Israel-Hamas war: UN warns Gaza aid on verge of collapse

The executive board of the World Health Organization (WHO) has passed a resolution urging immediate, humanitarian access to Gaza.

The Gaza Strip is currently under blockade from both Israel and Egypt, with only limited aid and humanitarian supplies being allowed in.

The resolution, brought forward by Afghanistan, Qatar, Yemen and Morocco, seeks the entry of medical personnel and supplies into the territory.

It also requires the WHO to keep track of violence against medical workers and patients. Moreover, the resolution aims to get financing for the reconstruction of hospitals.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the UN agency's 34-member board had achieved "the first consensus resolution on the conflict ... since it began two months ago."

The US did not block the text but said it lacked balance.

Canada labeled the text a "compromise resolution," but added that it did not do enough to mention the role of Hamas in the war. Australia, meanwhile, criticized the omission of the October 7 terror attacks on Israel, calling them "the catalyst for the current devastating situation."  

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on members of the militant Islamist group Hamas in Gaza to surrender.

Netanyahu said dozens of "Hamas members have surrendered to our forces in the past few days." 

"The war is still ongoing but it is the beginning of the end of Hamas," Netanyahu said in a video statement. "I say to the Hamas terrorists: It's over. Don't die for (Yahya) Sinwar. Surrender now."

Yahya Sinwar is the leader of Hamas in Gaza. Hamas is deemed a terror organization by the US, Germany, and EU, among others. 

Sinwar is currently believed to be hiding in the tunnels under Gaza. Capturing Sinwar dead or alive is one of the top objectives for the Israeli forces during the military operation in Gaza. 

Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group said it launched explosive drones at an Israeli command position near Ya'ara in northern Israel on Sunday.

In an attack at a different location at the border, the militant group said its fighters had achieved a direct hit on an Israeli position.

The Israeli army said "suspicious aerial targets" had crossed from Lebanon and two were intercepted. 

Two Israeli soldiers were moderately wounded and several others were lightly injured from shrapnel and smoke inhalation, it added.

In retaliation, Israeli fighter jets carried out "an extensive series of strikes on Hezbollah terror targets in Lebanese territory," the army said. There were no immediate reports of casualties in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, a senior Hezbollah politician said Sunday that Israeli air strikes in southern Lebanon marked a "new escalation" to which the group was responding with new types of attacks and weapons.

In a statement cited by the Reuters news agency, Hassan Fadlallah said the escalation would "not deter the resistance in Lebanon from continuing to defend its country and supporting Gaza."

Violence at the border between the two countries has killed more than 120 people in Lebanon, including 85 Hezbollah fighters and 16 civilians. In Israel, the hostilities have killed seven soldiers and four civilians.

Iran-backed Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by the US, Germany and several Arab Sunni countries.

Cyprus has detained two Iranians on suspicion of planning to attack Israeli citizens, local media reported Sunday.

Cypriot newspaper Kathimerini reported the men were arrested at the end of November on suspicion of having had contacts with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). 

The two individuals were believed to be in the early stages of gathering intelligence on potential Israeli targets, the newspaper said, adding that they had crossed from northern Cyprus.

Israeli intelligence service Mossad had also warned its Cypriot counterparts about the existence of an "Iranian terrorist infrastructure," the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

Netanyahu's office gave no details of the planned attack but said Israel was "troubled" by the use of Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus "both for terrorism objectives and as an operational and transit area."

Cyprus lies less than 400 kilometers (248 miles) from the coast of Gaza and many Israelis have made it home, while many others travel there for vacations.

Several thousand people protested Sunday in central Berlin against antisemitism, hatred and racism.

Under the motto "Never again is now!" the demonstrators braved heavy rain as they moved from the Tiergarten to the Brandenburg Gate.

Police estimated the number of participants at 3,200, while organizers said they expected 10,000 people to take part.

Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews, said in a speech that he sometimes didn't recognize Germany as "something has gotten out of hand," referring to a rise in antisemitic incidents in recent years, particularly since Palestinian militant group Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7.

"There is still an opportunity to repair this situation, but to do so you also have to admit what has gone wrong in the last few years, what you were unable or unwilling to see," he added.

The protest was also attended by Labor Minister Hubertus Heil and Bundestag President Bärbel Bas.

Germany has banned several pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent weeks after some protesters chanted antisemitic slogans during earlier rallies.

Hamas' terror attack against Israel is not justification enough for the punishment of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday.

Speaking during an interview aired at the Doha Forum conference in Qatar, Lavrov said while Russia had condemned the attack on Israel on October 7, which killed 1,200 people, it did not happen in a "vacuum."

"We do not believe it is acceptable to use this event for the collective punishment of the millions of Palestinian people with indiscriminate shelling," he added.

Lavrov said that for there to be "humanitarian pauses" in Gaza "some kind of monitoring on the ground" was needed.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Moscow's stance on the conflict in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday.

Netanyahu also "expressed sharp criticism of the dangerous cooperation between Russia and Iran," according to a summary of the discussion provided by his office.

The Israeli leader told his Kremlin counterpart that "any country that had been struck with a criminal terrorist assault such as Israel experienced would have reacted with no less force than Israel is using."

Israel responded to the October 7 terror attack by vowing to destroy Hamas and launched a military offensive in Gaza. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, at least 17,700 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the violence.

Hamas is designated a terror organization by the US, the EU, Germany and several other countries.

