Fourteen Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza as ground operation continues
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to US President Joe Biden on Saturday to discuss the "objectives and phasing" of Israel's military operation in Gaza.
Sunday 24 December 2023 12:27, UK
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his country's forces are going deeper into Gaza as IDF release details of dismantled tunnel network, where the bodies of five hostages were recovered.
news.sky.com
Israel-Hamas war: 136 UN staff killed in Gaza, says Guterres
Published 12/23/2023 Published December 23, 2023 last updated 13 hours ago last updated 13 hours ago
The secretary-general of the United Nations says no conflict has ever taken such a toll on UN workers. Meanwhile, the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza reports that Israel hit a refugee camp. DW has the latest.
The secretary-general of the United Nations says no conflict has ever taken such a toll on UN workers. Meanwhile, the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza reports that Israel hit a refugee camp. DW has the latest.
www.dw.com
Syrians cancel Christmas festivities in solidarity with Gaza
AFP / 24 December 2023 10:21
One needs to sign in for the article so I copied and pasted it below:
Opinion | Israel Must Recognize That It's Lost the Gaza War So It Can End the Palestinian Conflict
Hillel Schocken Dec 23, 2023 11:42 pm IST
***
www.haaretz.com
"Opinion | Israel Must Recognize That It's Lost the Gaza War So It Can End the Palestinian Conflict
Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombardment wait for their turn to bake bread at the makeshift tent camp in the Muwasi area in Rafah, Gaza Strip, last week. Credit: Fatima Shbair /AP
We won't win. Not even together. We lost the current war in the Gaza Strip over our right to a national home in the Land of Israel on October 7. Each additional day of the ground operation only increases the failure.
When this terrible war ends, as expected, in a few weeks due to international pressure, Israel's situation will be worse than it was immediately after Hamas' barbaric attack. But might something good arise from this failure? Perhaps the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
On October 16, the war cabinet announced the war's goals: ending Hamas rule in Gaza and destroying its military capabilities; removing the threat of terror against Israel from Gaza; a maximal effort to resolve the hostage issue and defending Israel's borders and citizens. When the war ends, we won't have achieved even one of these.
Polls currently show that our actions in Gaza are bolstering Hamas' status among Palestinians, not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank. Those who didn't want Hamas in Gaza will now also get it in the Palestinian Authority.
As for the hostages, what many saw as a maximal effort to free them was only partly successful; fewer than half were freed. And each day of additional fighting endangers the lives of the majority who remain in captivity. If a deal is made to free them, not only will we have to release all Palestinians held in Israel, including those with blood on their hands, we will also have to withdraw our forces and commit to ending the war.
Hamas' leaders aren't stupid; they won't agree to anything less. Our friends sponsoring the deal will be required to provide guarantees that Israel won't resume the offensive afterward.
Israel's international standing has already hit an unprecedented nadir, which not only endangers its ties with its friends, especially the United States, but also Jewish communities worldwide and turns Israelis into pariahs abroad. Our standing among other countries in the region has also diminished dramatically.
Contrary to the presupposition that Hezbollah is deterred from attacking us, Israel is the one that's deterred. Its weakness against Hezbollah received resounding confirmation when U.S. President Joe Biden grasped the situation and quickly dispatched an impressive military force to the Mediterranean Sea.
And despite these American deterrent forces, Iran's satellites are managing to cause trouble. Hezbollah turned tens of thousands of residents of northern Israel into refugees in their own country, while from the south, the Houthis in Yemen have succeeded in severing Israel's maritime ties. Israel has thereby been forced to accept something it deemed grounds for war in 1956 and in 1967.
Friends and family mourn Liel Hetzroni, 12, and her aunt Ayala Hetzroni from Kibbutz Beeri who were killed by Hamas during the October 7 attacks, as they attend a memorial ceremony for Liel whose body has not been recovered and at which her personal belongings are buried, and the funeral of Ayala, in Revivim, Israel in November.Credit: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
Throughout its 75 years of existence, Israel has managed to thwart the Palestinians' ambition to destroy it and their self-definition of Palestine as a sovereign state on the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
It did so initially by imposing a military government on the Palestinians inside Israel and repulsing attacks from across the 1949 armistice lines, and later by military rule over Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which it conquered in the 1967 Six-Day War.
The many years that have passed since then haven't weakened the Palestinians. The intensity of their opposition to Israel's very existence has exacted a price in blood from both sides, and a financial price that only continues to grow.
To keep the current war from being a prelude to much larger outbreaks of violence and preserve the Jewish people's national home in the Land of Israel, Israel must define ending Palestinians' opposition to its very existence as its supreme strategic policy goal.
Israel's messianic movement hopes, "with God's help," to achieve its goal by expelling all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. In its view, the massive death toll in Gaza and the settler riots in the West Bank, which are perpetrated under the auspices of the police and the army, are meant to "encourage" the Palestinians to emigrate from the territory under Israel's control – which would mean the ethnic cleansing of some 5 million Palestinians.
Nevertheless, it's hard to imagine that the world – which will soon force Israel to end the war in Gaza, given the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed and wounded and the material and humanitarian destruction, which has reached monstrous proportions – will allow this solution.
Israel's initial failure in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the Egyptians' achievement in crossing the Suez Canal restored Egypt's honor and led to the signing of a peace agreement. Israel's recognition of its loss in the current war, as described above, will help restore the Palestinians' national honor, which has been trampled for 56 years.
Soldiers resting in the shade of their troop-carrier in the desert in Sinai during the Yom Kippur War.Credit: GPO
This is apparently a necessary step in a process that will result in an end to the war in Gaza and a prisoner swap in which all Palestinians incarcerated in Israel will be released in exchange for all the Israeli hostages, whose fate depends on how much time passes before Israel recognizes this reality.
Israel will be forced to recognize the Palestinians' right to a sovereign, independent state and hold negotiations with any leadership they choose over an end to the conflict on the basis of United Nations resolutions and the Saudi peace initiative. Might the disaster of October 7 actually herald a new future for the Middle East?
Prof. Hillel Schocken is an architect who teaches at Tel Aviv University and a founder of Merhav – the Movement for Israeli Urbanism."
Why no one from an international body or organizations isn't going into Israel and arresting Bibi the psychopath astounds me at times:
'Unfazed' Israel Strikes Gaza After UN Demands More Aid For Besieged Territory; 'Won't Stop' (3 mins, 40 secs)
apnews.com
www.thehindu.com
www.palestinechronicle.com
