Middle East: UN aid chief condemns 'daily cruelty' in Gaza

A top UN official condemned the humanitarian situation in Gaza, describing "acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes" as Israel continues its daily bombardment of the territory.

Joyce Msuya, interim chief of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, addressed the Security Council, describing Palestinian civilians driven from their homes and "forced to witness their family members killed, burned and buried alive" in Gaza.

"Shelters, homes and schools have been burned and bombed to the ground," Msuya said.

"Numerous families remain trapped under rubble because fuel for digging equipment is being blocked by the Israeli authorities and first responders have been blocked from reaching them."

Msuya said hospitals had been attacked and ambulances destroyed, adding that "the daily cruelty we see in Gaza seems to have no limits."

The Security Council meeting that Msuya addressed was focused on a recent UN-backed report that warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine" in Gaza.

Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon called the report's claims "baseless and slanderous." He accused the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification network, which was responsible for the famine alert, of prioritizing "smearing Israel over actually helping those in need."

At least 33 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon on Tuesday, local authorities said.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said a strike on a residential building in the Chouf region south of Beirut killed at least 15 people.

"The Israeli raid on Joun in the Chouf district resulted... in the death of 15 martyrs, including eight women and four children," it said.

Another strike in the Aley region, east of Beirut, killed eight people according to the ministry.

The Israeli military said earlier that it targeted Hezbollah infrastructure, including command centers and weapons production sites. It did not provide evidence.

Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, more than a dozen people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday, news agencies AP and Reuters reported, citing hospital officials and Gaza's civil defense agency, respectively.

US President Joe Biden's administration says Israel has made good but limited progress in increasing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza and that it will not restrict arms transfers to Israel as it threatened to do a month ago if the situation had not improved.

State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said the progress needs to be supplemented and sustained, but added, "We have not made an assessment at this time that the Israelis are in violation of US law."

The law requires recipients to abide by international humanitarian law and not obstruct the delivery of such aid. 

But the United States would like to see more changes happen, Patel told reporters, adding that Washington would continue to assess Israel's compliance with US law.

Earlier, international aid groups said Israel had failed to meet US demands to allow greater humanitarian access to Gaza, where conditions are worse than at any point in the 13-month war.

Israel has failed to meet US demands to allow more humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, international aid organizations said, despite the opening of an additional aid crossing into Gaza.

The eight organizations, including Oxfam and Save The Children, said in a joint statement that Israel "failed to comply" with US demands "at enormous human cost for Palestinian civilians in Gaza."

"The humanitarian situation in Gaza is now at its worst point since the war began in October 2023," they said.

In Washington, however, the Biden administration was less definitive, saying Tuesday that the steps Israel has taken are welcome although not enough to make a dramatic improvement.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed in a Monday meeting with Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer "the importance of ensuring those changes lead to an actual improvement in the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, including through the delivery of additional assistance to civilians throughout Gaza," the State Department said.

Blinken "further reiterated the importance that Israel takes every possible step to minimize civilian harm," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

The US had given Israel a 30-day deadline until Tuesday to get more aid to the area or have military assistance from Washington reduced.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Iranians saying Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's government fears the people of Iran more than it fears Israel.

"That's why they spend so much time and money trying to crush your hopes and curb your dreams," he said in an English-language video message on X. "I say to you this: Don’t let your dreams die. I hear the whispers: Women, Life, Freedom. Zan, Zendegi, Azadi."

"Don't lose hope. And know that Israel and others in the free world stand with you," Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu also claimed that a third Iranian attack on Israel would cripple Iran's economy. 

"It would rob you of many more billions of dollars," he said, after claiming that the October ballistic missile attack on Israel cost Tehran $2.3 billion (€2.2 billion).

Israel and Iran have exchanged tit-for-tat missile attacks, raising fears of an even wider war in the Middle East. Iran has fired missiles directly into Israeli territory twice this year, prompting Israel to retaliate, most recently on October 26 when it hit Iranian military sites. An apparent Israeli strike also killed the political leader of the militant group Hamas while he was in Tehran in July.

Rocket fire from Lebanon killed two men in their 40s in northern Israel, near the city of Nahariya. Emergency services said a rocket hit a warehouse.

The Israeli military said the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah fired a barrage of about 10 projectiles into the north of the country, some of which were intercepted.

The rocket fire came as Israel again pounded Hezbollah strongholds in south Beirut and southern Lebanon, the military said.

Hezbollah said it targeted an air base south of Tel Aviv "with a salvo of quality missiles."

Germany's ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, condemned a call by far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for Israel to begin preparations for the extension of its control over the West Bank.

"The demand by Minister Smotrich to 'apply sovereignty' over the West Bank is an open call for annexation. Any preparation to implement this goal is in full breach of international law," Seibert wrote on X, adding that this announcement "threatens the stability of the entire region."

The German Foreign Ministry also strongly rejected Smotrich's demand. "Annexation would violate international law and endanger Israel's security," it wrote on X.

On Monday, Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper reported that Smotrich had instructed the Israeli settlement authority, which oversees West Bank settlements, to prepare the infrastructure necessary to apply Israeli sovereignty to the region. In addition, Smotrich posted on X: "2025 — the year of Jewish sovereignty in Judea and Samaria," referring to the territory of the West Bank. 

Smotrich was pointing to plans outlined in 2020 to annex Israeli settlement blocs covering 30% of the West Bank. 

