A body is carried to the area outside the hospital after an Israeli army strike in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis in the central Gaza Strip on January 2, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

More than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Thursday (January 9, 2025), as the conflict raged into a 16th month with no end in sight.

The Ministry said a total of 46,006 Palestinians have been killed and 1,09,378 wounded. It has said women and children make up more than half the fatalities, but does not say how many of the dead were fighters or civilians.

The Israeli Military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence. It says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths because the militants operate in residential areas. Israel has also repeatedly struck what it claims are militants hiding in shelters and hospitals, often killing women and children.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza. Israeli authorities believe at least a third of them were killed in the initial attack or have died in captivity.

The war has flattened large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its 2.3 million people, with many forced to flee multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are packed into sprawling tent camps along the coast with limited access to food and other essentials.

In recent weeks, Israel and Hamas have appeared to inch closer to an agreement for a ceasefire and the release of hostages. But the indirect talks mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt have repeatedly stalled over the past year, and major obstacles remain.

The Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution meeting chaired by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 30, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via Reuters

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday (October 30, 2024) hosted the first meeting of a new “international alliance” to press for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Unveiled last month on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the “International Alliance to Implement the Two-State Solution” brings together nations from the Middle East, Europe and beyond.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said nearly 90 “states and international organisations” were taking part in the two-day meeting in Riyadh.

“A genocide is happening with the goal of evicting the Palestinian people from their land, which Saudi Arabia rejects,” he said, describing the humanitarian situation as “catastrophic” and denouncing the “complete blockade” of northern Gaza.

“The Riyadh meeting was expected to focus on humanitarian access, the embattled UN agency for Palestinian refugees and measures to advance a two-state solution,” diplomats said.

“The European Union was set to be represented by Sven Koopmans, the special representative for the Middle East peace process,” diplomats said.

The United States, Israel’s top military backer, sent Hady Amr, the State Department’s special representative for Palestinian affairs.

The Gaza war has revived talk of a “two-state solution” in which Israeli and Palestinian states would live in peace side by side, though analysts say the goal seems more unattainable than ever.

The hard-right Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains implacably opposed to Palestinian statehood.

Arab-Islamic summit

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter and custodian of Islam’s two holiest sites, paused U.S.-brokered talks on recognising Israel after the Gaza war broke out last year between Palestinian militants Hamas and Israel.

In September, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said an “independent Palestinian state” was a condition for normalisation.

Prince Faisal reiterated that position on Wednesday (October 30, 2024).

The Saudi Foreign Ministry on Wednesday (October 30, 2024) also called for “a joint Arab-Islamic follow-up summit” to be held on November 11 focused on “the continued Israeli aggression on the Palestinian territories and the Lebanese Republic, and current developments in the region”.

In November last year, Saudi Arabia hosted a joint meeting of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation that condemned Israeli forces’ “barbaric” actions in Gaza.

Ireland, Norway and Spain announced their recognition of a Palestinian state in May, prompting an angry response from Israel.

Slovenia soon joined them, bringing the number of countries that recognise a Palestinian state to 146 out of the 193 United Nation member states.

The Gaza war was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 43,163 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

Israeli soldiers stand at the entrance of a tunnel where the military says six Israeli hostages were recently killed by Hamas militants, in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday, September 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike hit a house in Gaza City on Saturday (September 14, 2024) morning and killed 11 members of a single family, including women and children.

“We have recovered the bodies of 11 martyrs, including four children and three women, after an Israeli air strike hit the house of the Bustan family in eastern Gaza City,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told media.

The strike took place near the Shujaiya school in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, he said.

“Rescuers are continuing to search for the missing,” Mr. Bassal said.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strike.

Mr. Bassal said Israeli forces carried out similar strikes in some other parts of the Hamas-run territory overnight, killing at least 10 people.

Five people were killed in northwestern Gaza City when an air strike hit a group of people near Dar Al-Arqam school, he said.

Three others were killed in a strike in the Al-Mawasi area of the southern Khan Yunis governorate, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge, Bassal added.

The war in Gaza broke out after the October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians.

Militants also seized 251 captives during the attack, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead. The count includes hostages killed in captivity.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has so far killed at least 41,118 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details of civilian and militant deaths. The UN human rights office says most of the dead have been women or children.

U.S. and Arab mediators say they are closing in on a deal to halt the war in Gaza and free hostages captured by Hamas in its October 7 attack, but the talks have dragged on for months, with several moments of false hope.

The negotiations gained new urgency when Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah vowed to avenge the targeted killing of two top militants, attributed to Israel, raising fears of a far wider and more devastating war.

U.S. and Israeli officials expressed cautious optimism after two days of talks in Qatar last week, in which the mediators put forth a bridging proposal. But Hamas has been less upbeat, saying the latest proposal departs from previous iterations that it had largely accepted.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is back in the region and set to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday (August 19, 2024). Israel sent a delegation to Cairo on Sunday (August 18, 2024), and the mediators are expected to hold another round of high-level talks with Israel in Egypt later this week.

Here’s where things stand:

A cease-fire would halt the deadliest war ever fought between Israelis and Palestinians, a conflict that has destabilized the Middle East and sparked worldwide protests.

Israel’s offensive has killed over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health officials, who do not say how many were militants. The vast majority of the population has been displaced, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people are packed into squalid tent camps, the health sector has largely collapsed and entire neighborhoods have been obliterated.

The Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw militants abduct around 250 hostages. Some 110 hostages are still in Gaza, with Israeli authorities saying around a third are dead. Over 100 hostages were released during a weeklong cease-fire in November.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah has launched drones and rockets into Israel on a near-daily basis since the start of the war, and Israel has responded with airstrikes and artillery. The violence has escalated, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes on both sides of the border.

