Israel-Gaza war live updates: Israel vows ‘prolonged fighting’ in 2024 as it readies to pull troops

Israel-Gaza war live updates: Israel vows ‘prolonged fighting’ in 2024 as it readies to pull troops

The Israeli military plans to pull some troops from Gaza, even as it vows “prolonged fighting” in the new year. Five brigades, which could include thousands of troops, are being released, with two of them returning to civilian lives and three headed to scheduled training, the Israel Defense Forces said. The move is expected to “significantly ease the burden on the economy,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said Sunday, adding that “the fighting will persist, and their services will still be needed” in 2024.

Here’s what to know:

• “The IDF must plan ahead, understanding that we will be required for additional tasks and warfare throughout this year,” Hagari said in a New Year’s Eve speech, noting that troops continue to fight by air, land and sea.
• Beeri Kibbutz said that Ilan Weiss, who had been thought kidnapped on Oct. 7, is dead, without providing further details. The 56-year-old’s wife, Shiri, and daughter, Noga, were among the hostages released by Hamas in November as part of a temporary pause in fighting in Gaza.
• Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported Monday that its Alborz warship sailed through the Red Sea’s Bab al-Mandab Strait, a day after U.S. Navy helicopters exchanged fire with Iranian-backed Houthi militants there.
• British Defense Minister Grant Shapps wrote in the Telegraph newspaper that Britain was prepared to take “direct action” to deter further Houthi attacks in the busy maritime route.
• U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the United States does not support an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country seeks to control the Philadelphi Corridor, a key buffer zone along the border of Gaza and Egypt.
• At least 21,978 people have been killed in Gaza and 57,697 wounded since the war began, the Gaza Health Ministry said Monday. Israel estimates that 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

12:32 PM: The new year brought Gazans no respite from bombardments and displacement

Smoke billows over Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on New Year’s Day.

JERUSALEM — Mustafa Jaarour had expected 2024 to be the year he finally married.

The 34-year-old proposed to his fiancée seven months ago. They set a date: the second week of January.

“We [had] started preparing our house and buying furniture,” he said. “Unfortunately, our dream of getting married and starting a family evaporated and became a mirage after our house was demolished. Our dreams were postponed, indefinitely.”

The Gaza City resident spoke to The Washington Post by phone from al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, where he is sheltering.

The start of another year has offered no respite for Palestinians in Gaza, three months into a war that has pummeled the enclave and is expected to continue into 2024.

“No one is talking about the new year here in Gaza; it’s a luxury thing no one here can afford now,” said a humanitarian worker in Rafah in southern Gaza. He spoke on the condition of anonymity as he was not authorized by his organization to comment.

Israeli strikes echoed across Deir al-Balah, Maghazi and Khan Younis in the first hours of the new year. Across the enclave, Gazans braced for the morning routine of examining the night’s damage. Hamas fired rockets into Israel at the stroke of midnight.

Close to Khan Younis, Akram Abu Khousa said he started the new year evading gunfire that hit the school where his family is sheltering. He said it came from the east, where Israeli tanks were stationed along one of Gaza’s many battlefields.

As the day wore on, Rafif Aziz, 36, craved the homemade sweets she typically ate on New Year’s Day with her husband and children as they discussed their plans for the year. “For hours yesterday, [the children] have not stopped asking me about the sweets they are accustomed to,” she told The Post by phone from Deir al-Balah, where 80 of her relatives were sheltering in two small homes. “I had no answer to give them.”

In 2023, Aziz survived displacement, hunger, disease, bombs and being trapped under rubble.

“All I hope now is that my children will forget all this pain that has befallen their little hearts, that their coming days will be better, and that we will psychologically overcome everything we have been through,” she said.

Jaarour is scared to set expectations for 2024.

His relationship with his fiancée is tense, he said, as they constantly fear losing each other. How much longer, they wonder, will they stay living displaced and in tents?

“I hope the war will end soon,” Jaarour said. “All I hope for this year is that we achieve our dreams. We often wonder … will I hold my wedding among the displaced people’s tents?”

By: Miriam Berger and Hajar Harb

6:32 AM: U.S. Navy kills Houthis trying to board shipping vessel in Red Sea

Components of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group travel through the Strait of Hormuz in November. The USS Eisenhower sent helicopters to fire on Houthi boats that were threatening a Maersk shipping vessel in the Red Sea on Sunday, Dec. 31, the U.S. military said. (Keith Nowak/Reuters)

U.S. Navy helicopters exchanged fire with Houthi militants aboard four small boats in the southern Red Sea on Sunday, U.S. Central Command said, in a marked escalation of tensions in one of the world’s busiest maritime routes.

