23 December 2023, The New Daily: The UN Security Council has demanded both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict allow crucial aid into Gaza at scale amid fears of looming mass starvation and famine. The aid resolution was passed on Saturday morning (AEDT), with 13 Security Council members, including the UK and China, voting in favour.
Read MoreChristmas is cancelled in Bethlehem
23 December 2023, Canberra Times, by Reem Borrows: This year, Christmas is cancelled in Bethlehem. How could Palestinian Christians – the descendants of the first Christians in the world, indigenous inhabitants of the Holy Land – express any form of joy or festivity while enduring a violent campaign to uproot them from their land?
Read MoreGazans are starting to blame Hamas for wartime suffering
23 December 2023, The Australian, by Margherita Stancati and Abeer Ayyoub: Palestinians overwhelmingly hold Israel responsible for the death and destruction, but criticism of the militant group is spreading.
Read MorePeace at any price often leads to an even greater war
23 December 2023, The Australian, by Dave Sharma: At his Lowy Institute address on Tuesday evening, Albanese asserted Australia had a responsibility to uphold and defend the global framework. But at every test, at every juncture where the international system is being tested, this government goes to ground. Albanese is relegating Australia to the role of bystander in world affairs, a commentator but not an actor.
Read MoreGaza death toll passes 20,000 as US says it will support watered-down aid resolution
23 December 2023, The Age, by Najib Jobain, Jack Jeffery and Colleen Barry: Rafah, Gaza Strip: Health officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip say more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war between Israel and Hamas. The figure, amounting to nearly 1 per cent of the territory’s prewar population, is a new reflection of the staggering cost of the war, which in just over 10 weeks has displaced more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s people and devastated wide swaths of the tiny coastal enclave.
Read MoreThe fight to keep counting the dead in Gaza
23 December 2023, The Age, by Bassam Massoud and Maggie Fick: The morgue workers at the Nasser Hospital are part of an international effort that includes doctors and health officials in Gaza as well as academics, activists and volunteers around the world, to ensure the toll doesn’t become a casualty of the increasingly dire conditions of the war.
Read MoreUN resolution calls for Gaza aid but shies away from backing ceasefire
23 December 2023, The Age, by Michelle Nichols: Amid global outrage over a rising Gaza death toll in 11 weeks of war between Israel and Hamas and a worsening humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave, the US abstained to allow the 15-member council to adopt a resolution drafted by the United Arab Emirates.
Read MoreNo Ceasefire Can Work Unless Hamas Disarms
19 December 2023, Daily Telegraph, by Colin Rubenstein (AIJAC): As implied by the three conditions Australia and its NZ and Canadian partners specified for a sustainable ceasefire, any outcome to the current conflict which leaves Hamas in control of Gaza and able to rebuild its military capabilities guarantees two disastrous consequences. Firstly, an unrepentant Hamas will once more begin preparing, as its officials have said, to repeat the unprovoked massacre of October 7 “again and again”. And secondly, advancing the negotiated two-state Israeli-Palestinian peace that Australia has long supported will be completely impossible.
Read MoreLabor MPs break ranks on Israel
19 December 2023, Sydney Morning Herald, by Michael McGowan: Dozens of high-profile Labor figures, including members of the Albanese and Minns governments, have signed an open letter declaring the human rights of Palestinians have been ‘‘grossly violated’’ and accusing Israel of policies aimed at ‘‘the domination of one people over another’’.
Read MoreHamas Tunnel Is a Highway To Hell
19 December 2023, Courier-Mail, by Charles Miranda: The Israel Defence Force has revealed it has uncovered the largest Hamas tunnel as it presses on with its offensive in Gaza, despite growing international calls for a ceasefire and pleas from relatives to bring home the remaining hostages.
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