Israel-Gaza war live: Israeli military kills four alleged Palestinian militants in West Bank, IDF says | Israel-Gaza war

Archie Bland

In today’s First Edition newsletter, Archie Bland has a round-up of the situation in the Red Sea, writing:

There have been at least 17 attacks on vessels the Houthis believe are linked to Israel or its allies, mostly without success. Until now, the US has refrained from direct confrontation. But on Sunday, US Navy helicopters fired on a group of small boats attempting to board a container ship that had requested their protection, the Maersk Hangzhou. While Washington said that its helicopters had fired in self-defence, the deaths of 10 militants mark a new phase in the crisis.

The Houthis are a militia group representing a branch of Shia Islam called Zaidism that once ruled Yemen but was marginalised under the Sunni regime in the Yemen capital, Sana’a, since the 1962-70 civil war. They forced the government out in a 2014 coup, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention against them and a catastrophic civil war that the UN estimated led to 377,000 deaths and displaced 4 million people by the end of 2021.

The Houthis effectively won the war. An April 2022 ceasefire prompted a significant decline in violence, and fighting has largely remained in abeyance despite the official expiry of the truce in October. Most Yemenis now live in areas under rebel control, with the Houthis now running most of the north of the country and in charge of its Red Sea coastline. Crucially, the Houthis are backed by Iran as part of its longstanding hostility to Saudi Arabia, and the US recently declassified intelligence it said showed Iranian involvement in the operations against commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Read more here: Tuesday briefing – Will the Red Sea crisis lead to a wider Middle East conflict?

Israel will defend its actions in Gaza at the international court of justice in the Hague after South Africa launched a case against the state accusing it of genocide last week, Israeli media has reported.

“Israel, a long-standing signatory to the Genocide Convention, will not boycott the proceedings. We will participate and refute the absurd accusation that amounts to blood libel,” national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told the news site Ynet.

Haaretz newspaper reported that the rare decision was made during a meeting chaired by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and after consultations with the justice ministry, the military and the national security council.

Proceedings at the court can take years, but Israel’s immediate aim would be to prevent the court from issuing an interim order to halt its Gaza campaign.

In its application to open proceedings against Israel last week, South Africa said Israel’s actions in Gaza were “genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”

The Israeli military (IDF) has killed four alleged Palestinian militants during a raid in the occupied West Bank town of Azzun, the IDF has said.

The alleged militants were killed during an exchange of fire in which one Israeli soldier was also injured, the IDF said on Twitter, after they had allegedly shot and thrown explosives at Israeli soldiers. The military posted pictures of three submachine guns it said had been seized afterwards.

The IDF was also raiding at least five other towns and cities in the West Bank, according to the broadcaster Al Jazeera, which reported fighting in Qalqilya, near Azzun, and posted footage showing a wounded Palestinian man being kicked in the head by Israeli soldiers.

As of 30 December, 307 Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli military and Israeli settlers since Hamas’ 7 October attack, according to the UN, including 79 children.

The dead include a 17-year-old boy, Mahmoud Abu Haniya, who was shot in the back in Azzun last month when an Israeli raid sparked confrontations with residents, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The UN last week deplored what it said was a “rapid deterioration” of human rights in the West Bank and urged Israeli authorities to end violence against the Palestinian population there.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war with me, Helen Livingstone.

The Israeli military (IDF) says it has killed four alleged Palestinian militants in the West Bank town of Azzun overnight.

In a social media post, the IDF said the Palestinians had shot and thrown explosives at soldiers and after identifying the building where they were hiding, they killed them in an exchange of fire. It said three Carlo-type submachine guns were recovered afterwards.

An Israeli soldier was also injured in the exchange of fire.

The broadcaster Al Jazeera reported that the IDF was also carrying out raids in at least five other towns and cities in the West Bank, including on the Jenin refugee camp and the city of Jericho.

More than 300 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF and Israeli settlers in the West Bank since the 7 October attack on Israel.

More on that soon. In other key developments:

• The Israeli military claims to have killed Adil Mismah, a regional commander of Hamas’s elite Nukhba forces, in the central city of Deir al-Balah. The Israel Defense Forces said Mismah had taken part in Hamas’s 7 October attack against Israel.

• A total of 21,978 Palestinians have been killed and 56,697 injured in Israeli strikes in Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Monday. The figures include 156 Palestinians killed and 246 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added. Thousands more people are believed to be buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings and tens of thousands of Palestinians have been wounded.

• Israel is withdrawing some troops from Gaza to shift to more targeted operations against Hamas, an Israeli official told Reuters. The official said the withdrawal was focused on reservists – of which Israel drafted 300,000 for the war – and designed to “re-energise the Israeli economy”.

• Not all of those returned from Gaza will go home, a senior Israeli official told Reuters, with some prepared for rotation to the northern border with Lebanon, where Israel is expanding its preparations for war. “The situation on the Lebanese front will not be allowed to continue. This coming six-month period is a critical moment,” the official said.

• Israeli settlers killed at least 10 Palestinians and set alight dozens of homes in the occupied West Bank in 2023, making it the “most violent” year on record for settler attacks, an Israeli watchdog has said. Numerous West Bank attacks were carried out by a large group of Israeli settlers and the violence rose after Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel, said Yesh Din, a human rights group.

• The Palestine Red Crescent Society has collaborated with the Egyptian Red Crescent to establish the first organized camp in Khan Younis for Palestinians displaced by Israeli strikes across Gaza. The camp is initially set to hold 300 families from PRCS medical, ambulance and relief teams, with its capacity set to expand later to 1,000 tents, the PRCS said.

• Some of the Israeli communities north of the Gaza Strip that were evacuated in the wake of the 7 October attack by Hamas will be able to go back in the near future as military operations progress, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Monday. According to published remarks from a briefing, Gallant said that some of the evacuated communities in areas within a range of 4-7km north of the territory would be able to return soon.

• Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said that four of its fighters had been killed in southern Lebanon, updating the toll from three in a statement made earlier, without giving any further detail. Security sources said the first three were killed in an Israeli raid on two houses in the Lebanese village of Kafr Kila near the border where Hezbollah maintains security control.

• The US aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, deployed to the eastern Mediterranean after the deadly attack on Israel by Hamas in October to deter other regional actors from escalating the conflict, will return to the US “in the coming days,” the Navy said Monday. It will be replaced by the amphibious assault ship the USS Bataan and its accompanying warships, the USS Mesa Verde and the USS Carter Hall.

• Israel’s supreme court has ruled against a key component of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government’s judicial overhaul, which challenged the powers of the judiciary. A supreme court statement said eight of 15 justices had ruled against an amendment passed by parliament in July which scraps the “reasonableness” clause, used by the court to overturn government decisions which are deemed unconstitutional.