Israel-Gaza war live: Israel broadens ground offensive ahead of UN security council vote | Israel-Gaza war

Benita Kolovos

People fleeing the Israel-Gaza war will receive free healthcare under an Australian initiative, amid calls for other states to follow suit.

The state of Victoria’s health minister, Mary-Anne Thomas, will on Saturday announce people fleeing the conflict – who aren’t eligible for Medicare due to their visa – will be able to access essential healthcare, specialised mental health support and language services.

New South Wales announced earlier in December that it would provide free hospital emergency care, some surgery and outpatient services, hospital tests and limited emergency dental care, as well as maternity care, mental health care, ambulances and the use of interpreters, to people fleeing the conflict.

But the Victorian programme will go further. It will include care in public hospitals, public dental and maternal child health, as well as services from community health providers, priority primary care centres, local mental health and wellbeing hubs and specialised refugee and asylum seeker health services.

Since 7 October the world has been horrified by the gruesome fighting between Israel and Gaza. But the war could still get much worse.

Iran’s proxy in Yemen, the Houthis, have been firing missiles and drones at commercial shipping and naval vessels and at southern Israel for weeks now. Global markets are spooked as the danger to shipping through the Bab al-Mandeb strait rises.

Pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to strike back against Iran and its Houthi partner to stop these attacks. Advocates of striking back hard think this will deter a larger war. But if the US goes too far, it could end up entering a war it badly needs to avoid. The horror of the conflict between Israel and Gaza is already bad enough, but a larger conflagration would be a catastrophe for the US, Israel and people throughout the region.

A broader war could span Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel and Iran itself. It would come at an already precarious moment in global security when the US is struggling to supply more aid to Ukraine and manage rising tension in east Asia over Taiwan and the South China Sea. Regional and global effects would be unavoidable and could last decades, plunging the US back into large-scale Middle East conflicts it can ill-afford.

• Israeli forces signalled they were widening their ground offensive with a new push into central Gaza on Friday, as the UN security council was expected to vote on a resolution to increase humanitarian aid to stave off the threat of famine. As hopes faded for an imminent breakthrough in talks this week in Egypt aimed at getting warring Israel and Hamas to agree a new truce, air strikes, artillery bombardments and fighting were reported across the Palestinian territory.

• The US is assembling a multinational naval coalition to help safeguard commercial traffic from attacks by Yemen’s Houthi movement. On Thursday, the Pentagon said more than 20 countries had now agreed to participate in the group, known as Operation Prosperity Guardian. Some countries have not confirmed their participation, however, while others have said their efforts to help protect Red Sea commercial traffic will be as part of existing naval agreements rather than the new US-led operation.

• The European Commission on Friday said it had adopted a €118m ($130m) aid package to support the Palestinian Authority. The commission said the aid would help pay salaries and pensions of civil servants in the West Bank, social allowances for vulnerable families and the payment for medical referrals to East Jerusalem hospitals.

• Gaza health officials say more than 20,000 people have been killed in the war. Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Friday that it has documented 20,057 deaths in the fighting. It does not differentiate between combatant and civilian deaths. It has previously said that roughly two-thirds of the dead were women or minors.

• The US has declared it is ready to support a UN security council resolution intended to boost the flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza after a week of negotiations and substantial amendments, including the removal of a call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities”.

• The vote is now delayed until Friday, it’s understood. The Reuters news agency says the vote was delayed after Russia (also a veto power in the UN security council) and some other council members complained during closed-door talks about the amendments made to appease the US, according to diplomats.

• The US had also been wary of a reference in the draft resolution to a cessation of hostilities, according to diplomats. The US and Israel oppose a ceasefire, believing it would benefit only Hamas. Washington instead supports pauses in fighting to protect civilians and free hostages taken by Hamas. The draft resolution now has blunted language to have the council call for “urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities”.

• The latest UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) assessment of the situation says that: “On 21 December, heavy Israeli bombardments from air, land, and sea, continued across most of the Gaza Strip. Intense ground operations and fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups continued, in most areas of Gaza, with the exception of Rafah. The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups into Israel continued.”

• The World Food Programme says its latest food security analysis for Gaza shows that the entire population of Gaza is in crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity.

• The UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, has said about a report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification: “This announcement about the risk of famine in Gaza is sobering but not surprising. We have been warning for weeks that, with such deprivation and destruction, each day that goes by will only bring more hunger, disease and despair to the people of Gaza.”

• The Queen of Jordan, Rania Al Abdullah, has written an opinion piece in the Washington Post about the war. In it she says: “This has become an unequivocal humanitarian nightmare. With each passing day, the threshold of what is acceptable falls to new lows, setting a terrifying precedent for this and other wars to come.”

• Israeli forces invaded the Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s ambulance centre in Jabaliya in northern Gaza on Thursday evening, according to the PRCS. The PRCS added that Israeli forces arrested the crews and paramedics and took them to an unknown location while children and women remain trapped inside the centre.

• The US senator Bernie Sanders has called on the US to not provide “another $10bn to the rightwing extremist [Benjamin] Netanyahu government to continue their war against the Palestinian people.” In an address to the US Senate, Sanders said: “The Netanyahu government is continuing its military approach which is both immoral and in violation of international law.”

• Canada’s immigration minister has announced temporary visas for people in Gaza with Canadian relatives, the Associated Press reports. In an announcement on Thursday, Marc Miller said that despite the offer of temporary visas, Canada cannot guarantee safe passage out of Gaza.

• Cyprus’s president, Nikos Christodoulides, said on Thursday that his government was awaiting a green light from Israel to send a prepared package of desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza. His comments follow two days of talks between Cypriot and Israeli officials fine-tuning an initiative first proposed by the island republic in November. Christodoulides said: “We are waiting for final approval from Israel. We are ready.”

Israeli forces signalled they were widening their ground offensive with a new push into central Gaza on Friday, as the UN security council was expected to vote on a resolution to increase humanitarian aid to stave off the threat of famine.

As hopes faded for an imminent breakthrough in talks this week in Egypt aimed at getting warring Israel and Hamas to agree a new truce, air strikes, artillery bombardments and fighting were reported across the Palestinian territory.

Israel’s military on Friday ordered residents of Al-Bureij, in central Gaza, to move south immediately, indicating a new focus of the ground assault that has already devastated the north of the Strip and made a series of incursions in the south, Reuters reported.

Julian Borger

In case you missed it earlier, the US has declared it is ready to support a UN security council resolution intended to boost the flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza after a week of negotiations and substantial amendments, including the removal of a call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities”.

A vote on the resolution was postponed for a fourth day in a row until Friday, after negotiations late into the evening, but the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the US and Arab states had come up with an amended version Washington could support.

“We’re ready to vote on it. And it’s a resolution that will bring humanitarian assistance to those in need,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “It will support the priority that Egypt has in ensuring that we put a mechanism on the ground that will support humanitarian assistance, and we’re ready to move forward.”