Israel-Hamas war: Biden says Israel is losing global support

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has approved a resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.

The UNGA vote came days after the United States vetoed a similar resolution in the UN Security Council, calling for a truce.

Arab and Muslim-majority nations had called for an emergency session of the 193-member General Assembly to vote on the resolution.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN said ahead of the vote that Arab and Islamic ambassadors had been mobilizing support for the resolution.

He said they expected it would get a significantly higher number of votes than their previous resolution at the end of October, which was the first UN reaction to the Gaza war.

Hours before the vote, US President Joe Biden warned Israel that it was losing international support because of its "indiscriminate bombing" of Gaza.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk has described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as "extremely precarious."

"I mean, it's on the verge of, or well beyond, breakdown," he told reporters in Geneva at the end of the two-day event marking the 75th anniversary since the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"There is a clarion call for everyone and for the international institutions that deal with it, to take it very seriously," Türk said.

The offensive by Israel's military has left much of Gaza in ruin and left at least 18,400 people dead, mostly women and children, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

The UN estimates that 1.9 million of Gaza's 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war between Israel and Hamas, half of them children. 

Around 18% of infrastructure in the Gaza Strip has been damaged since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the United Nations satellite analysis agency UNOSAT.

The estimate is based on a satellite image taken late last month.

"As of 26 November 2023, UNOSAT has identified 10,049 destroyed structures, 8,243 severely damaged structures, and 19,087 moderately damaged structures, totaling 37,379 structures affected," the agency said.

"These findings underscore the urgent need for immediate ceasefire and support to address the growing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip," UNOSAT said. 

"The impact on civilian infrastructures is evident, with thousands of homes and essential facilities being damaged."

Israel has widened its relentless offensive in Gaza in recent days, having asked residents to move from southern areas of the territory after initially targeting the north.

The airstrikes and ground assaults have killed more than 18,000 people, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

US President Joe Biden urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "strengthen and change" his hardline government in some of the president's most candid comments on the conflict to date.

"This is the most conservative government in Israel's history," Biden told donors at a campaign event on Tuesday.

He said Netanyahu's government "doesn't want a two-state solution" — a solution that Washington officially supports.

Biden also said the international community was growing less supportive of Israel's continued strikes against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians.

"They're starting to lose that support," he said.

The Israeli army said on Tuesday it had recovered the bodies of two Israeli hostages in Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) informed the hostages' families "that their bodies had been recovered and returned to Israel," it said in a statement.

One of the bodies recovered belonged to Eden Zakaria, 27, who was wounded on October 7 when she was kidnapped from the music festival near Kibbutz Re'im. It is unclear if she was taken to Gaza dead or alive, according to Israeli media.

The other remains belonged to Ziv Dado, 36, a soldier serving near the Gaza border who was killed during the October 7 terror attack. Hamas militants took his body to Gaza.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed during the operation to retrieve the late hostages' bodies, the IDF said.

Israeli tanks and warplanes carried out new strikes on southern Gaza on Tuesday.

The Associated Press reported that dozens of Palestinians were killed in strikes in areas where civilians had been told to take shelter.

Residents in the city of Khan Younis told the Reuters news agency that shelling was now focused on the city center while residents in Rafah, where the border crossing with Egypt is located, reported the heaviest Israeli shelling in days.

In the north of the Gaza Strip, Israel's military said it struck a rocket launch site in Jabalia where a missile had been fired into Israel, and also found hundreds of shells and rocket-propelled grenade launchers in a Hamas compound.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it has lost 105 soldiers in the offensive so far, including 13 soldiers who were killed by friendly fire or other accidents.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the White House supports his goal of eliminating Hamas — which the US, the EU, and others consider a terror group — but said the two nations differ about what should follow the war in Gaza.

Netanyahu said in a video statement that "Gaza will be neither 'Hamas-stan' nor 'Fatah-stan'."

Fatah is the political party that leads the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

"I would like to clarify my position: I will not allow Israel to repeat the mistake of Oslo," he added, referring to the 1993 Oslo Accords that established limited Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza.

A senior member of the Palestinian Authority condemned Netanyahu’s comments on social media.

"We say to Netanyahu that Oslo died under the treads of his tanks, sweeping through our cities, villages, and camps from Jenin to Rafah," said Hussein Al-Sheikh.

In a speech at the United Nations in Geneva on Tuesday, Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said, "Israel and the United States will never be able to eliminate Hamas."