According to Centcom, Houthi militants on boats approached “within 20 meters” of the Singapore-flagged, Denmark-owned Maersk Hangzhou, attacking it and attempting to board. U.S. Navy helicopters responding to the ship’s distress calls then came under fire from the boats while attempting to verbally engage with them, Centcom said.

“The U.S. Navy helicopters returned fire in self-defense, sinking three of the four small boats, and killing the crews. The fourth boat fled the area,” the statement read. The helicopters, dispatched from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS Gravely, did not sustain damage, it added.

Ten Houthis were killed in the Red Sea fighting, a Houthi spokesman said; no U.S. personnel were injured, according to Centcom. Maersk said it was delaying all transits in the area until Jan. 2 and that the crew was reported safe.

When asked on ABC’s “Good Morning America” whether the U.S. military could carry out a preemptive strike against Houthi forces, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said: “I won’t say what’s on or off the table right now.”

“We certainly aren’t looking for a conflict with the Houthis,” he said. “The best outcome here would be for the Houthis to stop these attacks, as we have made clear, over and over again.”

Houthis have been disrupting shipping in the Red Sea since the war in Gaza began, saying the attacks are in solidarity with Palestinians.

Analysts say shipping costs were already on track to soar worldwide in 2024 for a variety of factors, not all related to the Middle East. With about 10 percent of global trade passing through the Red Sea, the impact of major shipping firms diverting their vessels could ripple through the global economy. About 17,000 shipping vessels sail through the Red Sea annually. Europe relies heavily on the waters, through which ships bring goods from Asia.

The alternative is often to route vessels through the Cape of Good Hope off South Africa, which can lengthen their journey by two weeks.

By: Leo Sands and Evan Halper

4:24 AM: Israel is planning ahead for warfare in 2024, IDF spokesman says

Smoke rises from the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday.

Israel is preparing for “prolonged fighting” as it heads into 2024, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said at a news briefing on the night of New Year’s Eve.

“Tonight, the year of 2024 begins. The objectives of the war require prolonged fighting, and we are preparing accordingly,” Hagari said.

“The IDF must plan ahead, understanding that we will be required for additional tasks and warfare throughout this year,” he added.

Fighting has continued to rage in the Gaza Strip, with the Gaza Health Ministry reporting Sunday that at least 150 people had been killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to at least 21,822 amid one of this century’s most destructive wars in the enclave. About 85 percent of Gaza’s population is estimated to be internally displaced, according to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), as other U.N. agencies continue to sound the alarm about dire humanitarian conditions and “woefully inadequate” volumes of aid.

Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.

Injured Palestinians receive medical treatment at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Dec. 31.

During the news conference, Hagari also condemned Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group that Israeli forces have continued to clash with around its northern border in recent weeks.

“Hezbollah has turned the southern villages in southern Lebanon into a combat zone,” Hagari said. He added: “We will continue to strike in Lebanon, in southern Lebanon — wherever Hezbollah activates terror against us, they will encounter significant and powerful strikes.”

By: Kelly Kasulis Cho

3:45 AM: Iran showcases its reach with militia attacks across Middle East

Houthi troopers stand guard in Sanaa, Yemen, during a protest on Dec. 29, 2023.

BEIRUT — The Gaza war has given Iran the opportunity to showcase the capacity of its newly restructured network of allied militias, demonstrating Tehran’s strategic reach while allowing it to keep a distance from the fight, according to members of the groups and military analysts.

On any given day since the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel, one or other of these militias has carried out an attack somewhere in the Middle East — and on some days several in different places. The Houthis in Yemen are targeting ships in the Red Sea; Kataib Hezbollah and other Iraqi groups are hitting U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria; and Lebanon’s Hezbollah is engaged in daily exchanges of fire with Israeli forces across the Israel-Lebanon border.

The attacks can seem random, but they are the fruit of a carefully calibrated strategy forged in the wake of the 2020 killing of Qasem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, to bring cohesion to the loosely formed alliance of militias — designated by Tehran as the “axis of resistance.”

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By: Liz Sly, Mustafa Salim and Suzan Haidamous