Updates: Hamas-Israel ceasefire holds

RSF said Israel was responsible for nearly half of all journalists killed this year worldwide, with 29 Palestinian reporters slain by its forces in Gaza, the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) group said on Tuesday.

In its annual report, the Paris-based media freedom group said the total number of journalists killed reached 67 globally this year, slightly up from the 66 killed in 2024.

Israeli forces accounted for 43 % of the total, making them "the worst enemy of journalists", RSF said in its report, which documented deaths over 12 months from December 2024.

The most deadly single attack was a so-called "double-tap" strike on a hospital in south Gaza on August 25 which killed five journalists, including two contributors to international news agencies Reuters and the Associated Press.

In total, since the start of hostilities in Gaza in October 2023, nearly 220 journalists have died, making Israel the biggest killer of journalists worldwide for three years running, RSF data shows.

Foreign reporters are still unable to travel to Gaza — unless they are in tightly controlled tours organised by the Israeli military — despite calls from media groups and press freedom organisations for access.

A federal judge has cleared the way for a Tufts University PhD student and pro-Palestinian activist Rumeysa Ozturk to work on campus after ordering the Trump administration to restore her status in a key database used to track foreign students.

Chief US District Judge Denise Casper in Boston issued an injunction after concluding Ozturk was likely to succeed in proving US Immigration and Customs Enforcement unlawfully terminated her record in the database the same day that masked, plainclothes agents took her into custody in March.

That ICE-maintained database is called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System and is used to track foreign students who enter on visas. The termination of a student's record from that database prevents that person from being employed.

Ozturk in a statement said she was grateful for the ruling and that she hopes "that no one else experiences the injustices I have suffered."

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it struck infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah in several areas in southern Lebanon, including what it described as a training compound used by the armed group's Radwan forces.

Military structures and a launch site belonging to Hezbollah were also hit in the attacks, the military added in a statement.

The strikes come less than a week after Israel and Lebanon both sent civilian envoys to a military committee monitoring their ceasefire, a step towards a months-old US demand that the two countries broaden talks in line with President Donald Trump's Middle East peace agenda.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet US President Donald Trump on December 29 to discuss the next steps of the Gaza ceasefire, an Israeli government spokesperson said on Monday.

"The Prime Minister will meet with President Trump on Monday, December 29, they will discuss the future steps and phases and the international stabilisation force of the ceasefire plan," government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian said in an online briefing to reporters.

DOHA: Conditions for medics and patients in Gaza are as severe as ever despite a nearly two-month truce in the territory, the president of medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said in an AFP interview.

"It's as hard as it's ever been," Javid Abdelmoneim said of conditions for medical staff operating in Gaza's hospitals, speaking on the sidelines of the annual Doha Forum on diplomacy.

"While we're able to continue doing operations, deliveries, wound care, you´re using protocols or materials and drugs that are inferior, that are not the standard. So you've got substandard care being delivered," he explained.

"We're seeing the injured patients in the emergency rooms in which we work throughout the strip," he added.

The MSF president said that since the truce began, aid "hasn't come in to the level that´s necessary".

"There isn't a substantial change and it is being weaponised [....] So as far as we´re concerned that is an ongoing feature of the genocide. It´s being used as a chip and that's something that should not happen with humanitarian aid," said Abdelmoneim.

The chief of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees denounced the Israeli authorities’ seizure of assets from its east Jerusalem compound on Monday, which police told AFP was part of a debt-collection operation.

"Today in the early morning, Israeli police accompanied by municipal officials forcibly entered the UNRWA compound in East Jerusalem", Philippe Lazzarini said on X.

With trucks and forklifts, the authorities took "furniture, IT equipment and other property", and the compound’s United Nations flag was replaced with an Israeli one, Lazzarini added.

Israeli police told AFP in a statement that the seizures were "carried out by the Jerusalem municipality as part of a debt-collection procedure".

"Police are present to secure the municipality’s activity," the statement said.

The Israeli army carried out fresh ceasefire violations in the Gaza Strip on Monday, using blasts, shelling and gunfire in areas under its control, according to local sources cited by Anadolu Agency.

The ceasefire agreement, which took effect on 10 October, ended Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza that had raged since October 2023 and left more than 70,000 people killed and over 171,000 wounded.

Local sources told Anadolu that Israeli forces detonated residential buildings in western Rafah, a district fully under Israeli control under the terms of the ceasefire, and opened fire to the east of the city.

The army also carried out artillery and helicopter attacks east of Khan Younis, another area that falls within the zones it controls under the truce.

According to the Gaza media office, Israel has committed hundreds of ceasefire violations since 10 October, killing 373 Palestinians and injuring 970 others.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel’s military will not withdraw from territories it has occupied in southern Syria, Anadolu Agency reported.

Speaking at a conference attended by Israeli ambassadors, mission heads and Foreign Ministry officials, Netanyahu reiterated that Israel would not leave areas seized after the fall of the Baath regime in Syria on December 8, 2024.

“We want to preserve these assets,” he said, referring to Jabal al-Sheikh (Mount Hermon) and the buffer zone adjacent to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which Israel has held since 1967.

Netanyahu added that Israel hopes to reach an agreement with the Damascus administration on demilitarising southern Syria.

The United States, Israel and Qatar held a trilateral meeting in New York on Sunday, a senior White House official told AFP, months after Israeli jets conducted an airstrike in Doha, unsuccessfully targeting Hamas leadership.

The White House official confirmed that the meeting had taken place but did not provide any further details.

Two sources told US news outlet Axios it was "the highest level meeting between the countries since the deal to end the war in Gaza, for which Qatar served as a key mediator."

Axios also reported White House envoy Steve Witkoff hosted the meeting, with Mossad spy chief David Barnea representing Israel and an unnamed senior Qatari official in attendance.

Qatar, along with Egypt and the United States, helped broker a comprehensive ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which remains delicate as both Israel and Hamas accuse each other of breaching its terms.

At least two children, aged 17 and 12, were transported to the hospital by the Palestine Red Crescent Society, according to the Wafa news agency. 

Wafa said that the two were attacked by Israeli soldiers at the Beit Furik military checkpoint, which is east of the city of Nablus.