James Landale
Diplomatic correspondent

Image source, EPA

The UK government has suggested it is preparing to follow the United States in imposing sanctions on Israeli settlers responsible for attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.

Andrew Mitchell, the senior Foreign Minister, told MPs the Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, had discussed the proposal last week with his US counterpart, Antony Blinken.

The US announced last week that Israeli settlers responsible for what it called extremist violence would be subject to a visa ban and would be unable to travel to America.

Mitchell was responding to a question from the Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy who asked if the government agreed that settlers involved in “attacks, serious criminal activity and fostering hatred” should be subject to travel bans.

Mitchell replied by saying that targeted killings of civilians in the West Bank were “completely abhorrent” and the UK was pushing for those responsible to be prosecuted and punished.

He added: "In terms of his comment about travel bans, I can tell him that planning is going on. The Foreign Secretary discussed this with his US counterpart last week and I hope it may be possible to say something about that shortly."

Omar is a four-year-old boy currently being treated in a hospital in central Gaza.

Thirty-five members of his family were killed in an Israeli air strike on his home, a family member told the BBC, in an attack that saw him lose an arm.

BBC Arabic spoke to a relative who is looking after him, who said Omar asks about the whereabouts of his mum and grandmother.

“When he comes and asks about his family, I can’t answer. Instead, I take a deep breath and try to run from the question in a kids’ manner by changing the subject. He needs a specific way to be told the information so that he doesn’t go into shock,” the man says.

“He has an amputation in his left hand, scars on his chest and face, his lower jaw is dislocated, he has a huge opening beneath his knee in his right leg from the missiles. We have never seen missiles like that before. The missile fell and destroyed the whole residential area around it”.

Hugo Bachega
Middle East correspondent, in Jerusalem

As fighting intensifies in Gaza, more and more residents are being pushed further south to Rafah, on the border with Egypt, and one of the areas designated as safe by the Israeli military.

The large number of displaced people means the city is unable to shelter everyone amid widespread shortages of food and water, as only limited humanitarian aid is being allowed to enter the territory.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, voiced concerns that the situation could lead to the mass exodus of Palestinians into Egypt, pointing to the “decimation of northern Gaza and the displacement of millions of Gazans to the south”, as well as the current evacuation orders in the central part of Khan Younis, with the Israeli military urging residents to move closer to the Egyptian border.

“[The] developments we are witnessing point to attempts to move Palestinians into Egypt,” Lazzarini said in an article for the Los Angeles Times published at the weekend, “regardless of whether they stay there or are resettled elsewhere”.

The United Nations and several member states, including the US, have firmly rejected the forced displacement of Gazans out of the territory, he added.

Similar concerns about Gazans being displaced out of their territory have been voiced by the Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, who said on Sunday that Israel was trying to “empty Gaza of its people”.

Egypt has strongly opposed any relocation of Palestinians to its territory.

But some are already referring to it as a possible second Nakba, or catastrophe, the way Palestinians describe the displacement of people following the Israeli declaration of independence, in 1948.

Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, strongly rejected the recent claims as “outrageous and false”, saying that the country was defending itself “from the monsters who perpetrated the 7 October massacre” and bringing them to justice.

Lena Shakora has left her home in northern Gaza for the centre of the territory and is now staying in a home with 40 people.

“All the houses are full and you are constantly sitting in fear of bombardment,” she tells BBC Arabic, describing every day as a “nightmare”.

“I wake up every day remembering that we are at war. People are starving - it’s torture to be displaced from your home and to have no food.”

She adds that her husband is well-off financially, but there is no food to buy for her sons.

“The shops are empty, there are no goods inside. We don’t see the aid that enters,” she says.

She says her sons are suffering from back pain because of the amount of water they have been having to carry, because of shortages.

“Please, please call for a ceasefire. We don’t need anything. We are ready to go back to our homes and sit in tents on the ruins, but please stop the constant fear we are living in."

Image source, Reuters

Sharon Alony-Cunion and her three-year-old twin daughters were released from Hamas captivity late last month, but she worries about the safety of her husband, David, who is still being held.

