Israeli strikes kill over 70 in Gaza camp, Christmas celebrations cancelled in West Bank

Thank you for following this live blog on Day 80 of the Gaza war.

A senior general with Iran's Revolutionary Guards was killed Monday by an Israeli strike in Syria, the military force said, with Tehran vowing to make Israel "pay for this crime".

Iranian state media also reported the death of Razi Moussavi, describing him as "one of the most experienced advisors" of Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Iran's state TV said Moussavi was targeted by "three missiles" and aired footage showing smoke rising from the area of the strike.

Residents of Gaza's Al-Maghazi refugee camp returned to their neighbourhood on Monday only to find blocks of concrete strewn where their homes had stood just a day ago.

"These houses are destroyed. Our house was bombed," said camp resident Abu Rami Abu al-Ais amid the debris.

"There's no safe place in the Gaza Strip."

Late on Sunday three houses in the camp were hit by Israeli air strikes that killed at least 70 people, according to the health ministry.

Israel says it issues evacuation orders and warnings so civilians can get to safety before military activity, but Zeyad Awad said there was no advisory before the strike.

"What should we do? We are civilians, living peacefully and wanting only safety and security," he said.

"Yet we are suddenly struck by Israeli warplanes without any warning."

The commander of the 51st Battalion of the Golani Brigade in the Israeli army was dismissed after endangering soldiers in the Gaza City area of Shujaiya, Israeli Channel 12 said Monday.

The "elite" battalion left Gaza this week in a move that was linked to a "reorganisation of ranks" after heavy losses in Shujaiya.

At least 10 troops were recently ambushed by Hamas there, including a senior officer.

Israel showed no mercy to Gaza’s Christians on Christmas Day as they remained trapped in besieged churches while deadly airstrikes continued to pound the enclave.

Gaza’s Christians - less than 1,000 of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million - have not been spared from the killing and devastation, with Israel’s raids and strikes even targeting Christian places of worship.

Read the full article here.

The festivities which usually happen at Christmas time are noticeably absent this year in Bethlehem as people mourn the deaths of over 20,600 Palestinians killed in Israel's war on Gaza, and hundreds more in the occupied West Bank.

The streets of Bethlehem, typically adorned with Christmas decorations, are starkly bare this year. A large decorated tree that usually stands in Manger Square near the Church of the Nativity, symbolising hope and renewal, is notably absent.

Read full article here.

On Friday, 22 December, Rabat and Tel Aviv were set to celebrate the third anniversary of their normalisation accord.

But celebrations have been scrapped amid the Gaza war, and angry anti-normalisation protests in Morocco.

Read the full article here.

Families of hostages taken by Hamas booed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday as he addressed parliament, vowing to bring the captives home but saying "more time" was needed.

"Now! Now!" the families chanted from the gallery when Netanyahu said Israeli forces first needed to increase military pressure on Hamas.

"We wouldn't be able to secure the release of hostages without military pressure," he said.

Netanyahu said he spoke to Israeli field commanders who said they needed "more time" to finish the mission.

"We won't stop until victory," Netanyahu said over the cries of protesters.

Six rockets have been fired from southern Lebanon towards Israel, Al-Jazeera Arabic has reported.

Four were launched towards the settlements of Qiryat Shemona and two towards Metula in northern Israel, Al-Jazeera's correspondent reported.

The correspondent added that Israel had fired interceptor rockets to stop the rockets from Lebanon landing.

Israel has increased its airstrikes on southern Lebanese border villages in recent days, saying that this was in response to increased rocket fire coming from the area.

Gaza government’s media office said 23 hospitals in the enclave are out of service due to Israeli bombardment, adding that more than 9,000 people succumbed to their wounds as they were unable to be hospitalised.

Aid coming into Gaza covers only 2% of the territory’s health sector needs, according to Ismail al-Thawabta, the director general of the government’s media office. He added that Gaza was in need of at least 1,000 aid trucks daily to properly function the health sector.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Gaza Strip on Monday and vowed to step up the army's assault in the Palestinian territory, his party said.

"I just came back from Gaza... we're not stopping, we're continuing to fight and we're intensifying the fighting in the coming days. It's going to be a long war that's not close to ending," he said, according to a Likud party statement.

20,674 people have been killed and 54,536 injured in Israel's bombardment of Gaza since October 7, Gaza's health ministry said Monday.

The ministry added that 250 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours and 500 wounded.

Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad have rejected an Egyptian proposal that they relinquish power in the Gaza Strip in return for a permanent ceasefire, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters on Monday.

Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas' political bureau, later denied in a statement what the sources said about the talks, adding: "There can be no negotiations without a complete stop to the aggression."

"The Hamas leadership is aiming with all its might for a complete, not temporary, end to the aggression and massacres of our people," he said, referring to the more than 20,000 Palestinians killed during the 11-week war with Israel.

Both groups, which have been holding separate talks with Egyptian mediators in Cairo, rejected offering any concessions beyond the possible release of more hostages seized on October 7.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said that Israeli forces raided the Jabalia ambulance centre, destroyed its ambulances, and forced displaced Palestinians, paramedics and volunteers to evacuate it.

Ambulances belonging to the PRCS headed to Jabalia from Khan Younis to evacuate the centre, the organisation said.

