Israeli military vehicles patrol the streets and alleys of the area during the second day of the raid on the Tulkarem Refugee Camp in the West Bank on December 25, 2024 [Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]
Palestinian factions called, Monday, for escalating resistance operations in the Occupied West Bank in retaliation for Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, Anadolu Agency reports.
Three illegal Israeli settlers were killed and six others injured early Monday in a shooting attack near the Kedumim settlement in the northern West Bank.
In a statement, Hamas hailed the attack as
a heroic response to the ongoing crimes and war of extermination committed by the (Israeli) occupation against our people in Gaza, the displacement plans in the West Bank, and the settler aggression on the Al-Aqsa Mosque and holy sites
“This operation is a message to the extremist Israeli government and its ministers that there is a free and rebellious nation that will not abandon its rights and that the resistance will continue until the occupation is removed from all of our lands,” it added.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) called the shooting attack a “powerful message” to the Israeli occupation.
It called for escalating resistance operations in the West Bank “to confuse the occupation’s calculations and weaken its security system.”
The Popular Resistance Committees termed the attack “a natural response” to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and the Judaisation and annexation plans in the West Bank.
Tension has been running high across the Occupied West Bank due to Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 45,800 people, mostly women and children, since 7 October, 2023.
At least 835 Palestinians have also been killed and nearly 6,700 others injured by Israeli army fire in the Occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian figures.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
A Palestinian child plays amid the rubble of destroyed buildings at the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, Palestine on January 2, 2025. (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)
The Knesset members are urging the Israeli military to destroy all sources of water, food, and energy—and to kill “anyone not flying a white flag of surrender.”
At least seven far-right members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, are calling on the country’s defense minister to order the total destruction of northern Gaza’s food, water, and energy sources—most of which have already been obliterated by 15 months of relentless attacks—and the killing of any Palestinian who isn’t clearly surrendering to the attackers.
In a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz dated December 31, the lawmakers assert that the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) campaign to forcibly expel Palestinians from northern Gaza—which critics have called ethnic cleansing—”isn’t being done properly” and is not “achieving the war objectives as defined by the government, which is the dismantling of Hamas’ governing and military capabilities.”
According to a translation by international humanitarian law expert Itay Epshtain on Thursday, the letter calls on the IDF to:
Destroy all energy sources including fuel, solar systems, generators, and power lines;
Destroy all food sources including warehouses, water, and water pumps; and
Lay siege and remotely kill everyone not flying a white flag of surrender.
That last demand apparently includes men, women, and children. IDF troops would then “enter gradually for a complete cleansing of the enemy’s nests,” according to the letter.
Lawmakers who signed the letter and their party affiliations include: Avraham Bezalel (Shas), Amit Halevi (Likud), Limor Son Har-Melech (Jewish Power), Osher Shkalim (Likud), Zvi Sukkot and Ohad Tal (Religious Zionism), and Nissim Vaturi (Likud).
Vaturi, the deputy Knesset speaker, previously called for Gaza to be “wiped off the face of the Earth” and argued for Israel to “stop being humane” and “burn Gaza now,” because “there are no innocents there.”
Notably, the lawmakers’ letter does not mention anything about freeing the more than 60 hostages believed to be alive and imprisoned by Hamas and possibly other groups in Gaza.
As Israeli journalist Bar Peleg reported Friday from the Jabalia refugee camp:
When the soldiers and officers in Jabalia are asked about their mission, the answer is destroying Hamas and its infrastructure, until the last terrorist is laid to rest. When they are asked, “And what about the hostages?” One soldier answered, “That concerns us, like it does everyone, but it isn’t a part of our operational considerations.”
Northern Gaza is already in ruins. As Peleg noted, “not a single habitable building remains” in Jabalia. Nearly all homes, hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure have been destroyed or damaged.
“Look at the extent of the destruction and annihilation here,” one IDF officer said. “No one has done this before.”
An IDF officer recently told Haaretz that one commander, Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, seeks to personally execute the so-called Generals’ Plan—a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza—by besieging and expelling 250,000 Palestinians from the area. United Nations officials estimate that more than 100,000 Palestinians have been forced from northern Gaza, even as the IDF says it disavows the Generals’ Plan.
Israeli policies and actions, as well as written and spoken calls for the destruction of Gaza and its people, have been presented as evidence in the South African-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister who ordered the siege of Gaza, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which in November issued arrest warrants for the pair and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
Israel’s 455-day bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza has left at least 165,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to officials there.
