forced Palestinians to resort to consuming contaminated water, leading to the outbreak of lethal diseases, especially among children. According to HRW, Israel committed these actions deliberately.
Israel’s actions in Gaza which resulted in the death of thousands of Palestinians constitute acts of genocide, HRW argued, quoting declarations by Israeli government officials announcing their intention to cut water supply off Gaza as proof of genocidal intent.
HRW’s report comes two weeks after Amnesty International released its own report accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. Both reports arrive more than a year after South Africa initiated a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing it of violating the Treaty on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, by committing acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The ICJ ruled then that Israel was ‘plausibly’ committing genocide and ordered Israel to take measures to prevent genocide in the strip.