EXPLAINER
US delays sale of weapons to Israel, as attacks on Gaza and its hospitals continue – here are major updates.
Here’s how things stand on Thursday, December 14, 2023:
Latest Developments
- Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja has said he will “fight” a ruling by the sport’s governing body that he says has stopped him from displaying messages in support of “those who don’t have a voice”, including children in Gaza.
- At least 27 people have been reported killed in Israel’s overnight strikes on two residential buildings in Rafah, southern Gaza, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency.
- The United States Central Command said on Wednesday that Yemen’s Houthi group attempted to attack the tanker Ardmore Encounter in the southern Red Sea.
- On Wednesday, 268 dual nationals were evacuated from Gaza to Egypt, said the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) in its latest situation report.
- The Israeli army website was briefly hacked by a pro-Palestinian group on Wednesday evening, which the army confirmed.
- Activists from a Jewish group calling for a ceasefire blocked a Los Angeles freeway during Wednesday morning’s rush hour, Reuters reported.
Human impact and fighting
- Reem Alsalem, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that at least 70 percent of the Palestinians killed in Gaza are women and children.
- Almost half of Gaza’s 1.9 million population is now sheltering in the Rafah governorate of southern Gaza, according to UN OCHA.
- Israel has detained the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital and about 70 other medical staff in an unknown location outside of the hospital, UN OCHA said on Wednesday.
- The Australian government is considering a US request to send a warship to the Red Sea, Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC, Australia’s public broadcaster, on Thursday.
- Israel is expanding its raid on Jenin in the occupied West Bank to other surrounding areas in what is “the largest and the longest of these Israeli military raids”, since October 7, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Charles Stratford. The raid has continued for two days and killed at least 11 Palestinians.
Diplomacy
- At least 100 staff members from the US Department of Homeland Security have signed an open letter to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas denouncing the department’s handling of the war on Gaza. The letter was dated November 22 and obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera.
- The prime ministers of Australia, New Zealand and Canada released a joint statement on Wednesday calling for a “sustainable ceasefire” in Gaza.
- US President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has arrived in Saudi Arabia where he is expected to discuss the Israel-Gaza war and regional security, according to a US official.
- Biden met with family members of Israeli captives being held in Gaza on Wednesday and said he “reassured them” he would “continue doing everything possible to secure the release of their family members”.
- The Biden administration is delaying the sale of more than 20,000 US-made rifles to Israel over concerns about attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Reuters reported citing sources familiar with the sale on Wednesday.
- Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, warned at the Global Refugee Forum on Wednesday that the “catastrophe” unfolding in the Gaza Strip threatens to create additional displacement across the Middle East.