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AS IT HAPPENED
Netanyahu ‘appreciates’ US veto in UN, says Gaza war ‘will continue’
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Saturday said he appreciated the US veto at the UN Security Council, which blocked a call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Israel will continue the war against Hamas, said Netanyahu, as the military pressed up with relentless bombardments in Gaza. Read our blog to see how the day’s events unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+1).
Issued on: 09/12/2023 – 08:07
Modified: 09/12/2023 – 17:17
2 min
File photo of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at a press conference in Tel Aviv taken October 28, 2023.
File photo of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at a press conference in Tel Aviv taken October 28, 2023. © Pool via Reuters
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FRANCE 24
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This blog is no longer being updated. For more of our coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, please click here.
Summary:
Israeli warplanes on Saturday pounded northern and southern Gaza, including areas in the south that were designated as safe areas for fleeing civilians.
Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu on Saturday said he appreciated the US veto at the UN Security Council, blocking a demand for an immediate ceasefire and declared the war in Gaza would continue.
The death of an Israeli hostage in Gaza was confirmed by his kibbutz and a hostage group on Saturday. Hamas on Friday said he was killed in a foiled Israeli rescue bid. The report was not confirmed.
Bypassing Congress, the Biden administration on Saturday said it approved the emergency sale of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million to Israel.
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas condemned the US UN Security Council veto, declaring that it made the US complicit in war crimes against Palestinians.
Hamas attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages, according to the Israeli government. Since then, at least 17,700 people have been killed in Israel’s ensuing assault on the Gaza Strip, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. At least 48,780 people have been injured and at least 7,600 people are missing, the Hamas media office said.
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Last Update: 9 hours ago
9 hours ago
This blog is no longer being updated. For more of our coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, please click here.
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9 hours ago
Thousands gather in Tel Aviv to demand the release of all hostages in Gaza
Thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday night demanding the release of all hostages being held in Gaza.
Demonstrators waved posters declaring, “Bring them home now”. Many carried pictures of Israelis still in Gaza. FRANCE 24’s Rob Parsons reports from Tel Aviv.
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10 hours ago
From London to Dubai, protesters take to streets calling for peace in Gaza
A day after the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, protesters on Saturday took to the streets in Palestinian solidarity rallies across the world.
In London, tens of thousands chanted “ceasefire now” amid anger over the British government’s abstention in Friday’s UN Security Council vote.
From London to Dubai, protesters take to streets calling for peace in Gaza
A protester in London calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, December 9, 2023. (Photo: Hollie Adams, Reuters)
From London to Dubai, protesters take to streets calling for peace in Gaza
London saw the eight successive weekend of Gaza peace protests on December 9, 2023. (Photo: Hollie Adams, Reuters)
From London to Dubai, protesters take to streets calling for peace in Gaza
At the COP28 summit in Dubai, a protester sings for climate justice and peace in Gaza on December 9, 2023. (Photo: Reuters)
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10 hours ago
Israel army chief says there are signs Hamas’ system is falling apart
Israel’s military must increase pressure on Hamas, whose system is showing signs of falling apart, said Israel’s military chief.
“We see terrorists who are surrendering, a sign of the collapse of the system, a sign that we need to press harder,” said Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi during a meeting with soldiers.
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11 hours ago
Netanyahu appreciates US position in UN Security Council
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said he appreciates the US veto at the UN Security Council, blocking a demand for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza war.
“Other countries must also understand that it’s impossible to support the elimination of Hamas on one side, and on the other to call for the end of the war, which will prevent the elimination of Hamas,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.
“Therefore Israel will continue our just war to eliminate Hamas and achieve the war’s other objectives that we set,” he added.
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12 hours ago
Bypassing Congress, Biden administration approves tank ammunition sale to Israel
More details coming in on US State Department approving tank ammunition sale to Israel:
Bypassing Congress, the Biden administration announced earlier Saturday that it has approved the emergency sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million.
The State Department said it had notified Congress of the sale late Friday after Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale” of the munitions in the US national security interest.
That means the purchase will bypass the congressional review requirement for foreign military sales.
The move comes as President Joe Biden’s request for a nearly $106 billion aid package primarily for Ukraine and Israel is languishing in Congress, caught in a debate over US immigration policy. A few progressive Democratic lawmakers have also spoken of making the proposed $14.3 billion to Israel in this package contingent on Israeli step to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability. This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives,” the department said in a statement. “Israel will use the enhanced capability as a deterrent to regional threats and to strengthen its homeland defense.”
The sale is worth $106.5 million and includes 13,981 120 mm High Explosive Anti-Tank Multi-Purpose with Tracer tank cartridges as well as US support, engineering and logistics.