A view of destruction following the Israeli attack on the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital and its surrounding buildings in Beit Lahia, Gaza on December 25, 2024. (Photo: Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut/Anadolu via Getty Images)
By targeting hospitals—essential lifelines in a besieged region—Israel not only deepens the humanitarian crisis but also sends a chilling message: no space, not even those dedicated to saving lives, is off-limits.
The recent Israeli raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital, or KAH, the only partially operating hospital in northern Gaza, is the latest phase of Israel’s egregious disregard for international humanitarian law and the sanctity of medical facilities. This audacious act highlights the alarming impunity with which Israel conducts its war of genocide in Gaza, and further aggravate the suffering in Gaza.
In attacking KAH, Israel resorted to the same discredited lies used to justify its assault on al-Shifa Hospital in November 2023, falsely alleging that Hamas operated a command center beneath the facility. This fabricated story has long been employed as a pretext to target medical facilities across Gaza. During its raid on al-Shifa Hospital in November 2023, Israeli forces found no evidence of a military presence yet proceeded to arbitrarily destroy the hospital without justification.
Eyewitness accounts report that Israeli forces stormed KAH under the pretext of searching for individuals allegedly connected to militant groups. Hospital staff were forcibly removed from their posts, and several patients, including children, were left unattended during the raid. Patients and medical staff faced severe intimidation and arrest, critical care was forcibly disrupted as soldiers combed through wards and operating rooms, ultimately setting the hospital on fire after failing to uncover the alleged military infrastructure.
Western media, in particular, frequently report on Israeli atrocities as though they are inevitable natural disasters, devoid of human accountability or compassion.
Two days after setting KAH ablaze, Israel escalated its attacks on Gaza’s medical infrastructure, killing seven civilians in a strike on al-Wafaa Hospital in Gaza City and shelling the nearby Ahli Baptist Hospital. Despite mounting evidence disproving its claims, Israel, unchallenged, repeated the same fabricated justification: that fighters were allegedly operating within the hospitals. This unsubstantiated template has become a routine pretext for targeting healthcare facilities, disregarding international laws designed to protect civilians and medical institutions during conflict.
Israel’s disinformation regarding the presence of military targets within Gaza’s medical facilities continues to be reported unquestionably by Western media, despite a well-documented track record of inaccuracies and history of falsehoods. This uncritical reporting not only undermines journalistic integrity but also perpetuates misleading narratives, often downplaying or outright ignoring Israeli crimes. By omitting the broader context of occupation, two-decade blockade, and systemic oppression, these media platforms contribute to a distorted representation of the reality on the ground. Western media, in particular, frequently report on Israeli atrocities as though they are inevitable natural disasters, devoid of human accountability or compassion. This approach not only erases the agency behind these tragedies but also dehumanizes Palestinian lives, reducing them to mere statistics.
The failure to keenly examine and challenge Israel’s repeated falsehoods reflects a blatant bias in Western journalism. By granting disproportionate weight to Israeli perspectives while sidelining Palestinian voices, these outlets perpetuate stereotypes and reinforce systemic racism. This one-sided, remote reporting on Gaza undermines the principles of journalistic integrity and fuels global indifference to the plight of the civilians. The lack of accountability for such biased coverage underscores the need for a more equitable and truthful approach by reporting directly from inside the war zone.
The targeting and subsequent destruction of hospitals is not random but part of a broader, systematic pattern of military violence against all aspects of civilian life in Gaza.
The raid on KAH is not an isolated incident but a manifestation of a broader military policy aimed at inflicting maximum pain on the people of Gaza. Already deprived of food, water, power, and adequate medical supplies due to Israel’s blockade, the timing of the raid on the only partially functioning hospital in northern Gaza, is emblematic of a systematic strategy to render the region uninhabitable.
The international community’s tepid response to such blatant violations has emboldened Israel to act with impunity. Despite clear evidence of war crimes, accountability remains elusive. The lack of meaningful action from global powers and institutions undermines the credibility of international law and signals to Israel that it can evade consequences.
Hospitals, including military hospitals, are recognized as neutral spaces under international law, protected from military aggression to ensure the uninterrupted provision of critical care during times of war. The United Nations has both a moral and legal obligation to uphold and enforce Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which explicitly prohibits attacks on medical facilities. Anything less would be a betrayal of the principles that underpin international humanitarian law and a failure to stop war crimes.
