INTERPRETER
The US delays arms sales to Israel as attacks on Gaza and its hospitals continue – here are important updates.
This is how things stand as of Thursday, December 14, 2023:
Latest developments
- Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja has said he will “fight” against a ruling by the sport’s governing body, which he says has stopped him from showing messages supporting “those who have no voice”, including children in Gaza.
- At least 27 people were reportedly killed in Israeli attacks on two residential buildings in Rafah, southern Gaza, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
- The United States Central Command said on Wednesday that Yemen’s Houthi group attempted to attack the tanker Ardmore Encounter in the southern Red Sea.
- On Wednesday, 268 dual nationals were evacuated from Gaza to Egypt, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) said in its latest situation report.
- The Israeli army’s website was briefly hacked by a pro-Palestinian group on Wednesday evening, which the army confirmed.
- Activists from a Jewish group calling for a ceasefire blocked a Los Angeles freeway during rush hour on Wednesday morning, Reuters reported.
Human impact and fighting
- Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that at least 70 percent of Palestinians killed in Gaza were women and children.
- According to UN-OCHA, almost half of Gaza’s 1.9 million residents are now sheltering in Rafah Governorate in southern Gaza.
- Israel has detained the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital and about 70 other medical staff at an undisclosed location outside the hospital, UN-OCHA said on Wednesday.
- The Australian government is considering a US request to send a warship to the Red Sea, Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC, Australia’s public broadcaster, on Thursday.
- Israel is expanding its attack on Jenin in the occupied West Bank to other surrounding areas in what is “the largest and longest of these Israeli military strikes” since October 7, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Charles Stratford. The raid lasted two days and killed at least eleven Palestinians.
Diplomacy
- At least a hundred employees of the US Department of Homeland Security have signed an open letter to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas denouncing the department’s handling of the war on Gaza. The letter was dated November 22 and obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera.
- The prime ministers of Australia, New Zealand and Canada issued a joint statement on Wednesday calling for a “lasting ceasefire” in Gaza.
- US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has arrived in Saudi Arabia, where he is expected to discuss the Israel-Gaza war and regional security, a US official said.
- Biden met on Wednesday with family members of Israeli prisoners held in Gaza and said he was “reassuring them” that he would “continue to do everything possible to secure the release of their family members.”
- The Biden administration is delaying the sale of more than 20,000 US-made rifles to Israel over concerns about attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the sale.
- Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, warned at the Global Refugee Forum on Wednesday that the “catastrophe” unfolding in the Gaza Strip threatens to cause additional displacement in the Middle East.