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Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz. [SEBASTIAN SCHEINER/AFP via Getty Images]
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz vowed on Wednesday to continue military offensives in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Yemen despite regional and international efforts to de-escalate and restore regional stability, Anadolu reports.
Israel “will continue its operations in Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and Yemen,” Maariv daily quoted Katz as saying during a training course for Israeli Air Force pilots, attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir.
“In Lebanon, we will continue to apply maximum force against Hezbollah; in Syria, Israel will not withdraw from Mount Hermon (Jabal al-Sheikh) and the security zone; and in the Gaza Strip, Israel remains committed to dismantling Hamas and disarming the territory,” he added.
“As for Yemen, Israel will continue its operations to prevent the Houthis from strengthening their capabilities,” he said.
Addressing its conflict with Tehran, Katz claimed that Israel had inflicted “significant damage on Iran’s nuclear and strategic capabilities.”
“I am following reports regarding Iran, which we struck strongly in cooperation with our American partners, and the security establishment is closely monitoring developments. Naturally, I cannot provide further details,” he added.
The Israeli army has launched a brutal offensive in Gaza, killing more than 71,000 people, mostly women and children, and injuring over 171,000 others since October 2023. The assault fueled regional tensions and sparked an exchange of attacks with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Yemen’s Houthis. The Israeli army also launched a 12-day war on Iran in June, which was halted under a US-sponsored ceasefire.
Tel Aviv also staged repeated cross-border raids into Syrian territory and launched airstrikes, killing civilians and destroying Syrian military sites, vehicles, weapons, and ammunition.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during the meeting with Provincial Heads at AK Party Congress Center in Ankara, Turkiye on December 24, 2025. [TUR Presidency / Murat Kula – Anadolu Agency]
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday said Israel has failed to honor its commitments and deliberately obstructed humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza, pledging that Turkiye would increase its support for Palestinians in the coming period, Anadolu reports.
“Israel is not keeping its word and is constantly creating difficulties and obstacles to the entry of humanitarian aid with fabricated excuses,” Erdogan said, addressing the Justice and Development (AK) Party’s extended provincial heads meeting in Ankara.
Erdogan said: “Even though a ceasefire has been established in Gaza since Oct. 11, hardships continue in residential areas that Israel has turned into rubble.”
He stressed that Turkiye would step up its assistance to Palestinians.
“During the blessed three months, we will increase our aid to Palestine. As Turkiye, we will not back down, we will not remain silent, we will not forget, and we will never leave Gaza alone,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan said the suffering of Gaza’s population has deepened further with colder weather and the onset of rainfall.
He said images of tents submerged by heavy rain and babies and children suffering from hypothermia due to extreme cold were being watched with heartbreak across Turkiye.
“According to the agreement, 600 aid trucks were supposed to enter Gaza daily. However, Israel does not keep its word even on such a humanitarian issue,” Erdogan said.
Despite these obstacles, he added: “We are nevertheless trying to stand by our oppressed brothers and sisters in Gaza.”
Erdogan said the 19th Turkish aid ship, carrying 1,300 tons of humanitarian supplies, reached Egypt’s El-Arish Port last week, noting that the total amount of aid Turkiye has sent to Gaza over the past two years has approached 105,000 tons.
Highlighting urgent needs in Gaza, Erdogan said residents require medicine, food, clothing, and fuel for heating. “Above all, Gaza needs hope, solidarity, and moral support. That is why we will pray a great deal,” he said.
Turkiye’s broader humanitarian stance
Positioning Turkiye’s Gaza policy within a broader humanitarian framework, Erdogan said the country has consistently come to the aid of those in distress.
“From the Caucasus to the Balkans, from Africa to Asia, whoever has been in distress, we have rushed to their aid. This was the case yesterday, it is the case today, and it will never change tomorrow,” he said.
He emphasized that Turkiye supports peace, and will not tolerate injustice.
“Everyone should know that, as in the past, we are in favor of peace and calm today as well. But this does not mean that we consent to injustice or remain silent in the face of oppression. Never,” he said.
“Throughout our history, we have always been a land of refuge for the oppressed. Without looking at religion, language, or origin, we opened our doors to those who were crushed, humiliated, subjected to oppression and massacres,” Erdogan stressed.
“Whether in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean, or anywhere else, we neither infringe on anyone’s rights nor allow our own rights to be violated,” Erdogan said.
He also stressed that Turkiye would not allow the rights of Turkish Cypriots to be usurped, adding that agreements, signatures, or political messaging would not alter Ankara’s stance.