The genocidal war on Gaza is not merely a regional issue; it is a moral litmus test for the global community. Every bomb dropped, every home destroyed, and every life lost in Gaza is a stain on humanity’s conscience. The international community must confront this genocide with the urgency and resolve it demands. Failing to act not only condemns Gaza’s population to further suffering but also erodes the very foundations of international law and human decency.
The international community’s response for the Israeli genocide in Gaza has been woefully inadequate. While some countries issue lukewarm condemnations, others, like the United States, provide unwavering support for Israel to “finish the job.” This double standard exposes the hypocrisy of the U.S. and Western powers that, ostensibly, champion human rights and international law in other contexts while turning a blind eye to the injustice in Palestine.
The Israeli attacks on medical facilities reveal a deliberate intent to coerce the population into forced “voluntary” ethnic cleansing. The targeting and subsequent destruction of hospitals is not random but part of a broader, systematic pattern of military violence against all aspects of civilian life in Gaza. This includes hospitals, schools, shelters, religious centers, agricultural infrastructure, water wells, bakeries, and aid distribution networks. These calculated assaults are designed to dismantle the foundations of daily life, exacerbate the humanitarian crisis, and strip the population of even the most basic means of survival.
The international community’s conspicuous silence and failure to hold Israel accountable have emboldened such actions, creating an environment where impunity reigns. By targeting hospitals—essential lifelines in a besieged region—Israel not only deepens the humanitarian crisis but also sends a chilling message: no space, not even those dedicated to saving lives, is off-limits.
Israeli war crimes in Gaza cannot be ignored. The world must respond—not with platitudes or empty gestures, but with concrete actions to ensure that those responsible for this ongoing genocide are held accountable.
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/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Scenes from Israel’s siege on Kamal Adwan Hospital. On the left, the last photo of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya as he walks towards Israeli tanks. On the right, IOF forced health workers and patients to strip and evacuate the hospital. Photo: Screenshots
As part of its ethnic cleansing policies, Israel continues to systematically target medical facilities and health workers across the Gaza strip.
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) set Kamal Adwan Hospital on fire on Friday, December 27, putting the largest medical facility in the northern part of the besieged enclave out of service. Kamal Adwan is located in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip and was one of the last functioning hospitals in the area.
According to the Director of Gaza’s Health Ministry, Munir al-Bursh, the IOF ordered 350 people including 75 patients and their escorts along with 185 medical staff to evacuate the hospital, and move to a nearby school sheltering displaced people.
Gaza’s Health Ministry stated that it has completely lost contact with medics inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital since the IOF stormed the facility.
The whereabouts of the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, are currently unknown. Dr. Safiya had been providing constant updates on Israel’s siege of the hospital for the last several months and pleading for international institutions to take action to stop Israel’s attacks. On December 2, 2024, he penned a column in the New York Times titled, “I’m One of the Last Doctors in This Hospital in Gaza. I’m Begging the World for Help.” In the essay, he wrote, “We feel as if the rest of the world is wrapped up in a different world from the one we are in. We are suffering and paying the price of the genocide that is happening to our people here in the northern Gaza Strip.”
Notably, in its report on Israel’s final siege on the hospital, the Times depicts the travesty at Kamal Adwan as collateral damage in Israel’s “offensive against Hamas militants” uncritically repeating Israel’s allegation that “the hospital was a stronghold for Hamas and that it was carrying out ‘targeted operations’ in the area.”
In a statement published on Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) slammed Israel’s arson attack on the hospital, which used to serve over 400,000 Palestinian citizens. “This morning’s raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital has put this last major health facility in north Gaza out of service. Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid,” the statement reads.
“60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition, including those on ventilators, reportedly remain in the hospital. The patients in moderate to severe condition were forced to evacuate to the destroyed and non-functional Indonesian Hospital. WHO is deeply concerned for their safety,” the statement continues.
The WHO clarified that the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital followed Israel’s escalating restrictions on the organization and its partners to access the hospital. The raid also came after repeated attacks on the hospital and its vicinity since early October. The organization considered the assault on the hospital as part of the systematic dismantling of the health system in Gaza, labeling it as a “death sentence for tens of thousands of Palestinians in need of health care.”
For its part, the Palestinian Presidency slammed the attack considering it as “part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of genocide and displacement against the Palestinian people”, and a “serious and blatant violation of international law and international agreements and conventions that protect medical facilities and personnel during armed conflicts.”
The Palestinian Presidency urged global health organizations, including WHO, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and other international humanitarian bodies “to fulfill their responsibilities toward stopping this crime against the Palestinian healthcare sector.”
