WORLD BRIEFING: December 12, 2023
Israel - Hamas War
Israel's defence minister Yoav Gallant says their military has encircled the last Hamas strongholds in Jabaliya and Shejaiya in northern Gaza. He says hundreds of Hamas operatives in Gaza have surrendered or been arrested in recent days, and the group is on the verge of being dismantled in the north - BBC
The Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza will open for aid inspections on Tuesday, Israel says, to 'double' the volume of aid entering Gaza. On Monday, intense air strikes were seen in northern Gaza as Palestinian rockets targeted southern and central Israel. Israel has urged Gazans to flee from some parts of the southern city of Khan Younis towards Rafah, as Israeli tanks move towards the city centre - BBC
Israel used U.S.-supplied white phosphorus munitions in an October attack in southern Lebanon that injured at least nine civilians, according to a Washington Post analysis of shell fragments found in a small village.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says Israel has killed about 18,200 people
Ukraine War
Some U.S. senators may skip Ukrainian President Zelensky speech in the chamber tomorrow. Rand Paul signaled he was likely to skip. “I might have something else going on. And Josh Hawley suggested similar. “I’ve heard his pitch — so I think I understand where he’s coming from.”
The apparent weak reception to Zelensky’s visit to Capitol Hill raises the question on whether his advisers may have miscalculated the intense feelings and divisions among lawmakers. Last week, Zelensky abruptly canceled a virtual address to U.S. lawmakers. Some speculated the atmosphere was too toxic and that he may not have been able to use his powers of persuasion the way he once did
About 6.3 million refugees left Ukraine during the war and have not returned, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). More than half are women and a third are minors. The number of returnees is 1.1 million (of the nearly eight million who left), according to estimates by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). According to a UNHCR survey last July, 18% of those displaced abroad wanted to return to Ukraine within the next three months and 62% when the necessary security and stability conditions are in place; the remaining 20% were inclined not to return. “My dream would be for 50% to return, and if it was 60%, I would be the happiest person in Ukraine,” Ella Libanova, director of the Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies (IDSS), said last November at the 7th Ukrainian Women’s Congress. A few days earlier, speaking the main Ukrainian television news channel, Libanova was extremely pessimistic: “The situation will be very bad, much worse than anyone can imagine.” The IDSS director revealed population forecasts for the country in 2033: a range of between 26 and 35 million inhabitants, including the territories forcibly annexed by Russia. If the average of the range is about 30 million, this represents a 42% smaller population than Ukraine had in the year of its independence, 1991, when there were 52 million inhabitants - El Pais
Elsewhere
China’s President Xi Jinping arrived in Vietnam Tuesday for his first visit in six years, as he seeks to counter the United States’ growing influence with the communist nation. Xi will meet the leader of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, after Hanoi upgraded diplomatic ties with Washington when US President Joe Biden visited in September - HKFP
South Africa plans to get 2,500 megawatts of new generation capacity from nuclear sources in a bid to tackle blackouts that have crippled the nation. The first of the new units will likely be operational in 2032 or 2033, Department of Energy Deputy Director-General for Nuclear Zizamele Mbambo told reporters Tuesday in the capital, Pretoria. Rotating blackouts have dogged Africa’s most industrialized economy since 2008 because Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. — which has held a near-monopoly over electricity provision since it started a century ago — is unable to meet demand from its old and poorly maintained plants - Bloomberg