U.N. resolution on aid for Gaza passes with U.S. abstaining from the vote

Hamas calls U.N. resolution on Gaza aid ‘insufficient’

Hamas said the newly-passed United Nations resolution to aid Palestinian civilians trapped by the fighting in Gaza was an “insufficient step.”

The Israelis, the militant group said in an official statement posted on its Telegram channel, created the “catastrophic situation” when their forces invaded Gaza. The U.N. resolution will not “stop the genocidal war waged by the terrorist occupation entity against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.

Hamas blamed the U.S. for working “hard to empty this resolution of its essence, and to issue it in this weak formula.”

“It is the duty of the U.N. Security Council to oblige the occupation to bring aid in sufficient quantities into all areas of the Gaza Strip, especially the areas of the northern Gaza Strip, which, in addition to the daily massacres, are subjected to a fascist siege and an ongoing starvation policy,” the Hamas statement said.

Israel has denied deliberately targeting Palestinians civilians and has accused Hamas of using its own people as human shields. The reported Palestinian death toll now stands at more than 20,000.

U.S. ambassador to U.N.: Gaza aid resolution ‘not perfect’

The U.S.Ambassador to the United Nations said the just-approved Security Council resolution — providing “pauses” in hostilities between Israel and Hamas and enabling humanitarian aid to get to the Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza by the fighting — is “not perfect.”

“We were appalled that some council members still refuse to condemn Hamas’s horrific terrorist attack on October 7, which set so much heartbreak and suffering in motion,” Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield said.

But, the ambassador added, “diplomacy has worked.”

“It was an intense few days of nearly 24 hour a day work,” Greenfield said. “Lots of phone calls, lots of text messages, my fingertips are tender from texting over the course of these few days.”

Although the U.S. helped craft the resolution, it was  sponsored by the United Arab Emirates and passed with a vote of 13 to zero with two abstentions — the U.S. and Russia.

Greenfield said Israel “is committed to reaching another agreement.”

“Now Hamas must agree to additional pauses,” she said. “Still, there is no doubt that today was a massive positive step.”

Israel vows continued war on Hamas, slams U.N. after Gaza aid resolution passes

The Israeli foreign minister vowed to keep fighting Hamas shortly after the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution that will provide “pauses” in hostilities and enable humanitarian aid to get to the Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza by the fighting.

“Israel will continue the war until the release of all the abductees and the elimination of Hamas in the Gaza Strip,” Eli Cohen said in a post on a social media that was translated by NBC News.

Meanwhile Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., took the Security Council to task for not condemning the deadly surprise attack of Israel that Hamas launched on Oct. 7 and sparked the latest Gaza war.

“This is a disgrace that reveals the irrelevance of the UN in relation to the war in Gaza,” Erdan wrote in a social media post that was also translated by NBC News.

But in the same post, Erdan thanked the U.S. and President Joe Biden “for standing by Israel throughout the negotiations on the Security Council resolution.”

“The decision maintains Israel’s security authority to monitor and inspect aid entering Gaza,” Erdan wrote.

While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken helped broker the “pauses,” the U.N. resolution was sponsored by the United Arab Emirates and passed with a vote of 13 to zero with two abstentions — the U.S. and Russia.

Erdan said the U.N. “should have focused on the humanitarian crisis of the abductees,” referring to the dozens of hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack.

“Focusing only on the aid mechanisms for Gaza is unnecessary because Israel anyway allows the entry of aid on any necessary scale,” Erdan said.

Hamas: Israel has not made a ‘serious’ offer to free hostages

A top Hamas official says the Israelis have not made any “serious or real offers” to free the remaining hostages.

Husam Badran, a member of the Hamas Political Bureau, said in an interview with Al Jazeera Live and posted on the militant group’s Telegram channel that the talk from the Israelis and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “about new prisoner exchange deals is nothing but an attempt to reduce popular pressure.”

“The occupation made a political decision to kill all of its prisoners, in order to relieve internal pressures, and it has become clear that the occupation, Netanyahu, and his war council are not concerned about the lives of their prisoners in the Gaza Strip,” Badran said in the interview, which was translated by NBC News.

Faced with growing criticism from his countrymen and from the families of the captives, Netanyahu and his government have insisted repeatedly that they are doing everything possible to secure the release of the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, when the militant group launched a deadly surprise attack on Israel.

