Updates: Hamas-Israel ceasefire holds

The Israeli occupation military issued a new eviction order for residents of east of the al-Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City, WAFA News Agency reported, citing sources.

The area — more than 100 meters in length and over 300 meters in width — had been designated as a “safe” location by the military ahead of the planned expansion of the no-go zone.

The announcement has triggered a large-scale displacement, with hundreds of families beginning to leave westward.

The Israeli military said two drones launched from Egypt into Israeli territory have been intercepted by air force helicopters, Al Jazeera reported.

In a post on Telegram, the military said that drones had crossed from the west in what it referred to as a “smuggling attempt”.

Israeli security forces announced on Thursday the arrest of five Israeli settlers over their alleged involvement in an attack on a Palestinian home that injured a baby girl in the occupied West Bank.

The eight-month-old infant suffered "moderate injuries to the face and head" in the late Wednesday attack, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

It blamed the attack on "a group of armed settlers", accusing them of "throwing stones at homes and property" in the town of Sair, north of Hebron.

The Israeli military said that its forces killed a member of Iran's Quds Force in Lebanon who had been involved in planning attacks from Syria and Lebanon.

The military identified the man as Hussein Mahmoud Marshad al-Jawhari, calling him a key operative in the force's unit 840.

He was assassinated in the area or Ansariyeh, the military added in a statement, without giving any further details of his death.

Lebanon said an Israeli strike near the border with Syria killed two people on Thursday, as a deadline nears for Lebanon’s army to disarm resistance group Hezbollah in the country’s south.

"An Israeli enemy strike today on a vehicle in the town of Hawsh al-Sayyed Ali in the Hermel district killed two people," the health ministry said, with the state-run National News Agency saying the raid targeted a van.

The NNA also reported that a man wounded in an Israeli strike last week near Beirut had died of his injuries.

It identified him as a member of Lebanon’s General Security agency and said "he happened to be passing at the time of the strike as he returned from service" in Beirut.

Israel reacted furiously to a condemnation by 14 countries including France and Britain of its approval of new settlements in the occupied West Bank, calling the criticism discriminatory against Jews.

"Foreign governments will not restrict the right of Jews to live in the Land of Israel, and any such call is morally wrong and discriminatory against Jews," Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said.

On Sunday, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that authorities had greenlit the settlements, saying the move was aimed at preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state.

"On the ground, we are blocking the establishment of a Palestinian terror state," said Smotrich, a vocal proponent of settlement expansion and a settler himself.

Fourteen countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Canada, then issued a statement urging Israel to reverse its decision, "as well as the expansion of settlements".

VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo XIV has condemned the "rubble and open wounds" left behind by wars, singling out the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza as he conducted his first Christmas homily.

Fragile is the flesh of defenceless populations, tried by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds," the pope said at the mass in St Peter's Basilica.

"How [...] can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold," he said.

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