Israel orders evacuation of Gaza hospital; Syria’s de facto ruler reassures minorities

Syria’s de facto ruler, Ahmed al-Sharaa, hosted Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt on Sunday in another effort to reassure minorities they will be protected after Islamist rebels led the ouster of Bashar al-Assad two weeks ago.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday Israel would continue acting against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, whom he accused of threatening world shipping and the international order, and called on Israelis to be steadfast.

Israel orders Gaza hospital evacuated

Israel ordered the closure and evacuation on Sunday of one of the last hospitals still partly functioning in a besieged area on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, forcing medics to search for a way to bring hundreds of patients and staff to safety.

The head of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, Husam Abu Safiya, told Reuters via text message that obeying the order to shut down was “next to impossible” because there were not enough ambulances to get patients out.

“We currently have nearly 400 civilians inside the hospital, including babies in the neonatal unit, whose lives depend on oxygen and incubators. We cannot evacuate these patients safely without assistance, equipment and time,” said Abu Safiya.

“We are sending this message under heavy bombardment and direct targeting of the fuel tanks, which if hit will cause a large explosion and mass casualties of the civilians inside,” he said.

Syria’s de facto ruler reassures minorities

Syria’s de facto ruler, Ahmed al-Sharaa, hosted Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt on Sunday in another effort to reassure minorities they would be protected after Islamist rebels led the ouster of Bashar al-Assad two weeks ago.

Sharaa said no sects would be excluded in Syria in what he described as “a new era far removed from sectarianism”.

Sharaa heads the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main group that forced Assad out on 8 December. Some Syrians and foreign powers have worried he may impose strict Islamic governance on a country with numerous minority groups such as Druze, Kurds, Christians and Alawites.

“We take pride in our culture, our religion and our Islam. Being part of the Islamic environment does not mean the exclusion of other sects. On the contrary, it is our duty to protect them,” he said during the meeting with Jumblatt, in comments broadcast by Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed.

Jumblatt, a veteran politician and prominent Druze leader, said at the meeting that Assad’s ouster should usher in new constructive relations between Lebanon and Syria. Druze are an Arab minority who practice an offshoot of Islam.

Sharaa, dressed in a suit and tie rather than the military fatigues he favoured in his rebel days, also said he would send a government delegation to the southwestern Druze city of Sweida, pledging to provide services to its community and highlighting Syria’s “rich diversity of sects”.

Seeking to allay worries about the future of Syria, Sharaa has hosted numerous foreign visitors in recent days and has vowed to prioritise rebuilding Syria, devastated by 13 years of civil war.

Israel will continue to act against the Houthis, says Netanyahu

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday Israel would continue acting against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, whom he accused of threatening world shipping and the international order, and called on Israelis to be steadfast.

“Just as we acted forcefully against the terrorist arms of Iran’s axis of evil, so we will act against the Houthis,” he said in a video statement a day after a missile fired from Yemen fell in the Tel Aviv area, causing a number of minor injuries.

On Thursday, Israeli jets launched a series of strikes against energy and port infrastructure in Yemen in a move officials said was a response to hundreds of missile and drone attacks launched by the Houthis since the start of the Gaza war 14 months ago.

On Saturday, the US military said it had conducted precision airstrikes against a missile storage facility and a command-and-control facility operated by Houthis in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.

Netanyahu, strengthened at home by the Israeli military’s campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon and by its destruction of most of the Syrian army’s strategic weapons, said Israel would act with the US.

“Therefore, we will act with strength, determination and sophistication. I tell you that even if it takes time, the result will be the same,” he said.

The Houthis have launched repeated attacks on international shipping in waters near Yemen since November 2023, in support of the Palestinians over Israel’s war with Hamas.

Turkey’s foreign minister meets HTS leader in Damascus

Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, met with Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, said Turkey’s foreign ministry, without providing further details.

Photographs and footage shared by the ministry showed Fidan and Sharaa walking ahead of a crowded delegation before posing for photographs.

The two are also seen shaking hands, hugging, and smiling.

On Friday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan said that Turkey would help Syria’s new administration form a state structure and draft a new Constitution, adding that Fidan would head to Damascus to discuss this new structure, without providing a date.

Ibrahim Kalin, the head of Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency, also visited Damascus on 12 December, four days after Assad’s fall.

Ankara had for years backed rebels looking to oust Assad and welcomed the end of his family’s brutal five-decade rule after a 13-year civil war. Turkey also hosts millions of Syrian migrants it hopes will start returning home after Assad’s fall, and has vowed to help rebuild Syria.

Fidan’s visit comes amid fighting in northeast Syria between Turkey-backed Syrian fighters and the Kurdish YPG militia, which spearheads the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeast and Ankara regards as a terrorist organisation.

Earlier, Turkey’s defence minister said Ankara believed that Syria’s new leadership, including the Syrian National Army armed group which Ankara backs, would drive YPG fighters from all territory they occupy in the northeast.

Ankara, alongside Syrian allies, has mounted several cross-border offensives against the Kurdish faction in northern Syria and controls swathes of Syrian territory along the border, while repeatedly demanding that its Nato ally Washington halts support for the Kurdish fighters.

The SDF has been on the back foot since Assad’s fall, with the threat of advances from Ankara and Turkey-backed groups as it looks to preserve political gains made in the past 13 years, and with Syria’s new rulers being friendly to Ankara.

Pope calls Gaza airstrikes ‘cruelty’ after Israeli minister’s criticism

Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.

Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.

“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”

The pope, as leader of the 1.4 billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide”.

Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticised those comments in an unusual open letter published by the Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialisation” of the term genocide.

Israel’s foreign ministry said that Israel was defending itself against the cruelty exemplified by Hamas militants “hiding behind children while trying to murder Israeli children”, holding 100 hostages and abusing them.

“Unfortunately, the pope has chosen to ignore all of this,” said the ministry, adding that the “death of any innocent person in a war is a tragedy”.

“Israel makes extraordinary efforts to prevent harm to innocents, while Hamas makes extraordinary efforts to increase harm to Palestinian civilians,” said the ministry.

Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.

The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.

The Israeli military said on Saturday the patriarch’s entry had been approved and he would enter Gaza on Sunday, barring any major security issues. Aid from the patriarch’s office entered last week, said the military.

Israel allows clerics to enter Gaza and “works in cooperation with the Christian community to make it easier for the Christian population that remains in the Gaza Strip — including coordinating its removal from the Gaza Strip to a third country,” said the military.

The war began when Hamas-led Palestinian militants attacked southern Israeli communities on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign, which it says is aimed at eliminating Hamas, has killed more than 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. The campaign has displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.

Israel says that at least a third of the dead have been militants and says it tries to avoid harm to civilians but is battling militants who it accuses of embedding among the population in dense urban areas. Hamas rejects this. DM

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