But Netanyahu has also been adamant about crushing Hamas and has continued to wage a relentless attack on Gaza that has killed more than 20,000 people, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

U.N. Security Council approves Gaza aid resolution; U.S. abstains

The U.N. Security Council approved a resolution that will provide “pauses” in hostilities and enable humanitarian aid to get to the Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza by the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

The United Arab Emirates-sponsored resolution passed with 13 votes in favor and two abstentions — the U.S. and Russia — with 0 votes against.

The agreement was reached after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken huddled with his counterparts from Egypt and the UAE, and other countries trying to deal with the Gaza crisis, according to a State Department official.

“My understanding is what is on the table now, the Security Council is calling for, for humanitarian efforts, for pauses to allow aid to come in,” Mark Regev, a top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said before the vote. “That sort of thing Israel has no problem with; we don’t see the civilian population of Gaza as the target of our operation. We want to support, see humanitarian aid, reach civilians. Our enemy is Hamas.”

Putin and Abbas discuss Gaza conflict

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a telephone call with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas today to discuss ways to de-escalate the conflict in Gaza as well as humanitarian relief efforts, the Kremlin said.

The leaders also agreed that Abbas would visit Russia at some point.

Family of Hamas hostage Gad Haggai mourns his death

Hours after learning that 73-year-old Hamas hostage Gad Haggai had died while in captivity, his family released a statement mourning his death, calling for the return of his body and urging the release of his wife, Judi, and the other captives.

Haggai, a father of four and grandfather of seven who held both U.S. and Israeli citizenship, was kidnapped Oct. 7 by Hamas from the Nir Oz kibbutz. The couple managed to notify friends that they had been shot and that Haggai was critically injured, according to the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum.

This is the family’s statement:

“We are filled with great sorrow by the murder of Gad Haggai, an American-Israeli citizen. He was a father of four, a grandfather of seven, and a member of his beloved kibbutz — Kibbutz Nir Oz. He will be remembered as a gifted man, with sharp intellect and a love for wind instruments — which he played since he was a young child. He was a talented chef, and alongside his wife, Judi, he lived a healthy, active lifestyle. We mourn the loss of our father and grandfather, and we continue to hope and pray that his body will be returned to us and that Judi is still alive and we will be reunited soon.

 “We continue to urge our leaders to do everything they can to bring our parents home to us. This latest news of Gad’s death only reaffirms the urgency with which we need to bring all of the hostages home.”

U.N. Security Council poised to vote on aid resolution after U.S. agrees to language

The U.N. Security Council is poised to vote on a new binding resolution today, aimed at providing more aid to Gaza, that has seen four delays since Monday.

The resolution originally called for a “cessation” in hostilities and for the U.N. to be the sole inspector and facilitator of aid distribution in the Gaza Strip. It has seen significant revisions and amendments primarily from the U.S., which objected to the idea of longer-term cease-fires and wanted unnamed humanitarian bodies besides the U.N. to oversee aid in Gaza.

Other Security Council members returned to their capitals yesterday ahead of voting to consult on the significant changes to the document. While U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. was ready to support the resolution in its current form, other nations supported the original, more strongly worded one.

“The draft resolution is not watered down,” Thomas-Greenfield said in response to a question yesterday. “The draft resolution is a very strong resolution that is fully supported by the Arab group that provides them what they feel is needed to get humanitarian assistance on the ground.”

Israeli forces fire tear gas near Al-Aqsa Mosque

Israeli forces fired tear gas at worshippers in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque in east Jerusalem, the Palestinian Information Ministry said in a statement on Telegram today.

It added that “rubber-coated metal bullets” were also fired at the crowd and people were doused with “contaminated water.”

Separate video footage taken at the scene shows Israeli police firing tear gas at crowds and chasing them away on horseback in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood of east Jerusalem, adjacent to the holy site.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third-holiest site in Islam and stands in a spot known to Jews as the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site in Judaism. The restriction of Palestinian access to the site frequently causes flashes in violence between Palestinians, Israelis and the military.

No one ‘is safe from starvation’ in Gaza, World Food Programme chief says

No one in Gaza “is safe from starvation,” World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain said in a statement today.

“We cannot stand by and watch people starve,” said McCain, wife of the late Sen. John McCain. “Humanitarian access is needed now for supplies to flow into and throughout Gaza and for civilians to safely receive lifesaving aid.”

More than 500,000 people in Gaza are facing “catastrophic” hunger conditions, the World Food Programme said in a statement, citing data from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the U.N.’s hunger monitoring system.

