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With Global Attention on Venezuela, Israel Intensifies Assault on Gaza, Lebanon
Israeli forces reported blew up a 5-year-old girl and wounded two other children a day after fatally shooting a 15-year-old boy in Gaza.
Jan 05, 2026
With the world captivated by and concerned over the Trump administration's weekend abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Israel bombed the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, continuing its devastating US-backed response to the Hamas-led October 2023 attack.
In Gaza, where Israel faces widespread accusations of genocide, an Israeli strike on Monday "hit a tent housing displaced people, killing a 5-year-old girl and her uncle and wounding two other children," the Associated Press reported, citing officials at Nasser Hospital. "Family members wept over the bodies as they were brought to the hospital."
The Israel Defense Forces used one of its common claims for when it kills civilians. According to the AP, the IDF said that it struck a Hamas militant who planned an imminent attack on Israeli troops in Gaza, the strike complied with the ceasefire agreement, and it was conducted in a targeted way to limit civilian harm.
The tent strike in the Muwasi area northwest of Khan Younis came a day after Israeli forces shot and killed at least three Palestinians in that city on Sunday. According to Reuters, "Medics reported that the dead included a 15‑year‑old boy, a fisherman killed outside areas still occupied by Israel in the enclave, and a third man who was shot and killed east of the city in areas under Israeli control."
Israel has killed at least 422 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 1,189 since reaching the ceasefire deal with Hamas three months ago. The overall death toll in the strip has climbed to at least 71,388, with another 171,269 people injured, according to local health officials. Global experts warn the true counts are likely far higher.
Meanwhile, according to Al Jazeera, journalists on the ground in the illegally occupied Palestinian territory observed that the IDF "has spent the past 24 hours expanding the so-called 'yellow line' in eastern Gaza," or the boundary behind which Israeli forces officially withdrew as part of the October deal.
Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud reported from Gaza City:
The ongoing Israeli attacks on the ground, the expansion of the "yellow line," are meant to eat up more of the territory across the eastern part, really shrinking the total area where people are sheltering.
Everyone is cramped here. The population here not just doubled but tripled in many of the neighborhoods, given the fact that none of these people is able to go back to their neighborhoods. We're talking about Zeitoun, Shujayea, as well as Tuffah.
It was not until the past few minutes that the sounds of hums, the drones buzzing, faded away, but it had been going on for the past night and all of yesterday. Ongoing explosions that could be heard clearly from here.
Mahmoud also reported that "there's nothing on the ground other than the headlines we've been reading over the past couple of days, the expectation now that within days the Rafah crossing is going to open and allow for movement in and out of Gaza. So far, we know the Israeli military is pushing for Rafah to be just a one-way exit."
Throughout the Israeli assault, far-right officials in Israel have ramped up calls to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinian population and recolonize the territory. There has also been a surge in violence from Israeli settlers and soldiers against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank over the past two years, as well as renewed settlement-building efforts there.
Laila Al-Arian, an American journalist and executive producer for Al Jazeera's documentary series "Fault Lines," said on social media Sunday, "With eyes on Venezuela, Israel is bombing Gaza and escalating its assault on the West Bank."
In November 2024, nearly a year before the ceasefire agreement in Hamas, Israel struck a deal with the Lebanese political and paramilitary group Hezbollah—and, since then, as with Gaza, has repeatedly violated it.
Israel launched strikes on eastern and southern Lebanon on Monday after an IDF spokesperson said the military would target alleged Hezbollah sites in Kfar Hatta and Ain el-Tineh, and Hamas sites in Annan and al-Manara.
Al Jazeera reported that "Lebanon's Health Ministry said a drone strike on a car in the southern village of Braikeh earlier Monday wounded two people. The Israeli military said the strike targeted two Hezbollah members."
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Israel's Attack on Aid Organizations in Gaza Is an Attack on Palestinian Survival
What emerges is a coherent strategy: first, producing dependency through siege, destruction, and institutional dismantling; then, weaponizing that dependency by controlling or withdrawing the means of staying alive.
Jan 03, 2026
Israel’s decision to halt the operations of 37 international aid groups marks a dangerous escalation in its ongoing genocidal campaign, which has destroyed Gaza’s capacity to sustain life through bombardment and siege, and now moves to deprive survivors of the last remaining forms of assistance.
