Source: Mondoweiss.net
The Biden administration bypasses congressional approval to rush an emergency arms sale to Israel as the WHO warns Gaza’s health system is collapsing and the PA announces 25 percent of Gaza’s urban space has been destroyed.
Casualties
- 17,400+ killed* and 46,000 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
- 274 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147.
- 425 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7. Israeli media reports over 5,000 injured, citing military sources.**
*This figure was confirmed by the PA’s Ministry of Health on December 9. Due to breakdowns in communication networks within the Gaza Strip, the Ministry of Health in Gaza has not been able to regularly and accurately update its tolls since mid-November. Some rights groups put the death toll number closer to 20,000.
** On December 9, Yedioth Ahronoth reported over 5,000 Israeli soldiers have been injured in the fighting thus far, with 2,000 categorized as disabled, citing official figures by Israel’s Ministry of Defense. Israeli reports about combat casualties are strictly subject to gag orders, and Yedioth Ahronoth later removed the 5,000 figure from its original report
Key Developments
- The PA’s Ministry of Public Works and Housing said that “more than a quarter of a million housing units were destroyed to varying degrees, either completely or partially, while more than 30 percent of the infrastructure was destroyed”.
- A recent BBC report based on satellite imagery estimated that 100,000 buildings had been destroyed by the end of November in the Gaza Strip, with the north of Gaza being the most heavily damaged.
- Israeli forces launched air raids overnight on Al-Nuseirat, Al-Maghazi, and Al-Zawaida refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip, and east of Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah and Al-Shujaiya neighborhoods, killing tens of Palestinians.
- WHO said that “as more and more people move to a smaller and smaller area, overcrowding, combined with the lack of adequate food, water, shelter and sanitation, are creating the ideal conditions for disease to spread.”
- WHO said that “Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing,” as 14 out of the 36 hospitals are partially working, with only two of them located in north Gaza.
- Yedioth Ahronoth revealed on Saturday that over 5,000 Israeli soldiers have been injured in the Gaza fighting, 2,000 were categorized as disabled, citing official figures by Israel’s Ministry of Defence.
- An average of 60 soldiers are wounded daily in battles in Gaza and transferred to the Israeli military’s Rehabilitation Department, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
- Israeli forces released a doctored video of what it said was Palestinian militants, stripped of their clothes, handing over their rifles in Gaza.
- Yemen’s Houthis rebels announced that they will target and ban any ship sailing to Israel from entering the strait of Bab Al-Mandab.
- Israeli forces arrested dozens of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, constructed a road to a settlement, and stole six heads of sheep from a Palestinian village.
PA: A quarter of urban space in Gaza has been destroyed
Israel bombardment of the Gaza Strip had erased almost 25 percent of the urban space, according to an estimate by the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Minister of Public Works and Housing, Mohammed Ziara….