Roughly 2.2 million people – almost the entire population of Gaza – are in crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity, it said, adding that 26% of the strip’s population, or around 576,600 people, have exhausted their food supplies and coping capacities and face catastrophic hunger.

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There is ‘no food shortage’ in Gaza, Israeli official says

KEREM SHALOM, Israel — There is “no food shortage in Gaza,” Israel’s head of the coordination and liaison administration for Gaza said today.

Col. Moshe Tetro told a news conference at Israel’s Kerem Shalom border crossing that “food reserves in Gaza Strip are sufficient for the near term,” adding that 50,000 tons of food had entered the enclave since Oct. 7.

Tetro said Israel was providing drinking water through pipes to “hundreds of thousands of residents” in southern Gaza. He did not say whether water was being provided to the north.

His comments came a day after the U.N. Integrated Food Security Phase Classification warned that the entire population of Gaza is “at risk of famine” due to “catastrophic” food insecurity, and that 50% of households in Gaza are at “emergency” levels of hunger.

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Here’s how the wording of the U.N. resolution calling for Gaza aid changed

A U.N. Security Council vote calling for enhanced aid to Gaza was delayed four times this week, over differences between the U.S. and other countries over the wording.

A week of negotiations and amendments saw language calling for a “cessation of hostilities” change to a “suspension,” the U.N. said in online updates about the talks yesterday. The U.S. has long maintained that a more permanent cease-fire would only benefit Hamas.

The U.S. also objected to the U.N. being designated as the exclusive inspector of aid vehicles coming into the Gaza Strip. That task is currently performed by Israel, although humanitarian organizations have warned this slows down deliveries into the strip.

Instead, the U.S. called for a “senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator” to take responsibility for facilitating aid and monitoring the situation on the ground. It did not say who this should be.

Support for Hamas growing in Saudi Arabia, poll shows

Support for Hamas is growing in Saudi Arabia, according to a new poll by The Washington Institute, a pro-Israel think tank based in Washington, D.C.

While the poll found that the militant group continues to be less popular in Saudi Arabia than in countries such as Lebanon and Jordan, it revealed there had been a 30 point shift in positive attitudes toward Hamas, from just 10% in August to 40% in November and December.

Just 16% of the representative sample of 1,000 Saudi Arabian respondents said that “Hamas should stop calling for the destruction of Israel, and instead accept a permanent two-state solution to the conflict based on the 1967 borders” and 95% said that they did not believe Hamas had killed civilians during its incursion into Israel on Oct. 7.

However, despite the broadening of support for Hamas and the prevailing negative attitudes toward Israel, 86% still felt that there was “no military solution to the conflict” and that there should be political negotiations for a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal.

A woman mourns as bodies are collected in southern Gaza

Max Butterworth

A woman mourns as the bodies of people killed in strikes are collected in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, today.

Hostage identified as U.S. citizen dies in Gaza

A 73-year-old hostage who was taken from kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’ incursion into Israel on Oct. 7, has died, a campaign group which advocates for captives and their families, said in a statement today.

Gadi Haggai and his wife, Judi, manage to notify friends that they had both been shot and that Gadi was critically injured after militants attacked, according to the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum.

“Judi is still held captive by Hamas,” the statement added. “Gadi’s body is still being held by Hamas in Gaza.” It did not say how he died.

Gadi was later identified as a U.S. citizen by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla, and Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y.

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European Commission to give $130 million to Palestinian Authority

The European Commission has adopted a 118 million euros ($130 million) aid package to support the Palestinian Authority.

The money will contribute to the payments of the salaries and pensions of civil servants in the West Bank, social allowances for vulnerable families in the West Bank and Gaza and the payment for the medical referrals to the East Jerusalem Hospitals, the commission said in a statement.

It will support the administrative and technical capacity of the Palestinian Authority institutions, the statement added,

The Palestinian Authority governs the occupied West Bank, while Hamas ran Gaza before Oct. 7.

Food and fuel shortages in southern Gaza

Max Butterworth

A Palestinian woman starts a fire for cooking food, surrounded by children outside a house in the southern Gaza Strip today.

Telecommunications restored in southern Gaza

Internet and cellphone service in south and central Gaza are being gradually restored, Paltel, the enclave’s largest telecommunications provider, said on X today.

Connectivity blackouts have been a regular problems for residents in the strip as Israel has waged war in the region. The country controls Gaza’s telecommunications, internet connectivity and electricity.