Hezbollah has vowed an even more severe attack — without saying when or how — in response to the killing last month of Fouad Shukur, one of its top commanders, in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.

Other Iran-backed groups in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have attacked Israeli, U.S. and international targets in solidarity with the Palestinians. Iran and Israel traded fire directly in April, and many fear a repeat if Iran makes good on its threat to avenge the killing of top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an explosion in Tehran that was blamed on Israel.

Hezbollah has said it would halt its operations along the border if there is calm in Gaza. A cease-fire deal might also persuade both Hezbollah and Iran to refrain from retaliatory strikes on Israel — if only temporarily — to avoid being seen as spoilers.

The two sides have been working off an evolving proposal for a three-phase process in which Hamas would free all the hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners, an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a lasting cease-fire.

President Joe Biden came out in favor of the proposal in a May 31 speech and the U.N. Security Council approved it shortly thereafter. But since then, Hamas has proposed “amendments” and Israel has asked for “clarifications,” with each side accusing the other of making new demands it cannot accept.

Hamas wants assurances that Israel will not resume the war after the first batch of hostages — around 30 of the most vulnerable — are released. Israel wants to ensure negotiations do not drag on indefinitely over the second phase, in which the remaining living hostages, including male soldiers, are to be freed.

Netanyahu has also demanded in recent weeks that Israel maintain a military presence along the Gaza-Egypt border to prevent arms smuggling and along a line bisecting the territory so it can search Palestinians returning to their homes in the north and make sure militants don’t slip in.

Israel denies the demands are new, but there was no reference to either in Biden’s speech or the U.N. resolution, which spoke of a full withdrawal. Other lingering issues include which Palestinian prisoners will be released and whether they will be sent into exile.

Any deal would have to be accepted by Mr. Netanyahu and Yahya Sinwar, who helped mastermind the October 7 attack and became Hamas’ overall leader after Haniyeh was killed.

Mr. Netanyahu faces intense pressure from families of the hostages and much of the Israeli public to make a deal to bring them home. But far-right leaders in his coalition have threatened to bring down the government if he concedes too much, forcing early elections that could drive him from power.

Mr. Sinwar, meanwhile, is hiding in Gaza, likely deep inside Hamas’ vast network of tunnels, and has stuck to a hard line throughout the talks. He also tops Israel’s most-wanted list, raising questions about what happens if he is killed.

In the past it has taken several days for Hamas’ negotiators to send proposals to Sinwar and receive his feedback. That means that even when the work of hammering out the latest proposal is completed, it would likely take a week or more for Hamas to formally respond to it.

Palestinians in Gaza say they are exhausted and desperate for a cease-fire. When Hamas accepted an earlier proposal in May, spontaneous celebrations erupted — but those hopes were soon dashed.

Aid groups have called for a cease-fire since the start of the war, saying it’s the only way to ensure desperately needed food and humanitarian aid reaches Gaza. Experts have warned of famine and the outbreak of diseases like polio if the war drags on. Even if the fighting ends tomorrow, the U.N. has said it would take more than a decade and tens of billions of dollars to rebuild Gaza.

In Israel, where many are still deeply traumatized by the October 7 attack, there is widespread support for the war and little sympathy for the Palestinians.

But the plight of the hostages has galvanized mass protests calling for a deal to bring them home and for the end of Netanyahu’s government, which many blame for the security and intelligence failures that allowed the attack to happen.

A picture of a TV screen taken on May 28, 2024, shows Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez delivering a speech over the recognition of Palestinian statehood by Spain, at La Moncloa Palace in Madrid.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the Spanish Cabinet will recognise a Palestinian state at its May 28 morning meeting as a European Union rift with Israel widens.

Ireland and Norway were also to make official their recognition of a Palestinian state later in the day. While dozens of countries have recognised a Palestinian state, none of the major Western powers has done so.

“This is a historic decision that has a single goal, and that is to help Israelis and Palestinians achieve peace,” said Sánchez, standing at the gates of the prime minister’s palace in Madrid, during a televised speech.

The Socialist leader, who announced his country’s decision before parliament last week, has spent months touring European and Middle Eastern countries to garner support for recognition and a cease-fire in Gaza.

Relations between the EU and Israel nosedived Monday, the eve of the diplomatic recognition EU members Ireland and Spain, with Madrid insisting that the EU should take action against Israel for its continued deadly attacks in southern Gaza’s city of Rafah.

Norway, which is not an EU member but often aligns its foreign policy with the bloc, handed diplomatic papers to the Palestinian government over the weekend ahead of its formal recognition of a Palestinian state.

Also Read | Israel to reprimand Irish, Norwegian, Spanish envoys over Palestine recognition

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Spain that its consulate in Jerusalem will not be allowed to help Palestinians.

At the same time, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell threw his weight to support the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor is seeking an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others, including leaders of the Hamas militant group.

In his speech on Tuesday, Mr. Sánchez said that the recognition of a Palestinian state was “a decision that we do not adopt against anyone, least of all against Israel, a friendly people whom we respect, whom we appreciate and with whom we want to have the best possible relationship.”

He called for a permanent cease-fire, for stepping up humanitarian aid into Gaza and for the release of hostages that Hamas has held since the October 7 attack that triggered Israel’s response.

Mr. Sánchez also laid out his vision for a state ruled by the Palestinian National Authority that must connect the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem through a corridor.

“We will not recognise changes in the 1967 border lines other than those agreed to by the parties,” Mr. Sánchez added.