Here’s how things stand on Monday, January 29, 2024:
Latest developments
Three United States troops were killed and dozens others injured in a drone strike on Sunday near a US military base close to the Jordan-Syria border. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella organisation of Iran-backed armed groups, has claimed responsibility.
Only eight planned United Nations missions to northern Gaza have successfully gone ahead since the beginning of January. Some 29 aid convoys were denied permission by Israeli authorities, while other deliveries were impeded by “excessive delays”, the UN’s humanitarian agency in the occupied Palestinian territories said on Sunday.
Complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian discrimination and hate in the US rose by about 180 percent in the first three months of Israel’s war on Gaza, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said on Monday.
Hundreds of members of the Israeli settler community gathered for a convention in Jerusalem on Sunday calling for Israel to rebuild settlements in Gaza. The so-called “Return to Gaza” conference called for the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from the enclave.
Palestine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the Jerusalem convention, which was also attended by 11 ministers of Israel’s new right-wing coalition government and 15 Knesset members, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Human impact and fighting
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said on Sunday it has buried three people in the courtyard of the al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza as Israeli forces besiege the area.
Israeli forces shot and killed a man in the town of al-Yamoun, west of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, early on Monday, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
Israel’s war against Hamas could last “10 years, or even an entire generation”, Benny Gantz, a senior member of Netanyahu’s government, was quoted as saying by The Times of Israel citing an interview with Channel12.
About 200 people, many of them journalists, took part in a vigil in Cape Town on Sunday evening to express solidarity with Palestinian journalists and remember media workers killed in Gaza since October 7, reported South African news outlet GroundUp.
Diplomacy
On Monday, Iran denied any involvement in the drone strike that killed three US soldiers near the Jordan-Syria border.
During an event to honour Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza on Sunday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog accused the International Court of Justice of twisting his words in its interim ruling ordering Israel to take measures to prevent genocide in Gaza.
Japan announced on Sunday that it will suspend additional funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) while it awaits the outcome of the agency’s investigation into allegations that several of its staff participated in Hamas’s October 7 attacks in Israel. Tokyo’s decision follows similar funding pauses by at least 10 Western countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and the US.
Jordan, Turkey, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Amnesty International have called on countries to reinstate funds for UNRWA.