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12 hours ago
More than 7,000 Palestinian militants killed in Gaza war, says Israeli official
Israel’s national security adviser has told a local TV station that more than 7,000 Palestinian militants have been killed during the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“This is a minimal estimate,” National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in an interview on Israel’s Channel 12. “It could be more, because we don’t know everything beneath places that collapsed and tunnels etc. But that is the conservative estimate.”
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13 hours ago
The politics of US military aid to Israel
FRANCE 24’s International Affairs Commentator Douglas Herbert breaks down the $380 billion commitment of US aid to Israel over a decade. Israel is the single largest recipient of US foreign aid to any country. Most of the aid is military aid, explains Herbert, and is focused on Israel maintaining a “qualitative military edge” – or “QME” – in the region.
US aid to Israel has long been “an article of faith” in Washington politics, Herbert notes. But with the latest Gaza war, a minority of progressive Democrats on Capitol Hill have “broken the taboo” on not questioning US military aid to Israel and are talking about adding conditions.
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13 hours ago
Houthis say Israel-bound ships in Red Sea will be targeted
A military spokesperson for Yemen’s Houthis has warned all shipping companies against cooperating with Israel, saying they will be a target of attack in the Red Sea.
“If Gaza does not receive the food and medicine it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” Yahya Saree said, announcing a ban on the passage of all ships en route to Israel.
The Houthis have been firing at Israel and ships in the Red Sea in a campaign they say aims to support the
Palestinians. US warships have shot down several of their projectiles.
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15 hours ago
US State Department approves potential tank cartridge sale to Israel
The US State Department has approved the potential sale of tank cartridges and related equipment to Israel for an estimated $106.5 million, the Pentagon said on Saturday.
The sale from US Army inventory will consist of 120mm M830A1 High Explosive Anti-Tank Multi-Purpose with Tracer (MPAT) tank cartridges and related equipment, the Pentagon said in a statement.
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15 hours ago
US ‘practising doublespeak’ by opposing ceasefire and warning Israel of humanitarian disaster
The Biden administration’s policy on the latest Gaza war is inconsistent and is failing to convince the international community, notes Gilbert Achcar of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
While the US has consistently supported Israel in the UN, senior US officials, such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have warned Israel of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, he says.
The US is “practicing doublespeak because they are seeing the extent of the massacre [in Gaza], which is absolutely huge and therefore they want to dissociate themselves in some way from the massacres,” says Achcar. “But who is fooled by such an attitude when you know that they are not only confirming their unconditional support for what Israel is doing”, but also supplying weapons to Israel, he explains.
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16 hours ago
Israel pounds Gaza, residents rummage for belongings in rubble
Gaza residents reported air strikes and shelling in northern and southern Gaza, including Rafah, the southernmost city near the Egyptian border, which was declared a safe area by the Israeli military for civilians fleeing the fighting.
Images from Rafah in the aftermath of the strikes showed destroyed buildings as residents tried to salvage their belongings from the rubble.
Israel pounds Gaza, residents rummage for belongings in rubble
A Palestinian woman holds her child after an Israeli strike on her neighborhood in Rafah on December 9, 2023. (Photo: Fatima Shbair, AP)
Israel pounds Gaza, residents rummage for belongings in rubble
Residents rummage through rubble of houses destroyed in the Israeli bombardment of Rafah on December 9, 2023. (Photo: Fatima Shbair, AP)
The Israeli military confirmed fighting in northern Gaza on Saturday. The IDF said its forces fought and killed Hamas militants and found weapons inside a school in Shijaiyah in a densely populated neighbourhood of Gaza City.
It said soldiers discovered a tunnel shaft in the same neighbourhood, where they found an elevator. In a separate incident, Israel said Palestinian militants shot at troops from an UN-run school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun.
Two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received the bodies of a total of 133 people from Israeli bombings over the past 24 hours, according to the Palestinian health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Hamas on Saturday said it continued its rocket fire into Israel.
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17 hours ago
Israeli hostage killed in Gaza, kibbutz confirms
An Israeli hostage held in Gaza has been killed, the man’s kibbutz community has announced hours after Hamas claimed he had died during a failed rescue attempt.
Sahar Baruch, 25, is the latest confirmed fatality among Israelis and foreigners taken captive during Hamas’s October 7 attack.
Beeri, the Gaza border community Baruch was from, and the Israeli Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a joint statement he had been “murdered”.
“It is with deep sorrow and a broken heart that we announce the murder of Sahar Baruch,” the statement said.
