2023-11-10 08:43:00
The Israeli army has agreed to observe breaks of a few hours each day in the north of the Gaza Strip, to allow Palestinian civilians to leave this area where fighting with Hamas is raging, with no prospect of an end. fire.
“A ceasefire with Hamas means a surrender,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated Thursday evening on the Fox News channel, reaffirming his objective of “eradicating Hamas” which started the war by attacking Israel on October 7. “Nothing will stop us.”
Israel, however, agreed to make daily humanitarian “breaks” from Thursday to allow civilians to flee the north – where the fighting and bombings are concentrated – towards the south of the territory, according to the United States.
These pauses “of four hours in certain areas of the north of the Gaza Strip, will be announced three hours in advance”, specified the spokesperson for the National Security Council of the White House, John Kirby, according to whom Washington has received assurances that “there would be no military operations in these areas for the duration of the pause”.
“No water, no bakery”
The Israeli army opened “an evacuation corridor” on Sunday, but Palestinians testified to persistent fighting along this road, used by 100,000 people since Wednesday, according to figures from the Israeli army and the Office of Coordination of United Nations Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The crowd of men and women on foot, carrying their children in their arms, some carrying a few small bundles, noted an AFP journalist, swells the hundreds of thousands of refugees crowded in the south of the small territory , in disastrous conditions.
“We have no water, no toilets, no bakery,” said Oum Alaa al-Hajin, who found refuge in al-Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, in the south, after days of walk. “We have a loaf of bread every three or four days, and we have to wait in line for several hours.”
According to OCHA, the number of displaced people in Gaza now stands at 1.6 million people out of the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.
In the north, where hundreds of thousands of people still remain, “the lack of food is increasingly worrying”, worries the UN, according to which no organization has been able to provide assistance. for eight days.
Hospitals that have not yet closed lack medicine and fuel to run generators.
Ahmad Mhanna, a doctor at Al-Awda hospital in Jabaliya, describes a “tragic” situation. In the maternity ward, “doctors use headlamps”, just like in the operating room, where surgeons operate “under local anesthesia”.
According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, the surroundings and sites of several hospitals in the north were shelled during the night from Thursday to Friday, including that of Chifa, where 60,000 people are refugees, that of al-Rantissi children and the Indonesian hospital. Hamas reported injuries but no people killed.
AFTV footage shows massive shelling Thursday evening near the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, which caused panic at the facility.
Israeli ground troops, supported by bombings, are tightening their grip on Gaza city which, according to the army, shelters the Hamas “military quarter” entrenched in a vast network of tunnels.
It claimed Thursday to have destroyed “tunnel entrances, anti-tank missile manufacturing workshops and rocket launch sites.”
“I think the Israeli army is operating exceptionally well in its fight against terrorists on the ground and underground,” Netanyahu said on Fox News.
“Neither govern, nor occupy”
According to Israeli air defense, around 9,500 rockets have been launched towards Israel since October 7, most of them intercepted. But their number has “reduced significantly” since October 27 and the start of its land operations.
Mr. Netanyahu reiterated Thursday evening that Israel does not seek to “govern or occupy” Gaza, “but we seek to give it, and us, a better future.”
While the UN Security Council is due to meet once again on Gaza on Friday, the head of its agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini said Thursday that the situation is “more than a humanitarian crisis, (to) a crisis of humanity”, during an international conference organized in Paris by French President Emmanuel Macron.
This conference made it possible to reach one billion euros in commitments, intended to respond in particular to the needs of the UN to help the population of the Palestinian Territories.
Israel, however, denied the existence of a “humanitarian crisis”, while recognizing the “many difficulties” faced by Palestinian civilians, whose territory is deprived of water, electricity, food and medicine by the total siege imposed by Israel since October 9.
According to OCHA, only 65 aid trucks from Egypt, via the Rafah crossing, reached there on November 9, a “completely insufficient” volume.
The Rafah terminal also reopened on Thursday to allow the evacuation of foreigners, dual nationals and injured people.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the bloody attack carried out against Israel on October 7 by Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
In Israel, at least 1,400 people have died since the start of the war, according to the authorities, the majority of them civilians killed on the day of the attack, of unprecedented violence and scale since the creation of the State. Israel in 1948. In addition, 239 people were kidnapped and are being held in Gaza.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli bombings left 10,812 dead, mainly civilians, including 4,412 children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
“We bury people in football fields and vacant lots because the cemeteries are full. The bodies are sometimes transported on carts due to lack of fuel to run the cars,” laments Shihteh Nasser, 48 years old.
Drone on a school
The conflict threatens to spread regionally.
Israel struck in Syria at dawn on Friday in response to a drone which fell on a school in Eilat (south) on Thursday, without causing any casualties, the Israeli army said.
The army also indicated “continuing its operations to destroy the infrastructure” of the pro-Iranian movement Hezbollah in Lebanon, with which exchanges of fire are daily.
In the evening, the Israeli army also announced that it had intercepted a missile coming from “the Red Sea region” with the Arrow 3 anti-missile defense system.
In the occupied West Bank, where violence is increasing, 18 Palestinians were killed Thursday in several localities, including 14 during an Israeli raid in the city of Jenin, a stronghold of armed groups, according to the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Authority.
“It’s a known scenario, this life is desolate,” a computer engineer who refused to give his name told AFP, as gunshots triggered panic in a group of onlookers in Jenin.
At least 170 Palestinians have been killed by fire from Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank since October 7, according to the Palestinian Authority.
10/11/2023 07:41:57 – Gaza Strip (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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