Israel-Hamas war updates: Gaza faces heavy Israeli bombardment

This live page is now closed. Please follow along with our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war at our new page, here.

For more context on the conflict, read more about why support for Israel remains steadfast among German politicians, here.

And read more about how the world remains divided two months into the war, here.

We’ll soon be closing this live page. Here’s a recap of today’s main events.

• The UN’s aid chief says comprehensive humanitarian operation in Gaza is nonexistent, with only patchwork aid able to be administered amid Israel’s offensive in the south.
• Footage shows Israel forces detaining dozens of men in northern Gaza, with Al-Araby Al-Jadeed saying their correspondent was among those stripped and taken to an unknown location.
• Deputy US envoy to the UN says the country’s opposition to a full ceasefire in Gaza has not changed, as the Security Council is set to meet on Friday to discuss the situation.
• Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu threatens to turn “Beirut and south Lebanon into Gaza” after antitank fire from Lebanon was reported to have hit an Israeli civilian.
• Tributes pour in for Refaat Alareer, a prominent Palestinian professor and poet killed in an Israeli attack in the south of the enclave.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi has denounced Israel’s “blatant aggression” on Gaza, saying that his country will not allow any attempt to “empty the population” of the besieged territory.

In an interview with the US network NBC, Safadi said the war “is not going to bring security to Israel”.

He also said that neither Jordan nor Egypt would accept the displacement of Palestinians from their own land or allow Israel “to proceed with its policies of transferring the crisis to the region”.

“The right to self-defence does not mean a license to kill with impunity. It does not mean attacking a whole community,” said Safadi, adding that most of the Palestinians killed in the Israeli military invasion are children and women.

WATCH: The war in Gaza is about allowing Israel to “empty Gaza of its population,” says Jordanian Foreign Minister @AymanHsafadi.

“We’re not going to allow Israel to proceed with its policies of transferring its crisis to the region.” pic.twitter.com/TBnWG6dhfg

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) December 7, 2023

British newspaper The Times, citing the UK defence secretary, is reporting that a British team is currently in the occupied West Bank helping to prepare the PA to take control of Gaza.

The report comes after Grant Shapps visited Ramallah.

“One of the reasons we are going to Ramallah to talk to the Palestinian Authority is to understand their capacity and ability. One of the things we will be doing is talking to the British team who are helping to build that capacity, along with the Americans,” Shapps said.

US officials have repeatedly said that the PA is the main candidate to succeed Hamas as the governing authority in Gaza after the war there ends.

However, the Israeli prime minister rejected this possibility yesterday. “As long as I am the Prime Minister of Israel, this will not happen,” Netanyahu wrote on X.

The anti-tank missile landed in the Shtula area of northern Israel, the military said.

In a post on X, the Israeli army also said it attacked a series of Hezbollah-related targets in Lebanon.

Ardi Imseis, an international law professor at Queen’s University in Canada, says UN political leaders are failing to identify what is happening on the ground in Gaza.

And what is happening, Imseis told Al Jazeera, is the forcible transfer of 1.8 million people, the bombardment of “80 percent of the population”, and the use of starvation as a tool of war.

“What’s worse is the Israeli leadership has been very clear on what they’re doing. They want at the very least to depopulate the Gaza Strip – that is, [that] all 2.3 million Palestinians should be leaving, in their view, to Egypt,” he said.

It is vital that the UN speak out against the “ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip which we are watching in real-time”, he said, adding that based on evidence that exists, there is a “real and substantial possibility that genocide is also taking place”.

Nihad Awad pointed to several recent incidents that have gained national attention, including the shooting of three Palestinian students in Burlington, Vermont, and the fatal stabbing of a Palestinian-American boy in Illinois.

CAIR says it received 2,171 complaints in an “ongoing wave of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate” in the country.

In another incident, one woman who was carrying a Palestinian flag in DC was threatened with beheading, Awad told Al Jazeera, while cases of people being fired from their jobs for expressing pro-Palestinian sentiments have also been reported.

“The 2,171 cases, these are not just numbers. Behind every number is a human being who suffered a hate crime or bias,” he said.

Blinken spoke shortly after Reuters news agency reported that its journalist Issam Abdallah had been killed by Israeli tank fire in southern Lebanon on October 13.

Following an investigation, Human Rights Watch said the killing appeared to be deliberate.

“It is important and appropriate that it be fully and thoroughly investigated,” Blinken said. “My understanding is that Israel has initiated such an investigation, and it will be important to see that investigation come to a conclusion and to see the results of the investigation.”

Sami Hermez of Northwestern University in Qatar tells Al Jazeera that Refaat Alareer was “someone who spoke to thousands”.

Alareer, a poet, writer, professor and one of Gaza’s most prominent academics, was killed in Israeli army strikes on southern Gaza.

“It’s hard when you have 17,000 people [dead], and we are unable to follow the stories of each and every one of them. This one touches me because I’m also a professor and writer just like Dr Refaat,” Hermez said.

