Updates: Israeli forces shell Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza

This live page is now closed.

You can read our piece on the future of the Iran-led “axis of resistance” after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, here.

And you can read about how a former US State Department official said the US government has “no concern for Palestinian suffering” and is pursuing Israel’s interests over its own, here.

This live page is closing soon. Here’s a recap of the day’s main developments:

• Israeli forces have shelled Kamal Adwan Hospital, with the director of the hospital reporting that medical staff are now trapped in a single room.
• A woman and her three daughters have been killed in an Israeli air attack in northern Gaza.
• At least 10 Palestinians, including two children, have been killed in Israeli air strikes on two houses in the Nuseirat refugee camp and Deir el-Balah city in the central Gaza Strip.
• The World Food Programme says that since October, 97 of its requests to deliver aid to northern Gaza, which includes Beit Hanoon, Beit Lahiya and Jabalia, have been rejected by Israel.
• Hamas says it, along with the Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is closer than ever to a potential ceasefire agreement.

Pedro Sanchez has called on the international community to recognise Palestine as a state and work towards granting it full membership at the UN.

“We must end the Israeli occupation and enable the Palestinian people to establish their independent state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, within the framework of a two-state solution,” Sanchez said during a speech at the Socialist International Conference in Rabat, Morocco.

He added the urgent call to end the suffering of Palestinian people and for an end to the blockade and restrictions on civilian life.

Mike Casey, a former State Department official who served as a deputy political counsellor at the US Office of Palestinian Affairs, described his experience as a diplomat in Jerusalem as humiliating.

“It’s frankly embarrassing … to see just the way we give in to the demands of the Israeli government and continue to support what the Israeli government is doing even though we know it’s wrong,” Casey told Al Jazeera.

“I’ve not seen that in any other country that I’ve served in.”

After four years in his post, Casey resigned in July over what he described as the US government’s unwavering support for Israel despite its devastating military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Read more here.

The US military says it has conducted air strikes against targets linked to the Houthi rebels in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, including a missile storage facility and a “command-and-control” site.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the strikes aimed “to disrupt and degrade Houthi operations”.

The US strikes come after a ballistic missile launched from Yemen injured 16 people in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv as Israel and the Houthis continue to trade fire.

You can read more here.

Al Jazeera is reporting from Amman because the Israeli government has banned it from Israel and the occupied West Bank.

More than a dozen people were injured after a failed interception when a ballistic missile was launched from Yemen.

This was the third incident of its kind just this week. The Israeli army says they’re now investigating why it was not intercepted and why this was such a significant failure.

Since the start of the war, the Houthis have launched more than 200 missiles, and more than 170 drones.

And in the summer back in July, there was a drone that evaded all Israeli air defences, no siren sounded, and was able to detonate in the middle of Tel Aviv and kill one person.

This time, it was just one minute from the time the sirens rang until the moment of impact.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has condemned Pope Francis’s annual Christmas address to The Vatican today, in which he said the Israeli strike on Gaza on Friday that killed at least 25 people was “cruelty … not war”.

“In response to the Pope’s statement today: Cruelty is terrorists hiding behind children while trying to murder Israeli children; cruelty is holding 100 hostages for 442 days, including a baby and children, by terrorists and abusing them. Unfortunately, the Pope has chosen to ignore all of this,” the ministry wrote on X.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 45,227 Palestinians and wounded 107,573 since October 7, 2023.

We have been reporting on Israeli attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp and Deir el-Balah in the centre of the Gaza Strip.

The death toll has now risen to at least 10 Palestinians, including two children.

The Israeli air attacks hit two houses in the Nuseirat refugee camp and Deir el-Balah.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says it has learned of the “forced entry and presence of Palestinian armed actors in its Health Centre in Jenin Camp” in the occupied West Bank.

The organisation said this happened on December 17, adding it has been unable to access the centre and does not presently have control over the facility and its use.

“This forced entry and presence of Palestinian armed actors is a new blatant disregard of UN premises. It has occurred while the Palestinian Security Forces are conducting an operation in and around the camp, ongoing since 14 December,” it added.

