The Israeli cabinet approved a long-delayed wartime budget package on Friday that includes a raft of tax increases and spending cuts to pay for a war that has entered its second year with no immediate end in sight. Israel has had to boost military spending by billions of shekels to accommodate the cost of a war that has resulted in thousands of troops deployed in Gaza and Lebanon, while much of the economy has slowed drastically due to a lack of workers. This week, the finance ministry cut the 2024 growth outlook for the second time this year to just 0.4% from an earlier estimate of 1.1%.
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All three of the main credit-rating agencies have cut their ratings on Israel this year on worries that the war could continue well into next year. Among the measures likely to bite hardest on Israeli households, value-added tax will rise in 2025 to 18% from 17%. In addition, there will be spending cuts across most ministries. The package will have to go to parliament for approval, which Smotrich said was expected by January. Failure to approve the budget by the end of March would trigger new elections.
A 10-month-old baby has been partially paralysed after contracting polio in Gaza, United Nations officials have said. According to the UN, Gaza, now in its 11th month of war, has not registered a polio case for 25 years, although type 2 poliovirus was detected in samples collected from the territory’s wastewater in June.
Open-source monitoring by watchdog group Airwars found a “high correlation” between the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s civilian casualty data and what Palestinian civilians “reported online,” according to a new report. Airwars identified 3,259 civilians who were killed in Gaza between October 7 and 24 — 75% of them were also listed on the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s official list of victims. To draw these conclusions, Airwars’ research team reviewed social media posts, statements from local news outlets, and news releases from non-governmental organizations to identify victims killed during the 17-day period. Analysts cross-referenced names with other biographical data and, where possible, matched these reports with specific incidents that Airwars cataloged since the Israeli offensive began. - “The scale of the civilian toll in Gaza has been one of the most enduring debates in the war,” Airwars’ Head of Investigations Joe Dyke told CNN. “We did this investigation not to get a definitive answer to exactly how many civilians have been killed, but to bring some new evidence to that debate.”
Palestinian-American doctor Jiab Suleiman arrived in Jordan last month ahead of an emergency medical mission into Gaza, which he was due to oversee. The Ohio-born orthopedic surgeon had already led two trips into the besieged strip since the Israel-Hamas war broke out in October and was finalizing details for his third. But his preparation would ultimately be for nothing. The day before the team was set to cross into Gaza, Suleiman received notice that he had been denied entry by Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, the Israeli agency that manages policy for the Palestinian territories and the flow of aid into the strip. Suleiman’s denial is part of a policy recently communicated to medical missions going into Gaza through Israel. The restrictions block the entry of US healthcare workers, and those of other nationalities, if they are of Palestinian origin or have Palestinian heritage, according to internal memos from the World Health Organization (WHO) obtained by CNN. CNN spoke with doctors from several medical aid organizations who say the policy has forced them to avoid recruiting any medical workers with Palestinian background or ID on their trips. The rejections often come at the last minute, they say, leaving the groups with no time to fill the empty slots and forcing them to enter Gaza with an incomplete staff. - CNN reviewed WHO internal memosfrom early June describing the extent of what they call Israel’s new policy, in which aid groups were advised against bringing medical professionals with a Palestinian background – even if only through a parent or grandparent - on mission trips. - Since the Rafah crossing was closed, Israel has further restricted the entry of medical supplies and limited the number of severely injured people who can leave Gaza. In March, a CNN investigation drawing on interviews with humanitarian and government officials, and documents compiled by aid groups, revealed items frequently rejected by Israel: anesthetics, oxygen cylinders, ventilators, medicines to treat cancer and maternity kits.
Some people are killed and some are reportedly killed, depending on who they are
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said five soldiers serving in the 202nd Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade were killed in Jabalia camp on Wednesday evening "as a result of fire by our forces". Two tanks in the area fired two shells at a building being used by the battalion's deputy commander, according to a statement. "From the initial investigation... it appears that the tank fighters, from the ultra-Orthodox paratrooper company Hetz, identified a gun barrel coming out of one of the windows in the building, and directed each other to shoot at the building," it said. Seven other soldiers were wounded by the tank fire, three of them seriously.
Leila Sadat, a special adviser on crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court, told the BBC that facilities critical to the survival of civilians should be protected unless a military body has some concrete evidence to suggest otherwise.
To assess war actions in terms of legality, you need to consider "the pattern" of those actions, she said.
"You can't just look strike by strike… [t]hey [the IDF] have hit water pipes, tanks, reservoirs, and infrastructure," she said.
"To take out over half of water and sanitation would be very difficult without intentionally doing so. So the pattern is evidence of either a reckless approach to civilian objects or the intentional destruction of them; these were not all mistakes," she added.
In response to our findings, Sara Elizabeth Dill, an international criminal and human rights lawyer, said: "What we are seeing is essentially siege warfare and the total destruction of Gaza, without regard for human life or human decency, or any attempts to comply with international law."
The US state department has found five units of the Israeli military responsible for gross violations of human rights in individual incidents, but says they will continue to receive US military backing.