While framed as an administrative measure, this latest move cannot be understood in isolation. It is the culmination of a longer process that has unfolded over the past two years, as Israel has systematically dismantled the humanitarian and medical infrastructure sustaining Gaza’s civilian population.
By defunding and delegitimizing The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the primary agency tasked with aiding Palestinian refugees; and by leveling accusations against humanitarian and health personnel, in the absence of meaningful global pushback, Israel has further entrenched a longstanding system of weaponized aid.
While the Israeli government initially framed the suspension of aid groups as being linked to their failure to comply with new registration requirements, it later noted in a statement that the process was “intended to prevent the exploitation of aid by Hamas, which in the past operated under the cover of certain international aid organizations, knowingly or unknowingly.”
Such criteria not only regulate aid work; they effectively silence dissent, conditioning the ability to deliver humanitarian assistance on political conformity.
Israel has long accused Hamas of exploiting humanitarian aid, despite such claims having repeatedly been debunked, including by senior Israeli military officials themselves.The new regulatory framework extends well beyond technical compliance. It introduces explicitly political and ideological conditions for aid delivery, disqualifying organisations that have supported boycotts of Israel or engaged in “delegitimization campaigns.”
Such criteria not only regulate aid work; they effectively silence dissent, conditioning the ability to deliver humanitarian assistance on political conformity.
UNRWA Test Case
The dismantling of UNRWA was a critical test case. For decades, the agency served as the backbone of civilian life for Palestinian refugees, providing healthcare, education, food assistance, and social services, under conditions of Israeli occupation and siege.
After October 7, 2023, Israel intensified its efforts to recast UNRWA not as a humanitarian agency operating under an international mandate, but as a political problem to be neutralized.
Allegations that a limited number of UNRWA employees were affiliated with Hamas, or involved in the October 7 attacks, were rapidly generalized into claims about the organisation as a whole. These claims triggered sweeping donor suspensions—including the immediate freezing of US funding, among UNRWA’s largest sources of support—illustrating how fast states are willing to act on evidence-free allegations from Israel, whose overall goal is to avoid global scrutiny of its crimes.
The persecution of UNRWA thus demonstrated how easily a central pillar of the humanitarian system can be dismantled, setting the stage for what would come next, as Israel launched a broader attack on international aid groups operating in Gaza.
In the months that followed, Israel blocked UNRWA’s operations on the ground and passed legislation criminalizing its activities across historic Palestine.
The response from the international community was striking in its weakness: While some donors ultimately resumed funding to UNRWA, no binding enforcement mechanisms were activated, nor were any serious political costs imposed on Israel.
The persecution of UNRWA thus demonstrated how easily a central pillar of the humanitarian system can be dismantled, setting the stage for what would come next, as Israel launched a broader attack on international aid groups operating in Gaza.
The consequences of this latest move are devastating. For decades, such organizations have provided essential services, amid the systematic degradation of civilian infrastructure and repeated assaults on healthcare in Gaza. Groups like Doctors Without Borders and Medical Aid for Palestinians offer vital resources for emergency and trauma care, along with other key services to sustain Gaza’s fragile health system, at a time when many hospitals are damaged or out of service.
Buffers Against Collapse
The centrality of international aid groups to Gaza’s survival is itself a measure of the depth of destruction imposed on Palestinian society. Such actors have long operated in spaces where Palestinian institutions have been dismantled, and political solutions deferred.
In the absence of an end to Israel’s occupation and siege, their presence has become one of the few remaining buffers against total collapse. In the context of an ongoing genocide and the destruction of the infrastructure required to sustain life in Gaza, stripping away the remaining humanitarian presence amounts to a direct assault on survival itself.
The Israeli government has sought to downplay the impact of the suspensions by asserting that the targeted organisations “did not bring aid into Gaza throughout the current ceasefire, and even in the past their combined contribution amounted to only about 1% of the total aid volume.”
In Gaza, where Israel has already destroyed the material conditions of life, the suspension of humanitarian operations completes this logic.