On 17 December, UNRWA West Bank office became aware of the forced entry and presence of Palestinian armed actors in its Health Centre in Jenin Camp, in the #WestBank.

This is a blatant disregard of UN premises. The Jenin Camp Health Centre must be vacated immediately to restore…

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) December 21, 2024

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid says his party will not “compromise” on pushing for the release of captives held in Gaza, during a protest to demand a deal be reached, The Times of Israel reported.

“There will be no compromise. We won’t bend over, we won’t give up and we will never enter the government,” Lapid said, hinting at National Unity chair Benny Gantz, who joined the government at the beginning of the war in Gaza.

Following Lapid’s speech, the protest joined the rally for the families of captives in front of the entrance to the army’s headquarters in Tel Aviv to call for a deal.

Away from the crowd, about two dozen left-wing activists also held signs accusing the government of committing genocide in Gaza.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says that since October, it has requested from Israel that it be able to deliver food to areas in Gaza’s northern governorate, which includes Beit Hanoon, Beit Lahiya and Jabalia, 101 times.

However, 97 percent of those requests were rejected or impeded on the ground.

In a post on X, the WFP said a joint UN convoy with nine trucks reached people in Beit Hanoon on Friday who had been cut off from assistance for more than 75 days.

It delivered two trucks of bottled water and seven trucks of wheat flour, and distributed canned food.

The director of field hospitals at Gaza’s Health Ministry told Al Jazeera that the situation at Kamal Adwan Hospital is a “deliberate killing by the occupation”.

Following reports of the Israeli army calling for everyone to evacuate the hospital, Marwan al-Hams said leaving the hospital would mean patients are walking into “inevitable death”.

“There is no safe way to evacuate patients and staff from Kamal Adwan Hospital. We contacted the World Health Organization and UNRWA, but to no avail,” he added.

The situation is really heating up in the north.

The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital released a video describing the attacks by the Israeli military on the hospital.

He said the military had opened fire on critical areas, including the ICU and incubators. He added that all medical teams were now trapped in a single room, trying to seek shelter from the ongoing assault.

The Israeli attacks on the hospital have caused extensive destruction and severe damage in terms of the ability of medical teams to provide essential medical care.

We also got confirmation from the director saying that explosives had been deployed near the hospital. It could be a sign of further escalation within the coming hours and more widespread destruction in the surrounding areas.

The director also said Israel is demanding the immediate evacuation of the hospital.

As we reported earlier, at least five people have been killed in an Israeli air strike on the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.

The Wafa news agency reported that Israeli fighter jets targeted the home of the Kabaja family. The attack also caused damage to neighbouring homes.

Local and medical sources have reported that more than 20 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since this morning.

Pope Francis has condemned Israeli air strikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.

The pope opened his annual Christmas address with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli air strikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.

“Yesterday, children were bombed,” he said. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”

Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticised the pontiff in an open letter published by the Italian newspaper Il Foglio.

Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialisation” of the term genocide.

The pontiff, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, usually remains neutral in conflicts but has become increasingly outspoken about Israel’s war on Gaza.

In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”

Gaza’s Health Ministry has confirmed to Al Jazeera that Israeli forces have launched an attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital.

The ministry’s director general said Israeli forces told medical teams to leave the hospital immediately.

However, such an evacuation of its staff would threaten the lives of 80 patients, the ministry said, adding that the hospital was bombed during a visit by a WHO delegation.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is reporting that the Israeli army has invited the family of a soldier who was captured and brought to Gaza on October 7, 2023, and is still presumed to be alive to an event for bereaved families.

The soldier’s father, Yehuda Cohen, told Haaretz: “How audacious the 7th Brigade is to declare my son as a fatality.”

The Israeli military said the brigade’s commander spoke with Nimrod Cohen’s parents and apologised for the “insensitivity”.

A young Palestinian man has been injured when Israeli forces raided Beita, south of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.

Sources told the Wafa news agency that Israeli forces broke into the town, patrolled its streets and detained a young man.

Israeli forces went on to beat him severely before releasing him.