Israel-Palestine live: Deadly Israeli attacks across Gaza as West Bank raids continue

Civil Defence crews in Gaza held a funeral to mourn the killing of one of their team members, who was killed by Israeli forces on Sunday.

The team member was killed during Israeli shelling of the Nuseirat area.

The crew members prayed in congregation and carried the dead body into an ambulance. 

A civil defence official told Middle East Eye on Sunday morning that their teams were "directly targeted".

"War planes targeted us, they target everyone and everything, including journalists and emergency personnel. Israeli forces just care about collective punishment and killing Palestinians," he said.

"From 7 October, our teams have been targeted, including our vehicles even when they are rescuing people," he added, saying their teams found seven dead bodies in central Gaza.

Reporting by Osama Kahlout

Amid mounting pressure for a ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the war would continue "until absolute victory".

The goal requires more time, he said at a televised prime-time news conference. Echoing the words of his military chief of staff, he added, "the war will last for many more months".

He also vowed to restore security to residents living in northern Israel along the boundary with Lebanon "through the diplomatic option or through a military operation". 

Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger has died aged 84, his family have announced.

A statement released by his family on X, formerly Twitter, said he died on Saturday in London.

They described him as "simply the most amazing and loved Dad, Grandad and partner. Rest In Peace".

Throughout his career he was highly critical of western foreign policy and, most recently, was critical of Israel's bombardment of Gaza. 

In a post published by Pilger on 5 November, he writes: "When I was last in Gaza, the Israeli air force terrorised the population by flying fast and loud and low at night. All children bed-wetted and had violent nightmares, said a psychologist, and were 'damaged forever'. Such is Israel's exercise of its 'right to self defence'." 

On 8 October he wrote: "The Palestinians are again fighting for their lives, refusing to live in the prison known as Gaza, controlled and policed by Israel with Palestinians killed and maimed, unreported, day after day. Now their resistance, to which they have a right, is called 'unprovoked'."

Video footage shared by local Palestinian media shows smoke billowing above a neighbourhood in Gaza's Khan Younis as Israeli war planes target the area. 

Euro-Med Monitor announced on Sunday that they have documented several cases of the Israeli military violating schools in Gaza which have been transformed into shelters for displaced Palestinians. 

In the Israeli raid on the Al-Rafi'i School in northern Gaza, males as young as 15 were detained, stripped and taken to unknown locations, they said. 

The organisation added that Israeli forces are targeting shelters which have the UN logo on them. 

"These attacks, ongoing since the start of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, include aerial and artillery bombardment, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries," the organisation said.

In a testimony to Euro-Med Monitor, an elderly man named Youssef Khalil said two Israeli soldiers opened fire on his family in a school classroom before detaining him. 

After he was released, he discovered the decomposed bodies of his family in the school.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on Sunday he had made clear in a call with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian that Iran shared responsibility for preventing Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.

The Israeli government has agreed to postpone local elections until 27 February, after originally postponing the elections until January due to the ongoing war on Gaza.

The decision must still be approved by the Knesset's Internal Affairs and Environment Committee.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society announced on Sunday that at least 15 people have been wounded in Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank, including in Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camp.

Dozens of Israeli soldiers are suspected of being infected with parasitic leishmania around the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli media, citing medical sources.

The leishmania parasite is transmitted to humans through the bite of a tiny sandfly.

The bites leave painful inflammatory skin lesions that do not heal and last for many weeks. If untreated, the lesions often leave permanent scars on the skin, reports state.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health on Sunday announced that the death toll in Gaza since the start of the war on 7 October has now reached 21,822.

An additional 56,451 have been wounded.

The figures include 150 Palestinians killed and 286 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.

Thousands of people across Israel called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's removal on Saturday evening.

Crowds gathered in Tel Aviv to rally against Netanyahu, while others protested outside his private residence in the northern city of Caesarea.

 Protesters held signs with a bloody handprint and the word "Guilty", while others chanted for him to be "removed now", according to Haaretz.

Netanyahu said on Saturday that the "war will continue for many months". During a press conference he held, Netanyahu added that "our policy is clear: we will continue to fight until we achieve all our war objectives".
 

