Médecins Sans Frontières: increasingly difficult to operate in Gaza hospitals

Heavy rains and intense winds destroyed part of the makeshift camps in the Gaza Strip today, where hundreds of thousands of inhabitants displaced by the war between Israel and Hamas are taking refuge. The Gaza municipality has assured working "around the clock" to deal with the damage caused by the bad weather, in particular to evacuate the water from the accumulated rainfall in the "low lying areas" of the refugee camps, although it points out that it is short of the necessary means and equipment.

"The violent winds ripped our tent away this morning, we were in the rain for hours and everything we own is now wet," Oum Mohammed Ouda, a 45-year-old mother from the north of the Gaza Strip and displaced to al-Mawasi, at the other end of the territory, told Afp. "We have no spare tents or any means to protect ourselves from this weather," she added, as others around her reported similar damage. More than three quarters of the buildings in the Palestinian territory have been destroyed by the war, according to the United Nations, which also estimates that almost the entire population has been displaced at least once due to fighting and shelling that began after 7 October 2023. Hundreds of thousands of people are still living in precarious shelters and the situation in these places had already worsened after the passage of Storm Byron in early December.

Six Hamas members were "shot and eliminated" yesterday in Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip, the IDF and the Israeli Security Agency (Isa) announced in a statement today. The statement explained that two 'terrorists', Kamal Abd al-Rahman Muhammad Awad and Ahmad Thabet, were killed 'in response to a failed projectile launch from the Gaza City area'. A third Hamas member, Ahmad Abd al-Fattah Saeed Maghdalawi, was 'targeted' but his current situation is still 'being verified'. In addition, the IDF and Isa report having 'eliminated' four other Hamas members, who were 'operating from a command and control centre', in an operation in the north of the Strip. Yesterday, the civil defence agency in Gaza had reported that Israeli attacks in the Palestinian territory had killed at least 13 people today, including five children, despite the ceasefire.

Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov, former UN envoy for the Middle East, is expected to take on the role in Gaza as field representative of the Board of peace, the transitional body for the Palestinian territory, theoretically chaired, according to his plan, by US President Donald Trump. This is reported by several media outlets.

Mladenov today met with Palestinian Vice-President Hussein al-Sheikh in Ramallah, West Bank, and yesterday - Israeli media report - he held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog. Mladenov was the UN envoy for the Middle East peace process from the beginning of 2015 to the end of 2020. In a statement on X, Sheikh said that during his meeting with Mladenov "an in-depth discussion took place on all political and field developments in the Palestinian territories".

He added that "the focus was on the situation in the Gaza Strip, how to transition to the second phase (of the ceasefire), the mechanisms for implementing US President Donald Trump's plan, and UN Security Council Resolution 2803".

According to Trump's 20-point plan, Gaza will be governed by a temporary, technocratic and apolitical Palestinian transition committee, overseen by the Board of Peace. Under the second phase of the fragile ceasefire, which came into effect in October, Israel is expected to gradually withdraw from its positions in Gaza, while Hamas is expected to lay down its arms. The deployment of an international stabilisation force is also planned. However, talks to start the second phase stalled after Israel accused Hamas of delaying the return of the last hostage to its hands.

Netanyahu met with Mladenov in Jerusalem yesterday and "reiterated that Hamas must be disarmed and the Gaza Strip must be demilitarised", the prime minister's office said in a note. Axios reported that Trump is expected to announce the Peace Council next week and that it would include about 15 world leaders. "Countries expected to join the council include the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey," Axios reported.

Hamas has elected a new leader in the Gaza Strip and filled vacancies in its political office. This was reported to the Emirati daily The National by two officials of the Palestinian group and sources in Cairo close to the organisation, pointing out that the elections were held last week and that the whole process would take place via secure phone lines and in-person meetings between Hamas leaders in Egypt, Turkey and Qatar. For security reasons, the sources added, the names of those elected will not be released until the start of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza.

Palestinian National Authority President Abu Mazen has declared that 2026 will be 'the year of Palestinian democracy', starting with municipal elections in the West Bank scheduled for next April. The following month, the eighth General Conference of al Fatah is expected to take place where "an appropriate date" will be set for the presidential elections, which Abu Mazen has pledged to hold within a year of the end of hostilities in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army has announced that it has carried out attacks against Hezbollah in "several areas" of Lebanon, a day after Beirut's announcement on the disarmament of the pro-Iranian Islamic fundamentalist movement in the south of the country, which the Jewish state deemed "insufficient". The raids "targeted warehouses and an arms production site, used for the rearming and military reinforcement of the Hezbollah terrorist organisation", the army said, without specifying the location.

"Several launching sites and rocket launchers, as well as military facilities," were also hit, the statement said, adding that these sites were "used by Hezbollah to conduct attacks" against Israeli territory. Such activities 'represent a violation of the agreements between Israel and Lebanon', the army denounced.

For its part, the Lebanese National Information Agency (Ani) reported shelling in the south of the country in areas far from the border, as well as in the Bekaa valley (in the east), where Hezbollah is strongly entrenched. No casualties were reported. Lebanon is under heavy pressure from the US to disarm Hezbollah, which emerged weakened in November 2024 from a bloody conflict with Israel.