Israel-Hamas war: List of key events, day 41

Here is the situation on Thursday, November 16, 2023:

Latest developments

• Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed on Thursday that fighter jets had struck the house of Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political bureau.
• After four failed attempts to respond to the Israel-Palestine war, the United Nations Security Council passed a Malta-sponsored resolution on “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza on Wednesday. No member state voted against the resolution, 12 voted in favour, and three – Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – abstained.
• The first truck carrying fuel to Gaza since Israeli bombardment started on October 7 arrived through the Rafah border crossing on Wednesday. Over the past few weeks, hospitals, sanitation systems, and water pumps are just a few of the infrastructures that have shut down due to fuel depletion amid a total Israeli siege.
• Two planes from Egypt carrying more than two dozen cancer patients from Gaza arrived in the Turkish capital, Ankara, shortly after midnight on Thursday (about 21:30 GMT, Wednesday), according to the AFP news agency.
• Some 150 demonstrators calling for a ceasefire in Gaza clashed with police outside the Democratic Party’s national committee headquarters in Washington, DC late on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press news agency.

Human impact and fighting

• After relentless bombardment across northern Gaza, including its hospitals, as well as displacement of Palestinians to the south, Israel is indicating an expansion of its assault across the Gaza Strip. “There is no place in Gaza that we will not reach,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli troops along the Gaza border on Wednesday, according to the AP.
• Two Israeli soldiers have been killed while fighting in northern Gaza, Israel’s military announced early on Thursday.
• Deadly Israeli air raids hit two residential buildings in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, Gaza’s central petrol station, and a mosque in al-Sabrah neighbourhood of central Gaza on Thursday, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
• As Palestinians continue to make the long, taxing journey from north to south Gaza, often by foot, they are also “reporting the presence of dead bodies in the streets”, according to the situation report of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released on Wednesday. Some have also reported being arrested, stripped down, and beaten by Israeli soldiers in what was supposed to be a “safe corridor” to flee south, OCHA reported.
• An up-to-date death toll for Gaza could not be made available for the fifth day in a row owing to the collapse of communication and medical services, according to OCHA.
• At least six Palestinians have been arrested in overnight Israeli raids across the occupied West Bank, according to Wafa.

Situation at Gaza’s hospitals

• Israeli forces renewed their attack on al-Shifa early on Thursday, with tanks and bulldozers advancing into the hospital and damaging its walls, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum.
• Doctors and medical workers at al-Shifa have been interrogated, while patients, staff, and displaced people are gathered in one place under Israeli custody and have not been afforded safe passage to leave, Abu Azzoum said on Thursday.
• Only one of 24 hospitals in northern Gaza is operational and taking in patients, while another five can only provide limited care to those who are already admitted.
• The Israeli military has removed a social media post, uploaded to X on Thursday, which showed what Israel claimed was proof of weapons being kept inside Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Diplomacy

• US President Joe Biden reiterated claims of Hamas tunnels under al-Shifa Hospital without evidence on Wednesday and said it is “not realistic” to expect Israel to stop the Gaza war, according to Reuters news agency.
• In a highly-anticipated meeting on Wednesday, Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the Israel-Gaza war and the risks of regional escalation.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ramped up his condemnation of Israel, calling it a “terror state” with “unlimited” support from the West in parliament on Wednesday.
• South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that her government may refer Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC) as it continues its assault on Gaza. She likened the circumstances of Palestinians to those in apartheid South Africa and called on “countries that have influence over Israel” to stop this “crime against humanity”.
• A four-person delegation of lawyers filed a complaint against Israel at the ICC on Wednesday.
• The defence ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations urged an end to the Israel-Hamas war and for the world to collaborate on setting up humanitarian aid corridors in Gaza at a regional meeting on Wednesday, according to the AP.
• Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat condemned Belize’s decision to recall its ambassador to Israel in a post on X on Wednesday. The Central American country severed its diplomatic ties citing Israel’s “unceasing indiscriminate bombing” and refusal to implement a ceasefire in Gaza, according to a statement on the government press office’s website on Tuesday.