But this calculation of material aid fails to capture the nature of the work and services these groups have provided, including specialized medical care, trauma surgery, rehabilitation for injured and disabled people, psychosocial and mental health services, and sustained institutional support to keep Gaza’s collapsing health system functioning.
In 2025 alone, Doctors Without Borders carried out nearly 800,000 outpatient consultations and treated more than 100,000 trauma cases in Gaza, while Medical Aid for Palestinians made many critical interventions, including through expanded cancer care in the territory’s north.
Israel’s 1% calculation, which has not been independently verified, reduces humanitarian impact to quantitative supply indicators, rather than lifesaving capacity. To present these organizations as marginal is not a factual assessment, but a narrative designed to normalize their removal.
What emerges is a coherent strategy: first, producing dependency through siege, destruction, and institutional dismantling; then, weaponizing that dependency by controlling or withdrawing the means of survival.
In Gaza, where Israel has already destroyed the material conditions of life, the suspension of humanitarian operations completes this logic. This is not a failure of humanitarianism, but part of a broader genocidal strategy, where the regulation and withdrawal of aid is used to render survival itself increasingly impossible.
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UN Human Rights Chief Rips Israeli Legislation to Execute Palestinians
"When it comes to the death penalty, the United Nations is very clear, and opposes it under all circumstances," said Volker Türk.
Jan 02, 2026
The United Nations high commissioner for human rights on Friday forcefully denounced proposed Israeli legislation that would effectively "impose mandatory death sentences exclusively on Palestinians under certain circumstances, both in the occupied Palestinian territory and in Israel."
The statement from the UN leader, Volker Türk, came after Israel's parliament, the Knesset, advanced three bills in November—votes that drew widespread condemnation, including from Amnesty International, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Hamas, which Israel considers a terrorist organization. The proposals would have to pass two more readings to take effect.
The bill pushed by the Otzma Yehudit or Jewish Power party would require courts to impose the death penalty on "a person who caused the death of an Israeli citizen deliberately or through indifference, from a motive of racism or hostility against a population, and with the aim of harming the state of Israel and the national revival of the Jewish people in its land."
As Türk noted: "When it comes to the death penalty, the United Nations is very clear, and opposes it under all circumstances... It is profoundly difficult to reconcile such punishment with human dignity and raises the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people."
"Such proposals are inconsistent with Israel's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," he explained. "In particular, the introduction of mandatory death sentences, which leave no discretion to the courts, and violate the right to life."
"The proposal also raises other human rights concerns, including on the basis that it is discriminatory given it will exclusively apply to Palestinians," the high commissioner continued.
He also highlighted that Palestinians are already often convicted after unfair Israeli trials, and denying any Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza Strip a fair trial as outlined in the Fourth Geneva Convention is a war crime.
Türk's comments come after Amnesty's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, Erika Guevara Rosas, argued last year that "the international community must exert maximum pressure on the Israeli government to immediately scrap this bill and dismantle all laws and practices that contribute to the system of apartheid against Palestinians."
Israeli politicians are pushing for the death penalty legislation over two years into a war on Gaza that has been globally decried as genocide—and led to an ongoing case before the top UN tribunal, the International Court of Justice. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 71,271 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded another 171,233, according to local health officials. Global experts warn the true toll is likely far higher. At least hundreds of those deaths have occurred since Hamas and Israel reached a ceasefire agreement nearly three months ago.
Israel has also continued to limit the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, including a new ban on dozens of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which Türk sharply criticized on Wednesday.
"Israel's suspension of numerous aid agencies from Gaza is outrageous," he said. "This is the latest in a pattern of unlawful restrictions on humanitarian access, including Israel’s ban on UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, as well as attacks on Israeli and Palestinian NGOs amid broader access issues faced by the UN and other humanitarians."
While Israel has slaughtered at least tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza over the past two years and starved many more, Israeli soldiers and settlers have also injured and killed a growing number of Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank—which Netanyahu has tried to downplay.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week that since the beginning of 2025, "a total of 238 Palestinians, including 56 children (24%), were killed by Israeli forces or settlers," and over the past three years, "settler violence and access restrictions have driven displacement across 85 Palestinian communities and areas in the West Bank, with 33 fully emptied of their residents."
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