Turning to domestic security, Erdogan said Turkiye’s push for a “terror-free Turkiye” has begun to ease pessimism beyond its borders, adding that Arab, Kurdish, Turkmen, Sunni, and Shia communities are looking to the future with renewed hope.
“Turkiye has finally embarked on a path of peace, security, development, and prosperity,” he said.
Concluding his remarks, Erdogan underlined the country’s resolve: “As Turkiye, we will continue to act with dignity, wisdom, common sense and calm, in line with international law, our bilateral agreements, and our deep-rooted tradition.”
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Original article by republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Healthcare workers and allies rally to demand the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all Palestinian healthcare workers held in Israeli jails, in New York City, on January 6, 2025. (Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“We won’t forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023,” said CodePink.
Ahead of Saturday’s one-year anniversary of Israel abducting Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya from the Gaza hospital he ran, advocates demanded the release the scores of health workers still imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces.
“One year ago, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the Israeli military along with dozens of other medical staff during a horrific raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza,” Dr. Yipeng Ge, a member of Doctors Against Genocide, said Friday on social media. “Free Hussam Abu Safiya. Free them all.”
Activist Petra Schurenhofer said on X: “It’s been a year since Israel abducted and illegally detained Dr Hussam Abu Safiya. And since then he has been languishing in an Israeli jail, being subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment. Don’t forget him. And don’t stop calling for his release.”
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the IOF from Kamal Adwan Hospital one year ago this week.Israel has detained & tortured Dr. Abu Safiya for one whole year.We won't forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023.
Abu Safiya, the 52-year-old director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was seized on December 27, 2024 as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops continued their yearlong siege and raids on the facility in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. The IDF claimed without evidence that Kamal Adwan—the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza at the time—was a Hamas command center.
During a previous Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan, Abu Safiya’s 15-year-old son was killed in a drone strike. Abu Safiya was seriously wounded in a separate drone attack that left six pieces of shrapnel in his leg.
After his capture, Abu Safiya was first jailed at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in Israel’s Negev Desert—where dozens of detainees have died and where torture, rape, and other abuses have been reported—and then Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Abu Safiya said he has endured torture by his captors—including beatings with batons and electric shocks—and suffered severe weight loss, broken ribs, and other injuries, for which he was allegedly denied adequate medical care.
A year has passed since the detention of my father, In this white coat, he walked alone amidst death, destruction, and in front of tanks—not because he was fearless, but because his oath and his humanity were greater than any fear. He refused to abandon the children and the… pic.twitter.com/8NtuIGBeYf
— Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya د.حسام أبو صفية (@HussamAbuSafiya) December 26, 2025
Israeli authorities deny these accusations. However, there have been many documented and otherwise credible reports of health and medical workers being tortured by Israeli forces—sometimes fatally, as in the case of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who headed the orthopedic department at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Abu Safiya remains in Israeli custody, despite having not been charged with any crimes. Israeli courts have extended his detention multiple times under so-called “unlawful combatant” legal provisions.
In January, Abu Safiya’s mother died of a heart attack that MedGlobal, the Illinois-based nonprofit for which Abu Safiya worked as lead Gaza physician, attributed to “severe sadness” over her son’s plight.
According to United Nations agencies and other experts, Israeli forces have destroyed or damaged nearly all of Gaza’s hospitals in hundreds of attacks since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. More than 1,500 Palestinian health workers have been killed.
Last year, an independent United Nations commission found that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
Albina Abu Safiya, the imprisoned doctor’s wife, pleaded last week: “Save my husband before it is too late. His only ‘crime’ was saving the wounded and tending to the wounds of children.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Greta Thunberg at protest against Aspen Insurance complicity in genocide. Source: Defend Our Juries
Palestine solidarity hunger strikers in Britain face mounting health risks as Starmer government continues to refuse engagement with their demands.
More Palestine solidarity hunger strikers in Britain have been hospitalized over the past week, as half of those taking part in the protest pass more than 50 days without food. While Keir Starmer’s administration continues to refuse engagement with the activists’ demands, health workers and family members warn of serious risks of death. Testimonies from the strikers themselves describe harsh physical decline. “I don’t think people realize how serious this is, as on day 35 you risk brain damage, organ failure and heart attack,” Rahma Hoxha, sister of hunger striker Teuta Hoxha, said on December 18.
Eight activists – Amu Gib, Qesser Zuhrah, Jon Cink, Heba Muraisi, Teuta Hoxha, Kamran Ahmed, Lewie Chiaramello, and Umer Khalid – have joined the hunger strike on a rolling basis since early November. Since then, three strikers have ended their action. Many of the strikers have been imprisoned for over a year while awaiting trial for taking part in direct action in solidarity with Palestine. Their demands include an end to censorship in prison, including the withholding of calls and books; immediate bail for all Palestine Action prisoners; the deproscription of Palestine Action; the right to a fair trial; and the shutdown of all Elbit Systems sites in Britain.