He was “kidnapped from his home by Hamas terrorists to Gaza … and murdered there,” it added without providing evidence.
Hamas on Friday said fighters of its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, had “succeeded in foiling an Israeli attempt to free an Israeli captive”.
“A fierce gunfight broke out between al-Qassam fighters and the Israeli special force, leaving many soldiers wounded while the captive Israeli… was announced killed,” Hamas said in an English-language statement late on Friday.
It released a video showing what it said was the hostage’s body. News organisations have been unable to independently verify its authenticity since journalists have been denied access to the besieged Palestinian enclave since October 7.
Earlier this week, Israel said 138 hostages remain in Gaza out of around 240 taken there on October 7.
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18 hours ago
The UN Security Council needs to be reformed, says Turkey’s Erdogan
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday called for the United Nations Security Council to be reformed, decrying the fact that the United States could veto a ceasefire proposal for Gaza despite huge support from other countries.
“The United Nations Security Council demand for ceasefire is rejected only by US veto. Is this justice?,” Erdogan said in a human rights conference in Istanbul.
“The UN Security Council needs to be reformed,” he added.
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18 hours ago
Process for inspecting aid at Kerem Shalom being tested, but crossing not open, says UN official
A new process for inspecting aid for Gaza at the Kerem Shalom crossing is being tested, but efforts to get permission for trucks to enter through the crossing and ramp up relief are still ongoing, a senior UN official told Reuters on Saturday.
Under the new system, trucks would come to the Kerem Shalom crossing on the border between Israel, Gaza and Egypt for the first time from Jordan, before entering Gaza from Rafah, about 3 kilometres (1.86 miles) away.
But the trucks would need to be allowed to enter Gaza directly through Kerem Shalom to alleviate an increasingly desperate situation in the coastal enclave, said Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the UN World Food Programme.
Israel has so far rebuffed pleas from the United Nations and others to open Kerem Shalom, but they both signalled on Thursday that Kerem Shalom could soon help process delivery of humanitarian supplies into Gaza.
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19 hours ago
Analysis: Failed UN resolution on Gaza ceasefire still ups pressure on US and Israel
While the UN Security Council failed to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas, the attempt “puts more pressure” on the US, which vetoed the move, and Israel, explains FRANCE 24 chief foreign editor Rob Parsons, reporting from Tel Aviv.
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19 hours ago
US veto on UN ceasefire resolution makes it complicit in Israeli ‘war crimes’, says Abbas
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas said the United States’ veto of a UN Security Council resolution demanding a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza made it complicit in what he described as war crimes against Palestinians.
“The president has described the American position as aggressive and immoral, a flagrant violation of all humanitarian principles and values, and holds the United States responsible for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and elderly people in the Gaza Strip,” said a statement from Abbas’s office.
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20 hours ago
MSF says US veto of Security Council bid for Gaza ceasefire was a ‘vote against humanity’
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a day ago
Israeli drone strike in Syria killed three Hezbollah members, say regional sources
Three members of the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah were killed in an Israeli drone strike in southwest Syria on Friday, according to two regional sources close to Damascus.
The strike also killed a Syrian who was accompanying them, one of the sources said.
The Israeli army declined to comment on the strike in Quneitra, also known as Baath City, near the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Israel has for years carried out attacks on what it has described as Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran’s influence has grown since it began supporting President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war that started in 2011.
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a day ago
Palestinian ambassador calls it ‘a terrible day’ for UN Security Council after US vetoes Gaza ceasefire
“Despite pleas from world leaders and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres”, the US on Friday was the only country out of 15 (the UK abstained) that vetoed the UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, reports FRANCE 24’s Jessica Le Masurier from New York.
After the vote, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, said that it had been “a terrible day” for the UN Security Council, adds Le Masurier.
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Key Developments from Friday, December 8:
Heavy urban combat raged in and around Gaza’s biggest cities on Friday, with major battles reported in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north and Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
Israel and the UN signalled that the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel into the Gaza Strip might be opened soon to allow aid in. Since the start of the war, the tightly controlled Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt has been the only point of entry into the enclave.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday urged Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to end violent attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians in the Israel-occupied West Bank.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP & Reuters)
About casualty figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry:
Gaza’s health ministry collects data from the enclave’s hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The health ministry does not report how Palestinians were killed, whether from Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages or errant Palestinian rocket fire. It describes all casualties as victims of “Israeli aggression”. The ministry also does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Throughout four wars and numerous skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, UN agencies have cited the Hamas-run health ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.
In the aftermath of war, the UN humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records. The UN’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza health ministry’s, with small discrepancies.
For more on the Gaza health ministry’s tolls, click here.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
