January 5, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has arrived in Lebanon to discuss the situation at the country’s border with Israel, an EU spokesperson told CNN on Friday. 

Borrell will be in Lebanon through Sunday to discuss the “situation in and around Gaza, including its impact on the region, especially the situation at the Israeli-Lebanese border, as well as the importance of avoiding regional escalation and of sustaining the flow of humanitarian assistance to civilians,” the EU said in a news release.

Some context: The visit comes after top Israeli officials told a visiting US envoy Thursday that time is running low to address security on its border with Lebanon.

Tensions with Iran-backed Hezbollah were further inflamed this week by the killing of a senior Hamas leader in Beirut, raising the fear of broader conflicts in the region.

There have been near-constant skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah, the militant group that dominates southern Lebanon, since Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Israel’s military released a video Friday showing one of what it says are seven tunnel shafts underneath the Blue Beach resort along the Mediterranean in northern Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces accuses Hamas of using the tunnel system to carry out "attacks both above and below ground."

The tunnel shafts, which run underground near the beach, also house "terrorist quarters," the IDF claimed in a statement.   

The military also said it discovered an array of weapons beneath the hotel, including AK-47 assault rifles, explosives and drones.

The IDF claims several Hamas militants fired anti-tank missiles at its forces from the hotel while they were battling for the tunnels.   

CNN cannot independently verify the IDF's claims.  

About Gaza's tunnels: One of the key challenges facing the Israeli military is the labyrinth of Hamas tunnels that it says spans the entirety of the strip.

The underground network, known as the "Gaza metro," is used to transport people and goods, store rockets and ammunition caches, and house Hamas command and control centers — all away from the prying eyes of the IDF’s aircraft and surveillance drones.

Hamas in 2021 claimed to have built 500 kilometers (about 311 miles) worth of tunnels under Gaza, though it is unclear if that figure was accurate or posturing.

During its ongoing offensive in the enclave, the Israeli military claims it has destroyed hundreds of tunnel shafts and discovered many more.

CNN's Nadeen Ebrahim and Joshua Berlinger contributed reporting to this post.

Gaza is Palestinian land and its future is not up to Israel to decide, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna told CNN on Friday, after two Israeli ministers called for resettling Gazans outside of the enclave. 

Such calls are “irresponsible” and “brings us away from a solution,” Colonna said, adding that such rhetoric is also against the long-term interests of Israel.

She stressed her support for the two-state solution.

“Gaza is Palestinian land, which wants to become part of the future Palestinian state. We support the two-state solution, which is the only viable option,” she said. “Gaza and the West Bank must together be part of the future Palestinian state.”

France is committed to avoiding any further escalation of the situation by all sides, including in neighboring areas such as Lebanon and the Red Sea, according to Colonna.

It’s the obligation for a democratic country like Israel to follow international law and protect the civilian population while exercising its rights of self-defense, she said. “[Civilians] are not responsible for the crimes and must be protected,” Colonna said. 

Famine is "around the corner" as people in Gaza face the "highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded," according to Martin Griffiths, the United Nations' top emergency relief official.

Griffiths says Gaza has become "a place of death and despair," saying in a news release published Friday that the death toll has reached the tens of thousands, medical facilities are under attack and there is a lack of functioning hospitals.

"Hope has never been more elusive," Griffiths wrote in the report, which was released by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs almost three months since Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

A public health disaster is unfolding as sewers spill over and infectious diseases spread in overcrowded shelters, Griffiths said. Around 180 Palestinian women "are giving birth daily amidst this chaos," the UN official added.

"Meanwhile, rocket attacks on Israel continue, more than 120 people are still held hostage in Gaza, tensions in the West Bank are boiling, and the specter of further regional spillover of the war is looming dangerously close," he added.

Fears of a broader war in the Middle East, spurred on by incidents involving Iranian proxy groups like the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, are a key focus of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's current trip to the region.

Griffiths urged all involved in the ongoing war to observe international law, "including to protect civilians and meet their essential needs, and to release all hostages immediately." He called on the international community to use all its influence to help make this happen.

"This war should never have started. But it’s long past time for it to end," Griffiths said. 

Satellite imagery provider Maxar has published a new image showing how crowded one part of Rafah in southern Gaza has become, as people move to the area from central and northern parts of the territory.

The image, taken on January 3, shows an area in Rafah — close to the Egyptian border — now filling up with tents and other improvised shelters.

Here's what the area looked like in November 2023:

Here's what the area looks like as of January 2024:

The war that began on October 7 has displaced at least 1.93 million people in Gaza, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Thousands of families have moved multiple times as Israel’s offensive has moved to new areas. 

Palestinians have told CNN about sky-high prices for food, with children going hungry, a lack of sanitation and densely crowded surroundings.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Turkey on Friday – the first stop in his whirlwind tour through the region to try to deter a wider conflict and press Israel on its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

The top US diplomat will hold a series of meetings in Istanbul on Saturday. He is expected to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

When Blinken last traveled to Turkey in November, he did not meet with the Turkish leader but met with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, for two and a half hours.