The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) condemned the attack calling it a “war crime” committed amid “international inaction and full complicity from the US administration.”
In an Al Jazeerainterview on Friday, Hamas official Osama Hamdan refuted Israeli claims that there were Palestinian fighters in the hospital and stated that Kamal Adwan Hospital has been subjected to a massacre for 75 days. Hamdan added that the attack on the hospital is part of an attempt by Israel “to end all manifestations of civilian steadfastness in northern Gaza.”
One day prior to setting the facility to fire, Israeli fighter jets launched an airstrike on a building opposite of Kamal Adwan Hospital. At least 50 people were killed in the attack, including three health workers. Earlier in the month, IOF placed booby trapped devices around the hospital, and eyewitnesses said they saw explosive robots and hidden bombs deployed around the facility.
Kamal Adwan was not the only major medical facility to be targeted by IOF in Gaza during the past two weeks. Israel also intensified its attacks on the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, and the Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia refugee camp north of Gaza city, which has prompted doctors and authorities in Gaza to request immediate intervention by the international community.
Yet, despite the numerous cries for help and warnings of dangerous escalation by Gaza’s health workers, Israel has been able to proceed with the destruction of healthcare and its genocide of the Palestinian people thanks to the full backing it enjoys by the United States government.
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/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Relatives and friends mourn over the bodies of five Palestinian journalists who were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, December 26, 2024
ISRAEL bombing the airport in Yemen’s capital Sana’a when World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was actually at it shows a brazen contempt for the United Nations.
It is not new. Israel has expressed this contempt repeatedly. Most dramatically when its ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan used a miniature shredder to shred the UN Charter after the general assembly voted in favour of giving Palestine full membership in May.
But it is seen too in the bombardment of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. In the evidence-free assertion that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA harbours Hamas fighters and subsequent decree banning the agency from operating in Israel-controlled territory — meaning the whole of Palestine.
Benjamin Netanyahu accuses the United Nations of intrinsic hostility to Israel, calling it an “anti-Israel flat Earth society” which has “an automatic majority willing to demonise the Jewish state.”
The siege mentality is deliberate: only by presenting this fortress state, so extravagantly armed by its Washington sponsors that it can extend its bombing campaigns across Lebanon, Syria and Yemen after over a year of carpet-bombing Gaza, as under constant existential menace can he justify its frenetic aggression.
Enforcing this narrative is why Israel has become more authoritarian in step with its increasing belligerence, codifying institutional racism through measures like the Nation-State Law and pending legislation that could bar parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel (and the Communist Party of Israel to boot) from standing in elections.
As its suspended communist MP Ofer Cassif warns, there is no positive outcome possible from this vicious cycle: an unendable, unwinnable war against the world will bring Israelis neither security nor peace.
Israel is a rogue state, a danger to itself and others, but it will not be stopped by other rogue states. Just as the agony of the Palestinians continues due to the US policy of unlimited support for Israel, we cannot expect the so-called “free world” to step in on Yemen’s behalf.
Least of all Britain. When evidence of Saudi Arabia deliberately bombing Yemeni schools and hospitals became undeniable, even the United States paused arms sales — but Britain did not.
Expecting our government to be persuaded or even shamed into upholding international law is a fool’s errand.
There is much to criticise in the United Nations: its undemocratic structure, the way the veto power can be wielded to shield perpetrators of war crimes.
Even so, since the beginning of the 21st century a clear division has emerged between the US-led West, awarding itself the right to violate international law by invading, bombing and assassinating whoever it likes, and emerging powers which support the United Nations — a creation of the Allied victory over fascism, intended to prevent the lawless aggression that characterised Nazi Germany and its allies.
China brokered peace in Yemen through a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. China continually makes the case too for UN recognition of a Palestinian state, and hosted talks between 14 Palestinian factions last year in an attempt to forge a united Palestinian leadership capable of taking that project forward.
China, like most of the global South, is not happy with an international system designed in Western capitals 80 years ago, and calls for a more equitable international order. Yet China, unlike the Western founders of that system, is acting to uphold its principles and prevent the world descending into the kind of “might is right” violence the UN was supposed to stop.
We need to recognise how the world looks from outside the West. The “rules-based international order” is not threatened by emerging powers, but by the US-led imperialist camp. We don’t rein in Israel, because its violence is ours.
This is why solidarity with Palestine means fighting for peace and disarmament in Britain, and resisting the constant militarist propaganda pretending our country is under threat.