The UN and World Health Organisation have said that disease in emergency shelters in Gaza is quickly spreading and intensifying as people seek safety in cramped conditions. 

With health services overstretched and Israel cutting off water supplies to the strip, respiratory infections and diarrhoea are among the most severe diseases in emergency shelters, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says.

Some 180,000 people are already suffering from respiratory infections, while more than 136,000 children under the age of five currently have diarrhoea, which can cause a life-threatening loss of water and vital minerals at this age if not treated. There are also more than 55,000 cases of lice and scabies.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said that the death toll in Syria as a result of Israeli air strikes has risen. 

"The number of people killed by air strikes, believed to be carried out by Israeli forces, has risen to 23," the rights group said.

The UK-based organisation added that those people killed in the air raids on al-Bokamal, Syria were from Iran-backed armed groups and included five Syrians and six Iraqis.

Good morning readers,

Today marks the 86th day of the war on Gaza, with the death toll surpassing 21,600.

Palestinians in the besieged enclave woke up to Israeli attacks in Rafah, Khan Younis in southern Gaza as well as in central Gaza. 

Here are some of the key updates:

• At least 64 people have been killed and 186 wounded in Israeli attacks on homes in central Gaza in the last 24 hours, Al Jazeera reported
• Israeli forces killed one Palestinian in Rafah by live fire
• Israeli raids continued in the occupied West Bank and in east Jerusalem. According to Al Jazeera, Israeli forces entered Silwan, located outside of Jerusalem’s Old City, and ransacked a number of homes. 
• Israeli forces also raided the Aqbat Jaber refugee camp, southwest of Jericho, and the al Fawaar refugee camp in southern Hebron. Israeli forces blocked off the entrance to the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem and surrounded the Thabet Thabet Hospital as well as the Zakat Hospital.  
   

Dear MEE readers, 

Welcome to the end of our Saturday coverage. Today, the death toll in the Gaza Strip since 7 October topped more than 21,600 people. Nearly 100,000 people have been displaced to Rafah in recent days, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that around 70 percent of Gaza's homes and half of the enclave's buildings have been damaged or destroyed in Israeli air strikes. 

Israel on Saturday intensified air strikes in Khan Younis, particularly in the vicinity of the European Hospital.

The UN agency Unrwa said that Gaza is now grappling with catastrophic hunger. According to the organisation, 40 percent of the population are now at risk of famine. 

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he planned to continue the deadly offensive in Gaza for “many more months”. 

"The war is at its height. We are fighting on all of the fronts. Achieving victory will require time. As the (army) chief of staff has said, the war will continue for many more months," Netanyahu said.

With goals to completely eradicate the Hamas government, Netanyahu also said that Israel should take over Gaza’s border with Egypt and close any access points. 

"The Philadelphi Corridor - or to put it more correctly, the southern stoppage point (of Gaza) - must be in our hands. It must be shut. It is clear that any other arrangement would not ensure the demilitarisation that we seek," he said.

Israeli police arrested at least two protesters in front of the Prime Minister's home in northern Israel, where hundreds demonstrated. Meanwhile, thousands demonstrated in Tel Aviv against Netanyahu’s policies, particularly in regards to his lack of action on returning Israelis being held captive in Gaza. 

In other developments: 

• The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced on Saturday that 165 Palestinians have been killed during the last 24 hours of Israeli air strikes on Gaza. An additional 250 Palestinians were wounded in the attacks.

• The Israeli army has reported that 431 soldiers are currently hospitalised, out of which 44 are in severe condition and 258 are moderately wounded.

• The UN agency Ocha announced on Saturday that 307 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank. The figure includes 79 children.

• The Palestinian Red Crescent Society has said that water scarcity is increasing in Gaza, threatening the spread of diseases and epidemics among displaced Palestinians, especially those sheltering in centres and schools. 

• United Nations agencies have said that Israeli bombardment and attacks on Gaza have caused damage to at least 352 schools in the besieged enclave.

• The Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator has said that the aid entering Gaza is "woefully inadequate" and that the war on Gaza presented an "impossible situation for the people of Gaza and for those trying to help them".

• US Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a leading Democrat, called on the Biden administration to explain why it has twice moved to transfer weapons to Israel without congressional oversight.