Key PointsIsrael has lost 15 soldiers in Gaza since Friday, one of the highest tolls for its forces so far.More than 20,400 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Hamas-Israel war.UN refugee agency chief, Filippo Grandi, has urged an end to the suffering in the third month of the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the Gaza war was exacting a “very heavy price” as the toll of soldiers killed in fighting with Hamas mounted.
“This is a difficult morning, after a very difficult day of fighting in Gaza,” he said after the army announced another soldier was killed on Sunday, taking to 15 the number of troops killed since Friday.
A Gaza health ministry spokesman said on Sunday that 166 Palestinians had been killed in the past 24 hours, taking the total Palestinian death toll to 20,424.
Tens of thousands have been wounded, with many bodies believed trapped under rubble. Almost have been displaced.
Israel’s military lost 10 soldiers in Gaza on Saturday, making it one of the deadliest days for Israeli troops since fighting began on 7 October, triggered by a deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel.
The daily toll was one of the highest for Israeli forces of the ground assault so far.
A relative mourns Israeli soldier of Ethiopian origin staff sergeant Birhanu Kassie during his funeral in Mount Herzl military cemetery on Sunday. Source: AAP / Abir Sultan/EPA
“The war is exacting a very heavy price… but we have no choice but to keep fighting,” Netanyahu said. He added: “This will be a long war… (until) Hamas is eliminated and we restore security.”
Later on Sunday, in a new statement, Netanyahu vowed to protect the lives of soldiers.
“We are intensifying the war in the Gaza Strip,” he said. “We will do everything to safeguard the lives of our soldiers. However… we will not stop until we achieve victory.”
The army said soldiers had raided a northern Gaza compound near schools, a mosque and a clinic and found “explosive belts adapted for children, dozens of mortar shells, hundreds of grenades and intelligence documents”.
Hamas rejected the Israeli claims, saying they are meant “to justify their massacring of innocent civilians and their destructive aggression”.
Five Israeli hostages killed in Hamas captivity were recovered from an underground tunnel network in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, the military said, showing footage of a white-tiled bathroom and workroom linked by dark, concrete-lined passages.
The publication left open the question of how they had died, with chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari saying post-mortems were pending.
“We will brief the families and then, depending on what they approve, the public,” he said on Sunday.
The three soldiers and two civilians were among 240 people taken by Hamas gunmen during the cross-border rampage of 7 October that sparked the war.
Photographs of Israeli hostages being held in the Gaza Strip are placed on a house that was destroyed by Hamas militants in Kibbutz Be’eri, Israel, on 20 December. Source: AAP / Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
The military announced the repatriation of their bodies earlier this month.
Hamas last week published a video showing three of the hostages alive in what appeared to be a narrow, white-tiled and windowless bedroom with an electric wall socket.
In a Hebrew chyron directed at Israel, Hamas said: “Your military weapons killed the three.” Hamas has previously said some hostages died in Israel’s shelling of Gaza.
The White House said on Saturday had discussed the Israeli campaign.
Biden “emphasised the critical need to protect the civilian population including those supporting the humanitarian aid operation, and the importance of allowing civilians to move safely away from areas of ongoing fighting,” the White House said in a statement.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on social media that “it’s hard to wish those celebrating ‘Merry Christmas’, with ongoing loss, grief and destruction.”
Vast areas of Gaza lie in ruins and its 2.3 million people have endured dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine due to an Israeli siege, alleviated only by the limited arrival of aid trucks.
Eighty per cent of Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN, many fleeing south and now shielding against the winter cold in makeshift tents.
The head of the UN refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, urged an end to the suffering in the third month of the war.
“A humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza is the only way forward,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “War defies logic and humanity, and prepares a future of more hatred and less peace.”
And World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus similarly renewed calls for a ceasefire, saying: “The decimation of the Gaza health system is a tragedy.”
On Friday, the United States allowed the passage of a UN Security Council resolution that effectively called on Israel to allow “immediate, safe and unhindered” deliveries of life-saving aid to Gaza “at scale”.
World powers had wrangled for days over the wording and, at Washington’s insistence, toned down some provisions — including removing a call for a ceasefire.
Separately, a senior member of Islamic Jihad — which has been fighting alongside Hamas — said the group’s chief Ziad Nakhaleh arrived in Cairo for talks on a truce and hostage exchange, after the Hamas chief visited last week.
Netanyahu, speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, dismissed reports that the United States had convinced Israel not to expand its military campaign.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that Netanyahu was persuaded by Biden not to attack the militant Hezbollah group in neighbouring Lebanon out of concerns it would launch an attack on Israel.
“Israel is a sovereign state,” Netanyahu said. “Our decisions in the war are based on our operational considerations, and I will not elaborate on that.”
The United Nations Security Council averted a threatened US veto on Friday, after days of wrangling, by removing from a draft resolution a call for an immediate end to the war.
The US and Israel oppose a ceasefire, contending it would let Hamas regroup and rearm.
The US abstained from the final statement, which urges steps to allow “safe, unhindered, and expanded humanitarian access” to Gaza and “conditions for a sustainable cessation” of fighting.
Yiftah Ron-Tal, a former commander of the Israeli ground forces, described the built-up Gaza battlefield as “the most complicated and fortified” in the world, requiring infantry, tanks, artillery and engineer corps.
“…I think what’s happening now is a product of a tough battle in a condensed area and in this kind of battle, sadly, there are many losses,” he told army radio.
The war between Hamas and Israel is the latest escalation in a long-standing conflict.
Hamas is a Palestinian political and military group, which has governed the Gaza Strip since the most recent elections in 2006.
Hamas’s stated aim is to establish a Palestinian state and stop the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, illegal under international law.
Hamas in its entirety is listed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union and seven other countries, including Australia. But the UN Assembly rejected classifying Hamas as a terrorist group in a 2018 vote.
In 2021 the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian territories dating back to 2014, including the recent attacks of both Israel and Hamas.