It added that 21 wounded people would be evacuated from the Baptist hospital and 12 others from Al-Shifa hospital.

12 Palestine Red Crescent ambulances🚑, coordinated through the ICRC departed from #KhanYounis towards #Gaza in a mission to evacuate PRCS teams and volunteers in the northern #Gaza. 🚨This came after Israeli forces compelled them to evacuate the ambulance center in #Jabalia,… pic.twitter.com/tzIpmcEueT

— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) December 25, 2023

Hamas called on the International Criminal Court to take urgent action to hold Israeli war criminals accountable and prevent their impunity, noting that the failure of the court and its prosecutor, Karim Khan, to act seriously and immediately places question marks over its role in protecting humanity from the violations of war criminals.

"We call on the court to overcome political pressures and assume its historical responsibility in holding Zionist officials accountable for the killing and atrocities in the Gaza Strip – something that cannot be doubted - in order to achieve justice and establish international justice by preventing criminal Zionists from escaping punishment," the group said.

Palestinian medical officials say the death toll from an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza has risen to 106.

Shipping firm Maersk says it is preparing to allow vessels to resume sailing through the Red Sea, thanks to the start of a U.S.-led multinational naval operation to protect shipping from attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Maersk said in a statement Sunday that "we have received confirmation that the previously announced multi-national security initiative Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG) has now been set up and deployed to allow maritime commerce to pass through the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden and once again return to using the Suez Canal as a gateway between Asia and Europe."

The company said it was working on plans for the first vessels to make the journey "and for this to happen as soon as operationally possible."

Egypt has put forward an ambitious, initial proposal to end the Gaza war with a ceasefire, a phased hostage release and the creation of a Palestinian government of experts who would administer the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank, a senior Egyptian official and a European diplomat said Monday.

The proposal, worked out with the Gulf nation of Qatar, has been presented to Israel, Hamas, the United States and European governments but still appeared preliminary.

It falls short of Israel’s professed goal of outright crushing Hamas and would appear not to meet Israel’s insistence on keeping military control over Gaza for an extended period after the war.

The World Health Organization said it led missions to barely functioning hospitals in northern Gaza at the weekend, describing growing desperation and starving people stripping an aid truck of supplies.

The UN health agency and its partners delivered aid, including fuel, to the devastated Al-Shifa hospital, once Gaza's biggest and most advanced medical facility, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said late Sunday on X, formerly Twitter.

Rising desperation due to acute hunger witnessed during joint mission by @WHO, @UNOCHA, @UNICEF, @WCKitchen to hospitals in north #Gaza; partners demand immediate scale-up of food and water to ensure population health and stability.
On 23 December, WHO and partners visited, and… pic.twitter.com/uNQep7Ig6T

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) December 24, 2023

Hamas' armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades published a video showing what it said were rockets fired at Israeli settlements, in response to Israel's ongoing massacres against civilians in Gaza.

كتائب القسام تنشر مشاهد من إطلاق رشقات صاروخية باتجاه المستوطنات الإسرائيلية pic.twitter.com/tFhQ7IUMTA

— التلفزيون العربي (@AlarabyTV) December 25, 2023

Cross-border clashes continued between Hezbollah in south Lebanon and the Israeli military on Christmas.

Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, as the Israeli army responded with artillery.

Iran denied on Monday a U.S. claim that a drone launched from Iran had struck a chemical tanker in the Indian ocean.

The Pentagon said at the weekend that the Liberia-flagged, Japanese-owned and Netherlands-operated Chem Pluto ship was hit 200 nautical miles off the coast of India.

"These repetitive accusations are rejected as baseless," Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said at a briefing, adding that the U.S. instead should face accusations for its role in Israel's war in Gaza.

The death toll from Israeli airstrikes on the Al-Maghazi and Bureij refugee camps in Gaza rose to a total of about 95, Gaza's health ministry said.

Bodies of victims piled up at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza City before their burial.

الصلاة على أكثر من ٧٠ شهيد من شهداء مخيم المغازي في مستشفى شهداء الأقصى#غزة_تستغيث pic.twitter.com/QtIhVudIvp

— Tamer Hamam (@tamerhamam_) December 25, 2023

The Israeli army said Monday two more soldiers had been killed in Gaza, taking to 17 the number of troops killed since Friday and 156 since Israel's ground invasion began on October 27.

Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus claimed that forces were close to gaining control in northern Gaza, and that now the focus was fighting in southern Gaza.

Israeli media had reported that 27% of all military deaths in Gaza were officers, including senior brigade and battalion commanders.

Just ahead of Christmas, Gaza's health ministry said at least 70 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on Sunday at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.

Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said the "toll is likely to rise" as many families were thought to be in the area at the time of the strike.

In a separate incident, the ministry said 10 members of one family were killed in an Israeli strike on their house in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza.

Videos shared online show the aftermath of the Al-Maghazi strike, and rescuers searching the rubble for survivors.

مُخيم المغازي يُباد. pic.twitter.com/sfRm8d3JU8

— نُسَيبة. (@_Nosayba_) December 24, 2023

تغطية صحفية: محاولات انتشال الجرحى من تحت الأنقاض بفعل مجــزرة الاحـتـلال على مخيم المغازي. pic.twitter.com/x7YXhbNGSs

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) December 24, 2023