Humanitarian organizations have warned that blackouts make it harder for their teams on the ground to communicate with one another, dispatch ambulances and operate safely.

Huge explosion snakes across city as ‘Hamas tunnels are destroyed’ by Israeli military

The Israeli military yesterday released video said to show a tunnel being blown up by its forces in the Gaza Strip.

The IDF claimed to expose “a large network of strategic underground tunnels which connect hideouts and bureaus belonging to Hamas’ senior military and political leadership.”

Medical teams ‘were subjected to beatings and torture,’ Palestine Red Crescent Society says

Some of the medical teams detained during a raid on an ambulance center in the Jabalia refugee camp “were subjected to beatings and torture,” the Palestine Red Crescent Society said on X today after they were released.

The organization said it “strongly” condemned the “targeting, arresting and assaulting” of its team members and called for the immediate release of eight teams who were still in custody.

It added that Israeli forces had destroyed the central communication system and ambulances at the center during a raid earlier this week.

NBC News could not independently verify this information.

Palestinian American mourns death of 100 family members and friends

Stephanie Gosk

Mohammed Shehaiber, a Palestinian American from Gaza who has lived in the U.S. for almost 30 years, told NBC News yesterday that more than 100 of his family members and friends have been killed in the strip this week alone, after his hometown of Sabra was bombed by Israeli forces Monday.

“They hit the neighbor’s house, next to my father’s house. The walls jumped, and Asma collapsed,” he said, describing the death of a female family member, who was the mother of two. Sabra, on the western outskirts of Gaza City, was an area his family believed would be safe, having been largely unaffected by previous wars with Israel. Now, Shehaiber believes, many family members remain buried under the rubble, with no diesel or supplies to assistin the efforts to recover them.

“The house that got destroyed, I grew up in it. All my childhood, gone. I have no childhood left,” he said. He added that in Gaza, Israeli bombing campaigns would only increase support for Hamas, instead of eradicating the group as Israel and the U.S. hope.

“Please stop it, Mr. Biden. You can do it,” he said. Referring to Israel’s campaign on the strip, he said, “It will only cause more problems, more hatred.”

Hezbollah and Israel trade fire over Lebanese border

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah targeted “gatherings of enemy soldiers” at a barracks in northern Israel this morning, it said in a statement today.

The Iran-backed militia said it achieved “direct hits” with rockets and artillery after it targeted the Shomera barracks near Israel’s northern border.

In a statement on Telegram, the IDF said it had identified a number of launches from Lebanon and it had “struck the sources of the fire with artillery.” It added that fighter jets had “struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

NBC News could not independently verify either claim.

IDF night operations in northern Gaza

Max Butterworth

This image, taken during a controlled tour of the Gaza Strip by the Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday and released today, shows Israeli soldiers during night operations in the north of the enclave. The image was reviewed by the IDF before it was released to global media outlets.

Hamas rejects hostage exchange deal for humanitarian ‘pauses,’ wants permanent cease-fire

A new report has suggested that Hamas rejected an Israeli offer for a weeklong cease-fire in exchange for the release of dozens of hostages, including remaining women and children, Egyptian officials told The Wall Street Journal.

Hamas officials announced yesterday that they refused to hold any talks about releasing hostages without a more permanent cease-fire, something Israel and the U.S. said would be a “surrender” to the group.

The failure to make headway on cease-fire negotiations comes as the United Nations estimates 500,000 people in the enclave are starving and the WHO said hospitals in the north of the strip were completely out of service.

Hamas hostage families plead with diplomats to help secure their freedom

Amid scenes of deep emotions, family members of several of the hostages held by Hamas addressed diplomats in Tel Aviv to ask for international assistance in securing their release.

How does the destruction in Gaza stack up historically?

By some measures, the destruction in Gaza has outpaced Allied bombings of Germany during World War II.

Between 1942 and 1945, the Allies attacked 51 major German cities and towns, destroying about 40%-50% of their urban areas, said Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian. Pape said this amounted to 10% of buildings across Germany, compared to more than 33% across Gaza, a densely populated territory of just 140 square miles.

“Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” he said. “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”

The U.S.-led coalition’s 2017 assault to expel the Islamic State terrorist group from the Iraqi city of Mosul was considered one of the most intense attacks on a city in generations. That nine-month battle killed around 10,000 civilians, a third of them from coalition bombardment, according to an Associated Press investigation at the time.

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