Source: Mondoweiss.net
Biden insists Netanyahu is open to a two-state solution, despite Netanyahu stating the opposite. Meanwhile, a Palestinian-American teenager was killed by Israelis in the West Bank, and the UN estimates two mothers are killed in Gaza every hour.
Casualties:
- 24,927 killed* and at least 62,388 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
- 369 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.
- 550 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, including 194 since the beginning of the ground invasion, and at least 3,221 injured.**
*This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health on January 20. Some rights groups put the death toll at more than 32,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.
**This figure is released by the Israeli military.
Key Developments
- Israel continues to relentlessly kill Palestinians in Gaza, as more reports emerge of torture and executions of Palestinians by Israeli forces.
- The United Nations says that two mothers are killed every hour on average in Gaza, as it denounces the disproportionate impact of the violence on women.
- An Israeli airstrike in the Syrian capital kills at least four Iranian military advisers.
- U.S. forces meanwhile launch the sixth wave of airstrikes on Yemen in a self-avowedly unsuccessful bid to deter Houthi rebels from disrupting commercial shipping in the Red Sea in support of Palestine.
- Israelis shoot and kill a Palestinian-American teenager in the head in the occupied West Bank.
- An Israeli airstrike kills two people in southern Lebanon.
- U.S. President Joe Biden has his first call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in nearly a month, and tells journalists that Netanyahu is in favor of a two-state solution, despite all evidence to the contrary.
- Israel’s emergency government meanwhile teeters on the brink of collapse amid internal discord and unilateral moves by Netanyahu threatening a hostage deal.
- The European Union’s chief diplomat says Israel bears responsibility for the existence of Hamas, and argues that a diplomatic solution may need to be imposed on Israel “from the outside.”
- The Guardian: Legal advisers for U.K.’s Foreign Office cannot conclude that Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is compliant with international law….