The West Bank has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Israel has built scores of settlements there but has never annexed the territory, which is home to about 3 million Palestinians. The international community overwhelmingly considers the settlements, where some 500,000 Israelis live, to be illegal and obstacles to peace.

Palestinians claim the West Bank as part of an independent state with its capital in east Jerusalem. 

United Nations peacekeepers warned that the Israeli military has committed "severe violations" of a cease-fire deal with Syria as its military continues a major construction project along the so-called Alpha Line, which separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria.

The comments by the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which has patrolled the area since 1974, come after an Associated Press report Monday that published satellite imagery showing the extent of the works along the frontier. 

UNDOF said as Israel conducted "extensive engineering groundwork activities," it protected earth-moving equipment with armored vehicles and main battle tanks.

"Such severe violations of the (demilitarized zone) have the potential to increase tensions in the area and [are] being closely monitored by UNDOF," the force said. 

The work, UNDOF said, began in July. High-resolution images taken on November 5 by Planet Labs PBC for the AP show more than 7.5 kilometers (4.6 miles) of construction along the Alpha Line, starting about 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) southeast of the Israeli-held Druze town of Majdal Shams.

The images appear to show a trench between two embankments, parts of which appear to have been covered with fresh asphalt. There also appears to be a fence running along it toward the Syrian side. 

Majdal Shams is the town where a July rocket strike killed 12 children playing football.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Israeli military said it has supplied hundreds of food packages to northern Gaza as it rushes to meet a US ultimatum.

The US had given Israel a 30-day deadline until Tuesday to get more aid to the area or have military assistance from Washington reduced.

According to the Israeli military, hundreds of food packages and thousands of liters of water were delivered on Monday to the Beit Hanoun area for distribution.

In addition, it said it had opened a fifth crossing into Gaza in line with one of the US demands.

It said 741 trucks carrying aid had entered northern Gaza through the Erez crossing since October, while 244 patients had been evacuated for treatment.

International aid groups said, however, that Israel has failed to meet the US demands in time.

Israeli troops have been besieging the northern end of the Gaza Strip for more than a month in an offensive the military says aims to prevent Hamas militants from reforming.

The fighting has created a disastrous humanitarian situation, with residents of the area largely cut off from aid.

Israel's military has carried out at least five airstrikes on southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, less than an hour after warning residents in several neighborhoods to leave their homes for shelter.

The area struck is under the control of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, against which Israel has intensified its campaign since late September following months of low-level conflict at the Lebanese-Israeli border

There were no immediate reports of casualties from the mid-morning strikes, with many residents having already fled the area since Israel began bombing it in September.

Newly appointed Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz told military officials on Monday that Iran was "more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities".

"We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal — to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel," Katz added on X, formerly Twitter.

According to the  International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran is rapidly advancing its nuclear program, and is continuing to increase stockpiles of uranium enriched to weapons grade levels in defiance of international demands. 

IAEA head Rafael Grossi has warned that Iran possess enough uranium enriched to near- weapons-grade levels to make "several" nuclear bombs if it chose to do so.

Iran claims it's nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. 

The always tense relations between Israel and its regional archenemy have recently worsened further amid tit-for-tat missile strikes.

Iran twice fired missiles directly on Israeli territory this year, drawing responses in kind from Israel.

Israel's new defense minister, Israel Katz, says he told military officials on Monday that there would be no cease-fire in Lebanon until "the goals of the war are achieved."

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Katz wrote that he had told the General Defense Forum that "offensive activity should be continued in order to ... realize the fruits of victory."

"In Lebanon there will be no cease-fire and there will be no respite," the post said.

Israeli leaders on Monday seemed to send mixed signals on the possibility of a cease-fire in Lebanon.

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who this week replaced Katz in the Foreign Ministry, said Israel was "working with the Americans on the issue," reporting "a certain progress."

Israel has escalated its hostilities against Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah militia since late September, beginning a ground offensive on September 30 after a previous campaign of intense airstrikes.

Iran-backed Hezbollah has been carrying out attacks on Israel since Israel began an offensive in Gaza against Hezbollah ally Hamas in response to deadly raids by the Palestinian militants in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The Israeli army said on Tuesday that four of its soldiers had been killed in figthing in the northern Gaza Strip, where it has been carrying out a major offensive.

All four "fell during combat in the northern Gaza Strip" on Monday, a statement said.

The deaths bring to 376 the total number of Israeli soldiers killed in the Palestinian territory since the start of ground operations against Hamas militants in October last year.

Some 43,500 Palestinians have been killed during the campaign, according to health officials in Hamas-run Gaza. That figure does not distinguish between civilians and militants.

Palestinian medical officials said two Israeli strikes in Gaza late on Monday and early on Tuesday have killed at least 14 people, including two children and a woman. 

At least 11 people, including two children, died in a strike on the so-called Muwasi humanitarian zone west of Khan Younis, according to officials at Nasser Hospital.

Al-Awda Hospital officials say three people, including a woman, were killed in another strike that hit a house in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, says most of its bids to coordinate aid convoys and humanitarian visits to northern Gaza last month were denied or impeded by Israel.

OCHA says it made 98 requests for authorization to enter the war-stricken zone but only 15 made it through.

 A spokesperson said Ocha was "worried about the fate of Palestinians remaining in North Gaza as the siege there continues, and urgently calls on Israel to open up the area to humanitarian operations at the scale needed, given the massive needs."  

Residents of northern Gaza are at risk of acute hunger as Israel carries out a major offensive there that it says aims to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping.

tj/wmr (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)