Turkey hosts Hamas leadership, and Erdogan has been outspoken against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the war in Gaza.

Indirect back-channeling to Iran to try to deter a wider conflict in the Middle East will also be a key focus of Blinken's trip to the region, a senior State Department official said Friday.

The top US diplomat will make clear to the leaders with whom he meets that the US does not want to see the conflict escalate nor do they intend to escalate it. The US expects that message to then be conveyed to Iran and Iranian proxies through the countries that have a relationship with them, the official said.

The US has sought to distinguish between defensive and escalatory actions amid an immense uptick in attacks on US personnel by Iranian-backed proxies in Iraq and aggression by Iranian-backed Houthis in the Red Sea.

Efforts to back-channel with Iran — through partners as well as competitors like China — have been happening since the early days of the war in Gaza.

More on Blinken's trip: The secretary of state will also travel to Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, and Greece. It is Blinken's fourth trip to the region since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. 

Some of Israel’s leading politicians sniped at each other in public Friday after what one source described as a “fight” in the security cabinet the night before.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said there had been a “stormy discussion,” while former Defense Minister Benny Gantz said a “politically motivated attack” had been launched.

The argument was over how to handle investigations into the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel — including the Israeli military’s failure to foresee it, and how to prosecute the war from now on.

After a break in the meeting, the source said, Transportation Minister Miri Regev went on the attack, according to the official, who asked not to be named discussing internal political discussions.

Regev, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s center-right Likud party, did not respond to a CNN question about the meeting.

Gantz, who joined the government from the opposition after October 7, said: “What happened yesterday was a politically motivated attack in the middle of a war. I participated in many cabinet meetings — such conduct has never occurred and must not occur.”

He did not say who had launched the attack.

But he did criticize Netanyahu, saying the meeting should have focused on the military campaign and Israel's future security, but that didn't happen. He said the prime minister must choose between "unity and security on one hand and politics on the other."

Netanyahu’s Likud party then lashed out at Gantz, saying that asking questions and receiving answers "is not politics," and accusing the war cabinet member of "looking for excuses" to break away from the unity government before the end of the war.

Gantz eyed as potential next prime minister: Gantz is widely considered a likely successor to Netanyahu when an election is called.

An Israel Democracy Institute poll conducted at the end of December and released on Tuesday found Gantz the most popular choice when respondents were asked who they would like to be prime minister after the war.

Almost a quarter, 23%, chose Gantz, while 15% chose Netanyahu.

“I don’t know” was the most popular response, with 30.5% choosing it. About 4% of respondents said “anyone but Bibi,” as Netanyahu is generally known.

Nearly 100 seriously wounded Gazan civilians rest and begin to recover aboard the French helicopter carrier-turned hospital ship, the “Dixmude,” at Egypt’s al-Arish port.

They are just some of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been wounded since the start of the war, which has claimed more than 22,600 Gazan lives, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

“It was horrible. I could see the muscle inside my leg. But it wasn’t red like you’d think. It was like the color of my skin,” said 10-year-old Maher, who is receiving treatment.

Now missing one leg, he still dreams of being a footballer. He has the names of his idols, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappé, written on the cast on his other leg.

The Dixmude is a short drive from the Rafah crossing, where patients were selected by Israeli authorities before being handed over to French doctors.

In the month since the first Gazan patients arrived onboard, the teams of French and international surgeons have spent 230 hours fixing bones, taking skin grafts and treating amputated limbs in 130 operations. Around 50% of the patients they have treated are children and half of the Gazans had lost at least one limb. 

Partly housed in tents on the ship’s cavernous hangar deck, the dozens of Gazans currently aboard still have access to a level of medical treatment – and security – now almost impossible to find inside Gaza, where only a fraction of hospitals are even partially operational.

The war, though, is never far from their beds.

Nisreen Al-Sahabani muttered one word as she flicked through photos of neighbors and relatives on her phone, “martyred, martyred, martyred.”

Caring for her nephew who was brought aboard with traumatic leg injuries, she hears Israeli airstrikes when she manages to speak with relatives still trapped in Gaza on the phone. 

But, like many aboard, she has no doubts about returning to Gaza, even if there’s no going back to her old home and life.

Houthi supporters gathered Friday in Yemen to commemorate the fighters killed by the US Navy off the coast of Yemen on December 31.

Both Palestinian and Yemeni flags, as well as Hezbollah banners, could be seen being waved as a crowd of thousands rallied in capital Sanaa, Reuters video showed.

The rally comes days after US Navy helicopters sank three Houthi small boats, killing the crews after they attacked and attempted to board a container ship of global shipping giant Maersk off the coast of Yemen, according to the United States Central Command (CENTCOM).   

Key context: The Houthis began launching the attacks in the Red Sea soon after the start of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, claiming they were targeting ships with ties to Israel as they stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The Yemen-based Houthis are believed to have been armed and trained by Iran, and there are fears that their attacks could escalate and fuel a wider regional conflict. And as the attacks continue, with major shipping and oil companies avoiding the area, there are real concerns about the impact on the global economy.