Above photo: Palestinians escaping Nuseirat Camp following an Israeli massacre in the Gaza Strip on November 11, 2024. Saed Abu Nabhan/APA Images.
Smotrich Announces Plan To Annex West Bank.
As accusations that Israel is committing ethnic cleansing in Gaza continue to grow, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declares 2025 will be the year of “expanding Israeli sovereignty” to the West Bank.
Casualties
- 43,603 + killed* and at least 102,929 wounded in the Gaza Strip, including 59% women, children and elderly, as of October 21, 2024.*
- 7809+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
- 3,243 Lebanese killed and more than 14,134 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***
- Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.
- The Israeli army recognizes the death of 890 Israeli soldiers 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 November 7, 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 November 7, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on November 7, 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
- 49 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes on Sunday and 50 on Monday, mostly in the north of Gaza, says Palestinian health ministry.
- Israel commits a new massacre in Jabalia, killing 36 Palestinians including children.
- Israeli artillery shelling on Nuseirat kills 40 Palestinians as tanks invade Nuseirat and demolish buildings adjacent to the Netzarim corridor.
- Israeli daily Haaretz accuses the Israeli government of committing ethnic cleansing in the north of Gaza.
- Haaretz says Netanyahu is responsible for war crimes in Gaza aiming at resettlement.
Lebanon
- Israeli army approves expansion of operations in south of Lebanon, while Israeli foreign minister says Israel has “made progress” towards a ceasefire in Lebanon.
- Israel kills 50 Lebanese on Sunday in bombings across the country.
- Israel repeatedly bombs the southern district of Beirut on Monday.
- Hezbollah strikes Haifa and Akka with more than 100 rockets, causing fires.
- Hezbollah’s media spokesperson Mohammad Afif says that the movement is prepared for a long war, and denies claims that Lebanon received Israeli proposals for a ceasefire.
West Bank
- Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says that 2025 will be the year of “extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank”, saying he hopes to work with the incoming Trump administration on the plans.
- Israeli forces raid the Jalazoun refugee camp north of Ramallah and arrest several Palestinians.
- Israeli settlers attack a mosque in the village of Burqa east of Ramallah, destroy four trailer houses and force families out in Sair, near Hebron, and stone houses and burn olive trees in Yasuf, near Salfit.
- Israeli settlers cut down 40 trees in Nahalin near Bethlehem. The village council says settlers have destroyed 120 trees in the village in recent months.
- The Palestinian commission for settlements’ affairs say that Israeli settlers have destroyed 1,490 trees in Palestinian farmlands in October alone, 740 of them in Hebron, 193 in Nablus, 178 in Ramallah, 160 in Bethlehem,100 in Salfit, and 30 in Qalqilya.
Israel
- Israeli government judicial advisor orders investigation into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leaks. Last week, Israeli internal intelligence arrested four Israelis, one of whom works in Netanyahu’s office, on charges of leaking and falsifying classified documents concerning the ongoing war on Gaza.
- Israel’s Attorney General is reportedly planning to order Netanyahu to fire National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir for “repeatedly violating the law while in office unless he changes his mode of conduct,” Israeli media reported.
- Netanyahu says that his cabinet is being subject to “a flood” of leaks by adversaries, claiming his government is attacked by leaks in order to promote a discourse “of weakness and compromise”.
Israel Continues Operation To Divide And Empty North Gaza
Accusations of Israel committing ethnic cleansing have increased after an Israeli army general admitted that Israeli forces have “evacuated” most of the residents of Beit Lahia, Jabalia and al-Atatra in the north of the strip, and that they will not be allowed back.
On Monday, the EU chief diplomat, Josep Borrell Fontelles, said that the term of “ethnic cleansing” is increasingly used to describe what is going on in the north in the north of Gaza. Borrell’s remarks on ‘X’ came a day after the Israeli daily Haaretz published an editorial, saying “the Israeli military is conducting an ethnic cleansing operation in the northern Gaza Strip.” The piece featured the testimony of Haaretz’s war correspondent, Yaniv Kubovitch, who toured the north of Gaza, and described it as having been hit by a natural disaster. According to Kubovitch, the Israeli army is transferring the remaining Palestinians out of their communities in the north by force, destroying houses, and opening roads within the north of Gaza to isolate residential areas.
Israeli forces had already separated the north of Gaza from Gaza City since it began its current offensive on the north on October 6, and has been opening a new “buffer zone” in the northern governorate, separating Beit Lahia in the northwest from Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in the northeast.
Israeli forces have also been besieging the last remaining functioning hospital in the north, the Kamal Adwan hospital, after arresting most of its medical staff. According to the hospital’s director, Husam Abu Safiyeh, the Israeli army is blocking the arrival of medical supplies and medical teams to the hospital, which is now operating with only two doctors.
Simultaneously, the Israeli army continues to enlarge the Netzarim corridor, between Gaza City and the central Gaza Strip. On Sunday Israel forces invaded the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza after a massive artillery shelling, bulldozing more buildings in the area adjacent to the Netzarim buffer zone, which now serves as station space for troops, and prevents Palestinians from crossing it back to the north.
Before October 7 of last year, the north of Gaza was home to some 700,000 Palestinians. Today, it is estimated that between 150,000 and 200,000 remain.