Amirabdollahian described Hamas as a "freedom movement." The US, the EU, Germany and several other governments classify Hamas as a terror organization.

The Iranian foreign minister also claimed that Israel would only be able to secure the release of more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas via a political solution to the conflict.

The World Bank will provide $20 million (€18.5 million) in new emergency relief funds for the people of Gaza, it announced on Tuesday.

This includes $10 million in financing for food vouchers and parcels — enough for an estimated 377,000 people.

Another $10 million provided by Japan and Germany will go towards medical care and supplies for humanitarian purposes.

"The activities are being implemented through UN agencies, such as the World Health Organization, the World Food Program and UNICEF, that have a proven ability to deliver in conflict settings and are already active in Gaza," the World Bank said in a statement.

"The financing is governed through robust fiduciary procedures that ensure resources reach people and are utilized for the purpose intended."

The World Bank previously provided $15 million in emergency relief funds to the people of Gaza during the latest fighting between Israel and Hamas militants.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he will speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about a timetable for ending major combat in Gaza when he visits Israel this week.

"The subject of how they are seeing the timetable of this war will certainly be on the agenda for my meetings," Sullivan said at a forum hosted by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

Sullivan spoke of a potential shift away from the current large-scale ground offensive and airstrikes in Gaza.

"It doesn't have to be that you go from that to literally nothing in terms of putting pressure on going after Hamas targets, Hamas leadership, or continuing to have tools in your toolbox to try to secure the release of hostages," he said.

"It just means that you move to a different phase from the kind of high-intensity operations that we see today."

Netanyahu has previously stated that the Israeli Defense Forces would maintain open-ended security control over Gaza once the conflict is over.

"I will have the opportunity to talk to Prime Minister Netanyahu about what exactly he has in mind with that comment because that can be interpreted in a number of different ways," Sullivan said.

Sullivan said that the Biden administration does not want to see Israel reoccupy Gaza or shrink its territory.

The US government has also called for the return of the internationally-recognized Palestinian Authority in Gaza.

Sullivan added that "the US position on this is clear."

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said on Tuesday that at least 18,412 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Israel launched its offensive in response to the October 7 terror attack by Hamas.

It added that more than 50,000 people have been wounded.

The US, the EU, Germany and others classify Hamas as a terrorist group.

The head of the United Nations' agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, issued a dire warning about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza during a visit to the territory on Tuesday.

"People are everywhere, live in the street, need everything. They plead for safety and an end to this hell on Earth," the UNRWA head said on social media.

"Our colleagues are asked to do the impossible in what is an impossible situation."

Israel says it is increasing the amount of humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza with the opening of the Kerem Shalom border crossing for inspections.

Aid will still pass into Gaza via the Rafah border crossing, where it will be transferred to international aid organizations.

However, the opening of the crossing will ease a bottleneck at the frontier.

"This morning, the first batch of humanitarian aid trucks underwent inspection at Kerem Shalom and is now en route to the Rafah Crossing," said COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry agency responsible for coordinating civilian matters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 

"This crucial step is set to expand the volume of aid reaching Gaza. We trust the UN did all the adjustments to receive and distribute the aid," COGAT tweeted on the social media platform X.

A day earlier, COGAT said the additional checkpoint would screen "trucks containing water, food, medical supplies and shelter equipment."

A World Health Organization (WHO) official has said only 11, or less than a third, of hospitals in Gaza remain partially functional.

"In just 66 days, the health system has gone from 36 functional hospitals to 11 partially functional hospitals — one in the north and 10 in the south," Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told a UN press briefing.

"We cannot afford to lose any health care facilities or hospitals," he said, speaking by video link from Gaza. "We hope, we plea that this will not happen."

The appeal comes after WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus voiced concern about the prolonged checks of medical supply convoys in the Gaza Strip.

The Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip has said Israeli forces are raiding a hospital in the north of the Palestinian territory.

"Israeli occupation forces are storming Kamal Adwan hospital after besieging and bombing it for days," ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement.

Al-Qudra said the troops were rounding up men in the hospital courtyard, including medical staff.

Israel's military did not immediately comment on the report.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said two mothers were killed when the maternity department of the hospital was reportedly hit on Monday.

"The hospital remains surrounded by Israeli troops and tanks, and fighting with armed groups has been reported in its vicinity for three consecutive days," OCHA said.

Health services in Gaza have been devastated, with only 11 of Gaza's 36 hospitals functioning at any capacity, according to the World Health Organization.

Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, Germany, the EU, the US and some Arab states.