December 22, 2023 Israel-Hamas war

Our live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war has moved here.

The resolution approved by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) “falls painfully short” of addressing the crisis in Gaza, the head of Doctors Without Borders US said in a statement Friday. 

The way Israel is conducting war is “causing massive death and suffering among Palestinian civilians and is inconsistent with international norms and laws," she said.

"Ensuring the rapid flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and safe, unhindered delivery of assistance within Gaza” is something that should have been established from the start of the crisis and shouldn’t have taken such a long time, she said. 

Benoit called on the Security Council and the US government to "focus their attention on establishing a ceasefire and ensure that international humanitarian law does not become a mere afterthought in this conflict.” 

Context: The UN Security Council passed a resolution Friday that calls for pauses in fighting between Israel and Hamas to allow more aid into Gaza. The resolution called for the “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days to enable full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access," although it stopped short of pleading for a ceasefire like a previous proposed resolution vetoed earlier this month. The United States, which has vetoed previous draft resolutions, abstained from voting this time. Russia also abstained.

The Israel Defense Forces has demolished a tunnel network in the Issa area of southern Gaza City, it claimed in a statement Friday.

The network served as an “underground post,” the IDF said, and “numerous buildings used as Hamas headquarters were destroyed” as part of its operations in recent days.

The statement claimed that “many Hamas terrorists were eliminated, along with many buildings used for terrorist activities and weapons that were destroyed.”  

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the tunnel network was targeted using “13 tons of explosives, which simultaneously detonated 30 tunnel shafts in a secured manner.”

The network, according to the IDF, was also “used for storage, hideouts, command and control, and movement of operatives between different areas.”  

The IDF said video footage captured by a canine unit revealed that the tunnel network was “hundreds of meters long.”

Some background: Colloquially referred to as the “Gaza metro,” a vast labyrinth of tunnels beneath Gaza is used to transport people and goods, to 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.

During its offensive in the territory, the IDF claims it has exposed “hundreds of terror tunnel shafts throughout the Gaza Strip,” and says it is operating “to locate and destroy dozens of attack tunnel routes.”

Recently, it has tested methods for flooding the Hamas tunnels.

CNN's Joshua Berlinger contributed reporting to this post.

The United Nations Security Council on Friday approved a resolution that calls for humanitarian pauses between Israel and Hamas, increased humanitarian aid to Gaza and the creation of conditions that will allow for a sustainable end to the fighting.

The vote ended days of closed-door negotiations.

The United States and Russia abstained, deciding against using their vetoes as permanent members of the body that would have shot down the resolution.

Throughout what a senior US diplomat called “marathon negotiations,” the US was eager to not vote against the resolution after it suffered global blowback for vetoing the last Security Council motion, which called for an immediate ceasefire.

Instead, Friday’s resolution called for “urgent steps” to lay the groundwork “for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

Its passage comes as the Biden administration has grown more vocal in expressing concerns over the brutality of the war in Gaza.

Here's what else you should know about the resolution:

And here are some of the other key developments in the war today:

This post was updated with the comments from the Palestinian representative to the United Nations.

US President Joe Biden says he is heartbroken by reports of the death of Israeli-American Gadi Haggai, who is said to have been killed by Hamas on October 7. The 73-year-old's death was confirmed in a statement from the Missing Persons Families Forum on Friday. 

Biden added that he is also praying for the Haggai family and reaffirmed that his administration will keep working to release other hostages in Gaza. 

The Haggai family told CNN today that they are “filled with great sorrow” after learning of the death of Gadi Haggai. The family added that they hope his body will be returned.

“We mourn the loss of our father and grandfather, and we continue to hope and pray that his body will be returned to us and that Judi is still alive and we will be reunited soon,” the family said in a statement. Judi is Gadi Haggai's wife.

Their daughter Iris Haggai Liniado, told CNN previously that her parents were on their morning walk about a mile and a half from their home in the Nir Oz kibbutz on October 7 when they heard rockets flying overhead. She said her parents “hit the dirt” and tried to call for help and that was the last Iris heard from them.

