At least 29 Palestinians, including children and women, were killed even before sundown on New Year’s Day in the Gaza Strip, where according to the United Nations, healthcare is now on the verge of total collapse due to the continuous and systematic Israeli attacks on hospitals. And the situation in the refugee camps is increasingly serious, where another newborn died of cold, the seventh in the space of a few days.
All this while attempts to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas for the release of the hostages and a truce have officially stalled once again. Meanwhile, the conditions of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are becoming more miserable every day, not only due to the continuous bombings, but also due to the harsh climate that has hit the region for days.
There are over 1,500 tents hosting entire families in the refugee camps and shelters of Gaza which are now totally floodedwith over 30 centimeters of water, due to the heavy rains that continue to lash the region, according to reports from the local Civil Protection. A condition that further puts the health of refugees at risk, where «Israel’s pattern of deadly attacks against and near hospitals in Gaza, and the associated fighting, have pushed the health system to the brink of total collapse, with catastrophic effects on Palestinian access to healthcare,” the United Nations human rights office said in a statement accompanying a report.
The hospitals in Gaza have become “death traps”, underlined the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk“as if the incessant bombing and the terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough.” Harsh words, which follow those expressed Monday by a group of United Nations rights experts according to which “the siege” appears to be part of an effort “to permanently displace the local population as a precursor to the annexation of Gaza” In all this, while the sad death toll in the Strip has reached 45,553 and 108,379 injured, the Israeli attacks in the last few hours have been concentrated in the north of Jabalia, in the central refugee camp of Bureij, in Gaza City and southern Khan Younis. And they began just after midnight, with a raid on a house in Jabalia, northern Gaza, that left 15 dead, including four children and a woman, and more. of 20 injured among three displaced families“bullets”, or rockets, continue to arrive from the Strip towards Israeli territoryso much so that Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that the IDF will intensify its attacks on Gaza if Hamas continues to fire rockets at Israel. “It will suffer hits of an intensity not seen in Gaza for a long time,” he said, even as the Israeli Air Force announced that it had launched more than 1,400 airstrikes in the Gaza Strip in December, with fighter jets, helicopters and drones. And just as an Israeli official told the Times of Israel that there are currently no Israeli teams in Doha or Cairo working on a deal with Hamas. Apparently also because Hamas has reportedly partially rejected a list of hostages that Israel insists must be released in the first phase of any ceasefire agreement: According to the Israeli broadcaster Kan, Hamas is willing to release 22 of the 34 hostages on the list, offering 12 deceased. With Israel then reportedly rejecting the idea, making it clear that it would only accept living abductees. Meanwhile, on the PNA front, there has been a decision to suspend Al Jazeera broadcasts in the Palestinian Territories. A move condemned by Hamas which speaks of a clear violation of media freedom, and which the pan-Arab broadcaster itself believes to be linked to Ramallah’s desire to curry favor with Donald Trump, who is arriving at the White House.