Palestinians outside the emergency ward of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City amid ongoing battles between Israel and Hamas. Photograph: Khader Al Zanoun/AFP/Getty Images
Palestinians outside the emergency ward of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City amid ongoing battles between Israel and Hamas. Photograph: Khader Al Zanoun/AFP/Getty Images
Al-Shifa hospital ‘no longer functioning’, says WHO
The World Health Organization has managed to get in touch with healthcare workers at Gaza’s al Shifa hospital where thousands of Palestinians, including critically injured ones, are sheltering as the Israeli military encircles the hospital.
In a statement on Sunday, WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus called the situation “dire and perilous”.
It’s been 3 days without electricity, without water and with very poor internet which has severely impacted our ability to provide essential care. The constant gunfire and bombings in the area have exacerbated the already critical circumstances.
Tragically, the number of patient fatalities has increased significantly. Regrettably, the hospital is not functioning as a hospital anymore. The world cannot stand silent while hospitals, which should be safe havens, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, and despair,” he added.
.@WHO has managed to get in touch with health professionals at the Al-Shifa hospital in #Gaza.
The situation is dire and perilous.
It's been 3 days without electricity, without water and with very poor internet which has severely impacted our ability to provide essential…
The WHO joins calls from other humanitarian groups including Medecins Sans Frontieres to stop attacks against healthcare facilities and for immediate ceasefire.
Funerals are being held for Israeli soldiers killed in the Israel-Hamas war. Here are some images from a funeral in Jerusalem.
A family member mourns on the coffin of school principal and soldier Yossi Hershkovitz, 44, during his funeral at Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
More mourners attend Mount Herzl Military Cemetery for the funeral of Yossi Hershkovitz. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
AFP has this update on the families working to bring hostages home:
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum has organised more than 20 foreign delegations each comprising three or four family representatives, according to Daniel Shek, head of the group’s diplomatic cell.
With the Israeli army’s operation in Gaza intensifying, the group is alert to the possibility of a “decrease in the sense of urgency” over hostages, said Shek, a former ambassador to France, who is now retired.
On the domestic front, public opinion is entirely behind the families of the hostages.
“For the past two weeks, the figures show the number-one priority for Israelis is the return of the hostages,” in contrast to the start of the war when it was “fighting Hamas”, said Shek.
One year after their last in-person talks, Xi Jinping and Joe Biden will come face to face once again on Wednesday in San Francisco, in an encounter that will dominate events at the Apec summit as the Chinese and US presidents seek to stabilise relations in an increasingly fraught geopolitical climate.
The meeting, which could last several hours, is the culmination of months of lower level dialogues which took place over the summer, with Washington sending more delegates to China than Beijing did to the US.
China and the US are now on opposing sides of two major conflicts, rather than just the Ukraine war, which overshadowed the leaders’ previous meeting at the G20 summit in Indonesia last year.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused data company, says that “Beijing’s political reality matters much more to it than its economic reality,” adding that the wars in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine “are broadly beneficial for Beijing”.
Beijing’s refusal to condemn Hamas for the latest violence in Israel and Palestine has frustrated western leaders and underlines why “the [Chinese] Communist party poses the largest threat to America’s global interests,” according to Stone Fish.
Muhammed Zaqout, director of hospitals in Gaza, said on Sunday that the Health Ministry has been unable to update the death toll since Friday as medics are unable to reach areas hit by Israeli bombardment.
UNOCHA confirmed this in its update on Sunday, writing, “On 12 November, for the second consecutive day, following the collapse of services and communications at hospitals in the north, the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza did not update casualty figures.”
The most recent toll stands at 11,078, of whom 4,506 were said to be children and 3,027 women.
“About 2,700 others, including some 1,500 children, have been reported missing and may be trapped or dead under the rubble, awaiting rescue or recovery. Another 27,490 Palestinians have reportedly been injured,” the UN said.
The UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees, is currently sheltering 618,000 people in southern Gaza in just 97 facilities. Three of these opened recently in Rafah, the UN said in a UNOCHA update on Sunday evening, adding, “Following these openings, the average number of IDPs per shelter slightly declined.”
1.5 million people in Gaza are internally displaced, the UN said.