Over the past week, incidents have been reported in which prison authorities failed to respond adequately to the strikers’ medical needs – needs that health workers emphasize grow more complex and dangerous with each passing day. Instead of being provided care, some activists were left waiting more than 12 hours for help and were hospitalized only after protests outside the prison.
“From 2 am, in freezing temperatures, we were forced to protest for more than 12 hours before an ambulance was finally dispatched to HMP Bronzefield so that Qesser Zuhrah could receive the urgent medical care she needs,” MP Zarah Sultana wrote on December 18. “Just as Keir Starmer’s Labour government has enabled genocide in Gaza, it is now enabling the deaths of Palestine solidarity strikers inside UK prisons.”
Health workers warn that the hunger strikers may already have crossed a point beyond which recovery is uncertain. “It is not possible to predict how long it takes to suffer irreversible organ damage or death,” Dr. Frank Arnold wrote in Medact’s guidance for hunger strikers. “The shortest time to death that I know of was 21 days. The longest survival without any food, but with careful fluid management, 70 days. That patient made a recovery but has lasting neurological damage.”
Mainstream British media have been remarkably silent even as it has become apparent that the government might be prepared to watch young people die in custody. At the same time, solidarity actions have expanded.
Education trade unionists, including executive figures from the National Education Union (NEU) and the University and College Union (UCU), have joined calls for immediate government intervention. In an open letter, they not only demanded action to protect the hunger strikers’ lives and address their demands, but also linked their current treatment to a wider crackdown on students and education workers expressing solidarity with Palestine. “We call on our trade unions, the wider Palestine solidarity movement and civil society to work together to protect the lives of the hunger strikers, defend the right to protest and end Britain’s shameful role in enabling Israel’s crimes of apartheid, occupation and genocide,” the letter states.
Health workers and artists have also mobilized in large numbers. More than 800 health professionals have signed an open letter warning British authorities of the dangers faced by the hunger strikers. Hundreds of Irish artists issued another appeal, endorsed by musicians KNEECAP and Fontaines D.C., as well as writer Sally Rooney. “Their decision to place their bodies on the line is a profound act of resistance – one that echoes the long histories of both Irish and Palestinian political prisoners who have used hunger strike as a non-violent act of sacrifice to assert their dignity in the face of state violence and repression,” the artists wrote.
Meanwhile, institutional repression against the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain continues to grow. On December 23, Prisoners for Palestine and Defend Our Juries reported new arrests during a lock-in protest in London addressing Aspen Insurance’s complicity in genocide. One of those arrested was climate and solidarity activist Greta Thunberg, who sat on the ground holding a sign reading: “I support the Palestine Action prisoners. I oppose genocide.”
“It’s not clear if the Met Police have made another one of their mistakes in interpreting the crazy ban on Palestine Action or whether the state has now turned anyone expressing support for prisoners locked up beyond the legal time limit for taking action to stop a genocide into alleged terrorists,” a Defend Our Juries spokesperson said. “If it is the former then we look forward to seeing Greta released without charge immediately. If it is the latter, it is yet another dark day for Keir Starmer’s genocide-supporting government. In calling people terrorists who are not terrorists they are not acting to protect the public, they are acting to protect the companies profiting from genocide and the genocidal state of Israel itself.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.UK Labour Party Foreign Secretary David Lammy repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
Mohammed al-Neder, 21, mourns over the body of his four-month-old brother Ahmed, who was killed by Israeli forces, during his funeral at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, December 20, 2025
ISRAEL’S new registration rules for organisations providing humanitarian aid to people in Gaza risks leaving hundreds of thousands without lifesaving healthcare in 2026, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned today.
The new requirements threaten to withdraw registration from international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) from January 1.
This non-registration would prevent humanitarian organisations from providing essential services to people in Gaza and the West Bank, MSF said today.
“With Gaza’s health system already destroyed, independent and experienced humanitarian organisations losing access to respond would be a disaster for Palestinians,” MSF said.
The international medical charity called on Israel to ensure that INGOs can maintain and continue their work in Gaza, saying the already restricted humanitarian response cannot be further dismantled.
“In the last year, MSF teams have treated hundreds of thousands of patients and delivered hundreds of millions of litres of water,” MSF emergency co-ordinator for Gaza Pascale Coissard said today.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Mohammed al-Neder, 21, mourns over the body of his four-month-old brother Ahmed, who was killed by Israeli forces, during his funeral at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, December 20, 2025