“Three days before we were released, they separated David from us. They took him to a different hiding place, and since then I don’t know what has happened to him,” she told Reuters news agency.

She says the girls ask every day: "Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy?"

Sharon was taken hostage on 7 October with her husband and one of their twin girls, she says. Their other daughter was separated from them, before they were reunited in Gaza 10 days later.

The conditions were difficult, she said, particularly for children. Sometimes they had to use a sink or a rubbish bin as a toilet, and had to keep the girls quiet, or talk only in whispers, sometimes for as long as 12 hours.

She said she had to make up stories to try to keep them quiet. "Every moment you have to be angry at her, tell her quiet, quiet, don’t, don’t,” she said.

She said that none of those who have returned from Hamas captivity are the same as they were before the attacks.

"We all have so many triggers, every little noise, every door slam, every airplane flying," she said, adding the girls sometimes cling to her or have tantrums. "Life has changed - this is not life."

And she says more needs to be done to free the remaining hostages: “There's a lot of families without a father, without a daughter, without a brother, without a grandfather, grandmother, mother.”

We've just received some updated casualty figures from the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.

It says 18,205 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, with a further 49,645 people injured.

The health ministry said in early December that about 70% of the casualties were women and children, but has not given a detailed breakdown in recent days.

Unicef says that, up to 6 December, more than 5,350 children had been reported killed, since Israel began its military campaign in response to the 7 October attacks in which around 1,200 people were killed in Israel.

As we reported earlier, more than 100 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the Israel Defense Forces began ground operations in Gaza.

As a reminder, here is how the number of people who have died in Gaza are counted.

Image source, Reuters

Teenager Tariq Qudeih in the Gazan city of Khan Younis has told Reuters news agency about the moment a strike hit a house in the street he was standing in.

"Glass fell on us, and a lot of people were wounded," he says. "People were screaming and you could no longer tell what was happening around you."

Many of the injured were taken to the Nasser hospital in the city, including a baby girl whose father said she was injured when a rocket hit the house she was sleeping in.

Hisham Shbeir told Reuters he thought they were in an area that was "classified as safe". The IDF has identified areas people should leave for their own safety, including parts of the city of Khan Younis.

But Gazans have reported confusion over which places civilians can go to escape the fighting, and some have struggled to access evacuation maps online because of difficulties with internet connectivity.

The Hamas-run health ministry says dozens of people have been killed across Gaza in the past 24 hours.

As we have been reporting, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has said it is "the beginning of the end for Hamas" - while the IDF's chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, said "we're seeing terrorists surrendering... a sign their network is collapsing".

But a military analyst has told the BBC that suggestions Hamas is on the brink of collapse are “wildly optimistic”.

Neri Zilber from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy says - that by Israel's count Israel has killed about 7,000 Hamas fighters out of an estimated 25-30,000 troops that Hamas had before the war.

He says Hamas has five brigades in Gaza, including two operating in the north that have suffered “extreme damage”, but three are still fighting in the south.

Zilber adds that Israel’s goal in destroying Hamas would involve killing its top leaders, destroying most of its dozens of battalions and eliminating its vast stockpile of weapons, particularly rockets.

He says he believes there is at least a month left of Israel’s ground operations in Gaza, and “as we know, Hamas is still firing rockets into southern Israel, and sometimes even central Israel".

Image source, Reuters

Rushdi Abu Alouf
Reporting from Istanbul

Khan Younis is the second largest city in the Gaza Strip and over the weekend, Israeli tanks started to move from the east, after they captured most of the four main villages.

Now, the tanks are advancing very slowly and approaching the eastern part of Khan Younis. The area is very complicated because there are huge buildings, shops and a lot of people.

There are still hundreds of thousands of people in Khan Younis.

This morning, the Israeli army was dropping leaflets asking people in Khan Younis to go west towards the al-Mawasi area - but this is a small area with no infrastructure.

Back in Khan Younis, the director of the hospital tells me staff are struggling to cope with the amount of injured people coming.

He stresses there are very little medical supplies left in the hospital and they are struggling with the shortage of food, water and fuel.