“It’s just unfathomable, horrific, brutal and so on, and we keep using these words, but nothing seems to capture it any more. I might as well just be silent.”

We are grief-stricken and enraged to hear that Israel has killed beloved Palestinian professor, writer, poet, and activist Refaat Alareer. Refaat’s constant, English-language updates kept many around the world informed about Israel’s ongoing, genocidal assault on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/EVSeFwV066

— IMEU (@theIMEU) December 7, 2023

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says it received 2,171 complaints amid what it has described as an “ongoing wave of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate” in the US.

The complaints included violations of free speech, hate crimes and hate speech, bullying, and threats against employment, the organisation said.

“Innocent Americans are suffering as a result of this rising tide of bigotry. Until our nation stops the violence in Gaza and rejects bigotry here in America, we fear that both Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism will continue to spin out of control,” CAIR wrote on X.

We received a staggering 2,171 complaints over the past 57 days amid an ongoing wave of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate.

At the national headquarters alone, First Amendment issues (33.94%), violations of an individual’s right to free speech and expression, remain the top… pic.twitter.com/hzP4TEuf9P

— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) December 7, 2023

Speaking during a news conference with UK Foreign Minister David Cameron, the top US diplomat defended what he described as some of Israel’s efforts to prevent civilian casualties in its operation in Gaza.

However, Blinken said, there remains a “gap” between their intent and the reality on the ground.

“As we stand here, almost a week into this campaign in the south after the end of the humanitarian pause … it remains imperative that Israel put a premium on civilian protection,” he said.

He said measures Israel could take to better protect civilians include improved communications on what areas of Gaza are safe, wider pauses in fighting and assurance that humanitarian aid will be provided to those who flee.

The United Nations has said there are no safe areas remaining in Gaza amid Israel’s offensive in the south.

The latest Israeli attacks on areas in southern Gaza have killed one of the enclave’s “most prominent English professors” and a lecturer at the Islamic University, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum has reported.

Refaat Alareer was killed in an attack on the home he was sheltering in, Abu Azzoum said.

Ramy Abdu, the founder of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, said Israeli soldiers “targeted, went after and killed the voice of Gaza, one of its best academics, a human, my dear and precious friend”.

Ahmed Alnaouq, a Palestinian journalist and co-founder with Alareer of the We Are Not Numbers project, also condemned the killing as “tragic, painful and outrageous”. He added: “It is a huge loss.”

In a social media post on November 1, Alareer shared a poem he wrote. “If I must die, let it be a tale,” it read.

If I must die, let it be a tale. #FreePalestine #Gaza pic.twitter.com/ODPx3TiH1a

— Refaat in Gaza 🇵🇸 (@itranslate123) November 1, 2023

The two leaders have held regular calls during the Gaza war, with Biden continually pledging support for Israel’s military operations.

In the latest call, the White House said Biden told Netanyahu that “much more assistance was urgently required” in Gaza. That came shortly after the UN’s aid chief said a comprehensive humanitarian operation in the enclave was nonexistent due to the heavy Israeli army offensive.

Biden also “emphasised the critical need to protect civilians and to separate the civilian population from Hamas”, the White House said, while reiterating “concern about extremist violence” against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles, or what we can call the Israeli surveillance drones, are responsible for gathering information for the Israeli warplanes so that they can target different residential buildings and other targets on the ground.

They facilitate the process of monitoring and observation of everything moving on the ground.

They are known for their very loud sounds, which have caused very noticeable physical discomfort for the majority of Gazans who have been suffering from them, as they deal with the aftermath of Israeli army explosions.

With the sounds of the Israeli surveillance drones, their psychological health is deteriorating, as they cannot sleep well, they cannot feel comfortable, while the drones are covering the sky looking for further targets to be completely destroyed.

Agnes Callamard made the appeal a day after UN chief Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 of the UN charter – a warning that the war in Gaza could “threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.

“The US, and other members of the Security Council, must support as a matter of urgency a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire by all parties in the occupied Gaza Strip and Israel,” Callamard, herself a former UN official, wrote on X.

The Security Council, which in November broke a weeks-long deadlock to pass a resolution calling for extended humanitarian pauses and the release of captives, is expected to meet on Friday to discuss the Gaza war.

The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad identified the pair as 31-year-old Abu Saleh and 27-year-old Abu Hussein.

It said they were killed on the border with Israel in southern Lebanon as they were “carrying out their duties”.

James Elder, spokesperson for the UN’s child relief agency, tells Al Jazeera that so-called “safe zones” in Gaza are anything but.

Watch our video to learn more:

The Arabic-language service of London-based outlet The New Arab says its correspond Diaa Kahlout was detained by Israeli forces today in Beit Lahiya during a mass arrest.

The news outlet said Kahlout’s brothers and relatives were also arrested, forced to disrobe and subjected to humiliating searches. They were then taken to an undisclosed location.

It called on “the international community, journalists’ rights defenders and watchdogs, and human rights bodies to denounce this ongoing assault committed by the Israeli occupation army against journalists since the 7th of October and exert efforts to ensure they are released from detention and protected”.