The Missing Persons Families Forum said Gadi Haggai was shot and critically injured that morning.

The Biden administration s praising the passage of the United Nations Security Council resolution on Gaza, saying it was the result of a "marathon negotiation," a senior US diplomat said Friday.

The resolution included compromise language “deploring” acts of terrorism. It also stopped short of calling for a ceasefire which was included in a resolution earlier this month in the Security Council that the United States vetoed. Israel has repeatedly rejected international pleas for a ceasefire, saying it needs to remove Hamas from power and recover the hostages, and the US has supported its position at the UN.

Instead, Friday’s resolution “calls for urgent steps” that would “create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” 

Another significant sticking point was Egypt and the United Arab Emirates pushing for a new UN mechanism to monitor the aid going into Gaza. The US believed it would be too cumbersome and slow down an already strained process. Instead, the resolution creates a position for a senior UN coordinator for aid.

The resolution also called for all the hostages held in Gaza to be released immediately. That, in addition to the softer language on the cessation of the fighting and the compromise on the aid monitoring mechanism, got the US to a place where it could support the resolution and see it passed, while still not voting "yes."

“We're never looking to use our veto and, in fact, we have very strict principles on use of the veto. that should be very rare, very unusual circumstances,” the senior US diplomat said.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it received 70 humanitarian aid trucks on Friday from the Egyptian Red Crescent through the Rafah border crossing.

It followed 78 trucks on Thursday, it said.

Before the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, an average of around 500 trucks entered the Gaza Strip every working day.

That figure included commercial trucks along with aid trucks, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

CNN's Sugam Pokharel contributed reporting to this post.

Newly declassified United States intelligence suggests that Iran has been "deeply involved in planning the operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea," National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told CNN.

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched over 100 attacks against about a dozen commercial and merchant ships transiting the Red Sea over the past four weeks, CNN previously reported.

The newly declassified intelligence suggests that "Iranian support throughout the Gaza crisis has enabled the Houthis to launch attacks against Israel and maritime targets, though Iran has often deferred operational decision-making authority to the Houthis," Watson said. 

On Tuesday, a senior US military official said that the Iranians are operating in the Red Sea when asked whether Iran is helping the Houthis select targets, CNN reported. But that official said the Houthi attacks have been broadly indiscriminate. 

"Iran has the choice to provide or withhold this support, without which the Houthis would struggle to effectively track and strike commercial vessels navigating shipping lanes through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden," Watson said. 

The Houthis have said they will only relent when Israel allows the entry of food and medicine into Gaza. Its strikes could be intended to inflict economic pain on Israel’s allies in the hope they will pressure it to cease its bombardment of the enclave.

The intelligence also suggests that the Iranians have provided monitoring systems to the Houthis that allow them to operate in the maritime space, Watson said.

The US this week launched Operation Prosperity Guardian, a maritime coalition aimed at beefing up security in the southern Red Sea. More than 20 nations have signed on to the initiative so far, the Pentagon said Thursday. 

Children in the Gaza Strip under the age of 5 — about 335,000 kids — are at high risk of severe malnutrition and preventable death, as the risk of famine conditions continues to increase, according to a UNICEF statement on Friday.

The UNICEF statement comes after the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) reported Thursday that approximately all of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents are now facing acute hunger. The entire population of the Gaza Strip is classified in a state of crisis, according to IPC.

That's the highest share of people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country, the report stated. 

“Many adults go hungry so children can eat,” according to IPC, calling for humanitarian access to be restored throughout the region to enable the rapid delivery of life-saving aid. 

UNICEF also said it is particularly concerned about the nutrition of more than 155,000 pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, as well as more than 135,000 children under the age of 2, given their specific nutrition needs.

CNN's Eyad Kourdi and CNN’s Michael Rios contributed reporting to this post.