In Australia, senior politicians have “softened their objections to a ceasefire” in Gaza, the Australian Associated Press reports, after a weekend of nation-wide demonstrations showed strong support for peace.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday everyone wanted to “take the next steps towards a ceasefire” but warned such action could not be “one-sided”.
Senator Wong said Israel should observe international law, citing Australia’s concerns with the deaths of civilians in struggling Gazan hospitals.
Protestors are seen during a Pro-Palestine demonstration in King George Square in Brisbane, Sunday, 12 November 2023. Photograph: Darren England/AAP
However, Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie claimed Senator Wong’s comments were an “equivocation”.
“Calling for a ceasefire as if there was some equivalence between the actions of Hamas and the actual reality of war is absolutely appalling and it needs to be highly condemned,” she told Seven’s Sunrise program on Monday.
But Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek clarified that Senator Wong said “we should be working towards the ceasefire” rather than outright pushing for an end to violence, and reiterated Israel’s “right to defend itself”.
“Working towards a ceasefire, calling for a humanitarian pause - that is a recognition that the civilian casualties in Gaza at the moment are very high, unacceptably high,” she told Sunrise on Monday.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory says that three of al-Shifa’s nurses have been killed
“Bombardments and armed clashes around the Shifa hospital in Gaza city intensified since the afternoon of 11 November. Critical infrastructure, including the oxygen station, water tanks and a well, the cardiovascular facility, and the maternity ward, was damaged,and three nurses killed,” the UN office reports in its most recent daily update.
The head of northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital has told Al Jazeera that the hospital has run out of fuel.
“Ahmed al-Kahlout, the head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that the facility’s main generator has run out of fuel, forcing the hospital to shut its operation,” the news organisation reports.
More than 5,000 people are sheltering at the hospital in addition to patients, al-Kahlout said.
Kamal Adwan is the latest hospital to stop functioning, after the WHO said al-Shifa hospital had run out of fuel and thePalestine Red Crescent Society announced that the al-Quds hospital was “out of service and no longer operational”, also due to a shortage of fuel needed to power generators.
Jewish school in Montreal is fired upon for second time this week
A Jewish school in Montreal was fired on Sunday for the second time this week AFP reports, citing local police.
Police spokeswoman Veronique Dubuc said no one was in Yeshiva Gedola when shots were heard around 5.00 am local time and there were no reported injuries.
Officers discovered bullet damage to the building’s facade and found cartridges on the ground, Dubuc said.
Police search an area near the Yeshiva Gedolah Jewish school after shots were fired at the school in Montreal, Sunday, 12 November 2023. Photograph: Canadian Press/Shutterstock
The incident took place only two days after that school and another Jewish school in Montreal, Canada’s second-largest city, were fired upon, also without casualties.
“The fact that people took the liberty to attack the same target more than once demonstrates the situation’s seriousness,” school spokesman Lionel Perez said during a press conference, adding that classes would continue as usual.
Earlier in the week, a Montreal synagogue suffered minor damage in a firebombing, and three students were injured when pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel groups clashed at the city’s Concordia University.
Israeli military planners are well aware that international pressure has halted Israeli offensives or counterattacks in a series of previous wars. In 1967 and the Yom Kippur war of 1973, the Israel Defence Forces rushed to make gains in the final hours before ceasefires were imposed.
Israeli military planners are well aware that international pressure has halted Israeli offensives or counterattacks in a series of previous wars. In 1967 and the Yom Kippur war of 1973, the Israel Defence Forces rushed to make gains in the final hours before ceasefires were imposed.
In 1982, the US president, Ronald Reagan, told the prime minister, Menachem Begin, to halt the intensive shelling and bombing of Beirut, leading Israeli hawks to claim that international pressure had deprived them of a conclusive victory against Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization.
There are few signs that the current Israeli government is about to make any such concession to the entreaties of Israel’s allies. Munir al-Boursh, an undersecretary at the Hamas-run health ministry, alleged on Sunday that Israeli snipers had deployed around Shifa, firing at any movement inside the compound. He said airstrikes had destroyed several homes next to the hospital, killing three people, including a doctor.
In typically bullish style, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said his country had offered fuel to Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, which has suspended operations during the fierce fighting with Hamas but that the militant group had refused to receive it. The Israeli military has said there is a safe corridor for civilians to evacuate from Shifa to southern Gaza, but people sheltering in the hospital said they were afraid to go outside.