We have some fresh pictures to bring you from the Gaza Strip, as smoke billows into the air following a series of Israeli air strikes.

It comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Islamist group Hamas to "surrender now".

Have a look at the latest images below.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

The UN's Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) has said there is "almost a total breakdown of civil order" around its aid deliveries in Gaza.

The BBC asked Juliette Touma, the organisation's director of communications, about videos circulating on social media that some say show members of Hamas intercepting aid trucks.

"We've had several incidents, very sadly of course, of our warehouses being broken into and our supplies taken," she says.

She says there have also been cases of people who were "simply hungry" who intercepted aid trucks and "ate the food there and then".

"If it's an indication of anything, it’s an indication of just how hungry people are," she adds.

She was asked about claims by the Israeli military that Hamas members have been sheltering in Unrwa schools and that weapons have been found in bags with the Unrwa logo.

She told the BBC that "we’re seeing these reports constantly and we take them very, very seriously", but getting information "becomes very difficult" in places in northern Gaza where Unrwa no longer has access.

Touma also said the agency was "seeing people moving multiple times" in a "pattern of forced displacement".

One staff member, for example, had moved ten times during the conflict, she said.

If you're just joining us this afternoon for our Israel-Gaza conflict coverage, or need a recap, let's bring you up to date with the key developments today:

• Israel's army has issued another call for Palestinians to evacuate Gaza City in the north and Khan Younis in the south as it says it is closing in on "full control" of northern Gaza
• PM Benjamin Netanyahu says dozens of Hamas militants have surrendered and he described the situation as “the beginning of the end” for the group
• Palestinian health officials say dozens of people have been killed in the past 24 hours as the Israeli military has bombed targets in Gaza City in the north, and the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis
• Seven more Israeli soldiers have been announced killed this morning, bringing the total number to 104
• Rockets have again been launched from Gaza into Israel, with one person injured in the central city of Holon
• The UN's Palestinian refugee adency says there is "almost a total breakdown of civil order" around its aid deliveries

• The UN general assembly will meet on Tuesday and is likely to vote on a draft resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire - after the US vetoed an earlier UN security council resolution last week

Image source, Getty Images

Palestinian media have reported a number of deadly Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip on Monday.

The official Wafa news agency said, external six people, most of them children, were killed when a flat belonging to the Subh family in the Tal al-Sultan area of the southern city of Rafah was bombed on Monday morning.

The Hamas-affiliated Safa news agency posted the names of 10 people who it said died, adding that they included displaced people who had fled the nearby city of Khan Younis.

Wafa said, external that another five people, including three children, were killed in a strike on a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp, and that a woman and a child were killed when the Mishari family’s home in the neighbouring town of Deir al-Balah was hit.

Dozens of people were also reportedly killed or wounded after a strike in the Sheikh Radwan area of Gaza City, in the north, according to Wafa and Safa.

On Monday afternoon, they reported that 15 people were killed in a strike on a home in Maghazi refugee camp, in central Gaza. Photos from Turkey's Anadolu agency showed people searching for casualties beneath a destroyed building and at least one body.

Image source, Anadolu

Anna Foster
Reporting from Sderot, souhern Israel

Image source, Reuters

When you stand here in this elevated position in the city of Sderot looking across to Gaza you really get a panoramic view not just of the skyline - which has been shattered by two months of war - but also of the continuing strikes.

We have seen and heard this morning some really intense air strikes in the northern part of the Gaza Strip - very large impacts where we have seen huge column-like plumes of smoke rising into the air coming from what appears to be a couple of key areas. At times we've even felt the pressure wave from the explosions.

There was also a rocket attack from Gaza towards us here in Sderot. We heard the sirens which went off here and took cover, as we watched the interception from Israel's Iron Dome missile system.

All of this shows just how intense the fighting still is and it is not just around the southern city of Khan Younis. It’s often very active here, and today particularly so.

There’s very little sign of a return to the ceasefire we had recently.

Image source, Magen David Adom

A barrage of rockets was launched towards communities in central Israel by Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip around midday local time (10:00 GMT).

Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service says, external a 45-year-old man suffered a shrapnel wound to his leg when a rocket hit the city of Holon, next to Tel Aviv.

It also posted a photo and video from the scene that showed damage to a building and several vehicles on one street.

Israeli authorities say Hamas has fired more than 10,000 rockets towards Israel since 7 October, when multiple barrages served as cover for gunmen to breach the Gaza perimeter fence and launch the attacks on nearby communities and military bases in which arond 1,200 people were killed.

Yolande Knell
Middle East correspondent, reporting from Jerusalem

Amid a show of solidarity with war-torn Gaza today, most shops are shuttered, and schools, universities and businesses closed across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“It’s the public’s strongest weapon,” says Malak from East Jerusalem, who supports the strike. “It seems dystopian to continue on with my life and strive after personal development in my career when people in Gaza, which is one hour from me by car, are getting slaughtered and deprived of the basic necessities of life.”

In Jordan as well, a BBC producer says that many stores and workplaces have responded to a call for a global strike. There is visibly less traffic on the roads.

After the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Palestinian activists began calling for a day of action to raise pressure on Israel. On social media they are using the hashtag: #ShutItDown4Palestine.

It is unclear to what extent the plan has caught on internationally.

Image source, Reuters

Jeremy Bowen
International Editor

There have been almost daily exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah, the dominant militia-cum-political movement in Lebanon, which is allied with Iran.

It’s very well armed and very experienced from fighting in Syria, and an all-together different category of enemy for Israel than Hamas could be – and that is heating up.

There’s also been speculation that Israel – once it’s done what it needs to do in Gaza – might move on to try and do something similar with Hezbollah.

For many people in the Middle East that would be something of a nightmare scenario.

There’s an element of solidarity in what Hezbollah is doing, but its leader Hassan Nasrallah has said that they’re essentially tying down Israeli troops in the north.

So it’s not a symbolic, performative act. They argue that they are doing something on a lower level than full warfare, but that they are still tying down thousands of Israeli troops.

There’s also an enormous amount of economic disruption in northern Israel, and many of the population from the area have been displaced from border communities and are going to live in hotels elsewhere in the country.

It hasn’t been in the news in the way that Gaza has, but it’s causing a lot of damage to Israel.

Italy, France and Germany have called on the European Union to impose ad hoc sanctions against Hamas and its supporters, Reuters reports, saying it has seen a letter written by the country’s foreign ministers to the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

"We express our full support for the... proposal to create an ad hoc sanctions regime against Hamas and its supporters," the letter says.

"The swift adoption of this sanctions regime will enable us to send a strong political message about the European Union's commitment against Hamas and our solidarity with Israel.”

Israel not committing to a deadline to end the warpublished at 11:16 Greenwich Mean Time 11 December 2023

11:16 GMT 11 December 2023

Yolande Knell
Middle East correspondent, reporting from Jerusalem

Image source, EPA

The likely timeline for Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip remains a main focus in the Israeli media.

As international pressure for a ceasefire has increased, Israeli officials seem to have extended their timeframe.

Speaking to Channel 12 TV, the national security advisor, Tzachi Hanegbi, insisted the US – Israel’s closest ally – has set no deadline for Israel to achieve its goals. He said: “The evaluation that this can’t be measured in weeks is correct, and I’m not sure it can be measured in months.”

Meanwhile, Israeli media analysts widely characterise the current fighting, which involves several army divisions deployed deep inside Gaza, as the second stage of the war.

They suggest military officials would like to have until the end of January to complete it.

However, it is thought the US is quietly pushing for this phase to end by the new year.

Israeli public opinion is also deeply sensitive to emotional calls for a new release deal from the families of hostages held in Gaza.

Experts say in the third phase of the war, troops are expected to be deployed in a buffer zone in Gaza for an interim period.

The fourth and final stage is supposed to see a new regime taking power, to replace Hamas.

Palestinian groups have called for a global strike today to show solidarity with people in Gaza.

Here are some pictures from the occupied West Bank this morning, as people there take part in the strike.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, EPA

Image source, Reuters