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Israel's ex-defence chief Yoav Gallant resigns from Parliament; IDF strikes Gaza City suburb - medics

Israel's ex-defence chief Yoav Gallant resigns from Parliament; IDF strikes Gaza City suburb - medics
Reuters
By Reuters
1 Jan 2025
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Gallant had often broken ranks with Netanyahu and his coalition allies of far-right and religious parties, including over exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from serving in the conscript military - a hot button issue.

Israel's former defence chief Gallant quits politics


Former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who had often taken an independent line against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government allies, said on Wednesday he was resigning from Parliament.

Gallant was fired from the government in November by Netanyahu, after months of disagreements over the conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza, but kept his seat as an elected member of the Knesset.

"Just as it is on the battlefield, so it is in public service. There are moments in which one must stop, assess and choose a direction in order to achieve the goals," Gallant said in a televised statement.

Gallant had often broken ranks with Netanyahu and his coalition allies of far-right and religious parties, including over exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from serving in the conscript military - a hot button issue.

In March 2023, Netanyahu fired Gallant after he urged a halt to a highly contested government plan to cut the Supreme Court's powers. His dismissal triggered mass protests and Netanyahu backtracked.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Gallant and Netanyahu, along with a Hamas leader, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict, which Israel has contested.

Israel strikes Gaza City suburb, say Palestinian medics 


The Israeli military kept up the pressure on northern Gaza on Wednesday, striking in a suburb of Gaza City, medics said, and told residents in a central part of the enclave to evacuate from an area where militants were firing rockets.

Air strikes in Shejaia, a suburb of Gaza City, killed at least eight Palestinians, according to local emergency services. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military and it was not immediately clear who was killed in the attack.

In al-Buriej, in central Gaza, the Israeli military said it struck a militant operating in an area from which rockets had been fired into Israel the previous day. Its Arabic spokesman had ordered people to leave the area before the strike.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA said two people had been killed in that strike and 15 more in an airstrike in Jabalia. There was no immediate confirmation from Gaza health officials.

Much of the area around the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and razed, fuelling speculation, which Israel denies, that it intends to keep the area as a buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.

Israel says its almost three-month-old campaign in northern Gaza is aimed at preventing Hamas militants from regrouping. Its instructions to civilians to evacuate are meant to keep them out of harm's way, the military says.

Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place is safe in Gaza and that evacuations worsen the humanitarian conditions of the population.

According to the Palestinian civil defence, more than 1,500 tents sheltering displaced people across Gaza were flooded by heavy rains over the past two days, leaving people exposed to the cold, their belongings damaged.

Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the tiny coastal strip is in ruins.

The war was triggered by Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Gaza population down 6% since war - Palestinian statistics bureau


The population of Gaza has fallen 6% since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Palestinians left the enclave while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

Around 45,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, have been killed since the war began but another 11,000 are missing, the bureau said, citing numbers from the Palestinian Health Ministry.

As such, the population of Gaza has declined by about 160,000 during the course of the war to 2.1 million, with more than a million or 47% of the total children under the age of 18, the PCBS said.

It added that Israel has "raged a brutal aggression against Gaza targeting all kinds of life there; humans, buildings and vital infrastructure... entire families were erased from the civil register. There are catastrophic human and material losses."

Israel's foreign ministry said the PCBS data was "fabricated, inflated, and manipulated in order to vilify Israel".

Israel has faced accusations of genocide in Gaza because of the scale of death and destruction.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations' highest legal body, ruled last January that Israel must prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians, while Pope Francis has suggested the global community should study whether Israel's Gaza campaign constitutes genocide.

Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide, saying it abides by international law and has a right to defend itself after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 killed 1,200 Israelis and precipitated the current war.

The PCBS said some 22% of Gaza's population currently faces catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, according to the criteria of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global monitor.

Included in that 22% are some 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food, the bureau said.

UN body accuses Israel of destroying Gaza healthcare


Israeli attacks on hospitals in Gaza have devastated the Palestinian enclave's health system and raised serious concerns about Israel's compliance with international law, the UN Human Rights Office said in a report on Tuesday.

The 23-page report, documenting various attacks between October 12, 2023, and June 30, 2024, concluded that since the Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, the conduct of hostilities in Gaza had had severe consequences on Palestinians' access to medical attention.

"The destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, and the extent of killing of patients, staff, and other civilians in these attacks, is a direct consequence of the disregard of international humanitarian and human rights law," it said.

Daniel Meron, Israel's permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, described the report's data as fabricated. He said on X that Israel operates in accordance with international law, would never target innocent civilians, and accused Hamas of using Gaza hospitals for what he called "terror activity".

The Israeli military has accused Hamas of using hospitals as command centres for military operations and said that people Israel has detained at the facilities were suspected militants.

The UN report alluded to such arguments but said not enough information had been made public to substantiate them.

Israel has in the past few days conducted operations against hospitals in Gaza that drew criticism from the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) among others.

The report said deliberately directing attacks against hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are, provided they are not military objectives, would be war crimes.

It also warned that a systemic pattern of rights abuses against civilians could constitute crimes against humanity.

Israel has consistently rejected such suggestions.

The UN said that responding to its report, the Israeli government said its military had taken extensive measures to mitigate civilian harm and minimize disruption, including providing aid and evacuation routes, and setting up field hospitals.

In a statement, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said: "As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became a death trap."

Hamas killed 1,200 people and abducted 251 to Gaza in its attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 45,500 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's subsequent campaign against Hamas in Gaza, Palestinian health officials say. DM

Read more: Middle East crisis news hub

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