Israel has rejected as "outrageous and false" an allegation by Jordan that Israel was implementing a systematic policy of pushing Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Sunday said the policy meets the "legal definition of genocide."

Safadi, whose country borders the occupied West Bank and absorbed the bulk of Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948, also said that Israel had created hatred that would haunt the region and define generations to come.

"What we are seeing in Gaza is not just simply the killing of innocent people and the destruction of their livelihoods (by Israel) but a systematic effort to empty Gaza of its people," Safadi said at a conference in Doha.

Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy hit back at the accusations, saying: "These are, of course, outrageous and false accusations," adding that his country was defending itself from the "monsters" behind the October 7 attack.

Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees on Sunday accused Israel of preparing for the mass expulsion of Gazans into Egypt.

In an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini pointed to the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the increasing concentration near the border of displaced civilians.

"The United Nations and several member states, including the US, have firmly rejected forcibly displacing Gazans out of the Gaza Strip," Lazzarini said.

A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Ministry said the accusation was "simply not true."

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said Sunday that improving the health care situation in Gaza is "almost impossible" amid Israel's ongoing offensive. 

"It's stating the obvious to say that the impact of the conflict on health is catastrophic," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that health workers were doing an impossible job in unimaginable conditions. 

"In summary, health needs have increased dramatically, and the capacity of the health system has been reduced to one-third of what it was," said Tedros.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls to end the Gaza war, claiming they are inconsistent with supporting the aim of eliminating the militant Islamist group Hamas.

Netanyahu made the comments when briefing his Cabinet. 

He said he told the leaders of Germany, France, and other countries: "You cannot, on the one hand, support the elimination of Hamas and, on the other, pressure us to end the war, which would prevent the elimination of Hamas."

Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by Germany, the US, and several other countries. 

Philippe Lazzarini, the chief of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said Sunday that his agency was on the verge of collapsing in the Palestinian enclave, adding that an immediate cease-fire was needed to end "hell on earth" there.

Lazzarini said the "dehumanization" of Palestinians had allowed the international community to tolerate the continued Israeli attacks in Gaza.

The agency chief said the situation in Gaza now was "by any description" the worst that he had ever seen.

He urged all UN member states to "take immediate actions to implement an immediate humanitarian cease-fire."

Lazzarini said on Friday that "calling for an end to the decimation of the lives of Palestinians in Gaza is not a denial of the abhorrent attacks" on Israel carried about by the Hamas militant group on October 7.

A French frigate shot down two drones in the Red Sea heading toward it from the Yemeni coast, France's military said early on Sunday.

Frigate "Languedoc" intercepted and destroyed the "two identified threats," the military said in a statement on social media. The frigate operates in the Red Sea. The interceptions happened 110 kilometers (68 miles) from the Yemeni coast.

Earlier on Saturday, Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels threatened to attack any vessels en route to Israeli ports so long as food and medicine were not allowed into the besieged Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said it has hit some 250 militant targets across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, including weapon stores and tunnels belonging to Hamas.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said fighter jets and ground troops destroyed a Hamas communications facility next to a mosque in the south of the Palestinian enclave.

The IDF also said it has destroyed tunnel networks in the southern city of Khan Younis using precision bombs. 

A cell trying to attack advancing Israeli troops in the area was identified with the help of a drone and fired upon, The IDF added.

Gaza's Hamas-controlled health ministry says some 17,700 Palestinians have been killed in more than two months of fighting in Gaza. The figures cannot be independently verified.

Israel's offensive was triggered by the worst massacre in the country's history on October 7 when Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people and took another 240 hostage. Hamas is considered to be a terrorist organization by several countries. 

The head of the United Nations said the Security Council has been paralyzed by its failure to agree on the necessity for a cease-fire in Gaza. 

The body's "authority and credibility were severely undermined" by its delayed response to the conflict, which began on October 7.

The comments from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres came two days after a US veto that blocked a resolution calling for a cease-fire.

He said the council was "paralyzed by geostrategic divisions."

"I reiterated my appeal for a humanitarian cease-fire to be declared," Guterres told the forum. "Regrettably, the Security Council failed to do it."

"I can promise I will not give up," he added.

Israel bombarded targets in Gaza after two months of fighting in the narrow Palestinian enclave.

At least 17,490 people, mostly women and children, have died in two months of fighting in the Gaza Strip, according to the latest figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

The militants crossed into Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 240 others. Close to half of the hostages were released in a six-day humanitarian truce, which saw many Palestinian prisoners in Israel also set free and returned to Gaza. 

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have threatened to attack any vessels heading to Israeli ports unless food and medicine are allowed into the besieged Gaza Strip.

Their warning comes after a series of maritime attacks by the Houthis since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7.

The Houthis said they would prevent the passage of ships heading to Israel if humanitarian aid was not allowed into Hamas-ruled Gaza.

While the Houthis have recently attacked ships traveling in the Red Sea that they claim have direct links to Israel, their latest threat expands the scope of their targets.

Efforts to reach a deal to agree on a Gaza cease-fire and release more hostages held by Hamas are continuing, Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said Sunday.

This comes despite Israeli bombardment bombardment of the territory, which is "narrowing the window" for a successful outcome, he said.

"Our efforts as the state of Qatar, along with our partners, are continuing. We are not going to give up," Al Thani told the Doha Forum, adding that "the continuation of the bombardment is just narrowing this window for us."