2024-01-06 10:02:00
The Gaza Strip is the scene of new Israeli strikes this Saturday, January 6. It has become a “place of death” that is simply “uninhabitable”, warns the UN after almost three months of a relentless Hamas-Israel war which could set the region ablaze. According to AFP journalists, Israeli strikes sounded early Saturday in Rafah, a town at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have taken refuge in recent weeks trying to escape the clashes.
Friday January 5, hospital sources reported 35 deaths in Deir el-Balah (center) while in the north of Gaza, where the Israeli army launched its ground operation at the end of October, the bombings continued. “The whole neighborhood is destroyed and I don’t know where people will return. Where are we going to live? » a resident of Jabaliya (north) told AFP after an Israeli strike. “Look at this destruction, but despite this, we will remain determined. We did not flee to the south or elsewhere, we stayed in al-Sika (Jabaliya district), where our homes were,” he added.
“Daily threats before the eyes of the world”
The Gaza Strip has “simply become uninhabitable”, and its inhabitants “face daily threats before the eyes of the world”, summarized the coordinator of humanitarian affairs of the United Nations, Martin Griffiths. According to Unicef, the clashes, malnutrition and the health situation have created “a cycle of death which threatens more than 1.1 million children” in this impoverished territory even before the start of the war.
Israel has vowed to “destroy” Hamas – an Islamist movement classified as terrorist by the United States and the European Union – after its unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which killed 1,140 people, mainly civilians, according to a AFP count based on the Israeli toll. Around 250 people were taken hostage, including around a hundred released during a truce at the end of November.
Israeli military operations have left 22,600 dead in Gaza, mostly women and minors, according to the latest report from the Hamas Health Ministry, in power in Gaza since 2007. “We continue to call for an immediate end to the conflict, not only for the people of Gaza and its threatened neighbors, but for the generations to come who will never forget the 90 days of hell and attacks on the most fundamental principles of humanity,” said Martin Griffiths.
“2024 will be a year of fighting”
Israel, however, insisted that its operation in Gaza would continue until the “return” of the hostages and the “elimination” of Hamas’ military capabilities, which also remain “important”, according to its American ally. “2024 will be a year of fighting,” warned the spokesperson for the Israeli army, Daniel Hagari, also noting “a very high level of preparation” of the troops on the border with Lebanon, an almost daily scene. since October 8 of exchanges of fire with Hezbollah, a movement supported by Iran like Hamas.
These tensions increased this week with the elimination, in a strike attributed to Israel, of Hamas number two, Saleh al-Arouri, in a southern district of Beirut, a stronghold of Hezbollah. “The response is inevitable. […] We cannot remain silent about a violation of this magnitude because it would mean that all of Lebanon would be exposed” in the future, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Friday. “Our fighters in all border areas […] will respond to this dangerous violation,” he added.
In Syria and Iraq, attacks against military bases of the United States, Israel’s main ally, have increased in recent weeks, while in Yemen the Houthi rebels, also supported by Iran, have increased their shootings in Red Sea in order to slow down international maritime traffic in “support” of the Palestinians in Gaza. In this context, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, is due to meet this weekend with officials in Lebanon while American Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Turkey for a regional tour which will also take him to Arab countries and the Holy Land in the hope of avoiding a regional conflagration.
“The future will above all be reconstruction”
Another possible element on his program: the longer-term future of Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant unveiled his first post-war plan on Thursday, which calls for the establishment of an administration without Hamas, but without an Israeli civilian presence. “The people of Gaza are Palestinian. Therefore, Palestinian entities will be in charge (of management) on the condition that there is no hostile action or threat against the State of Israel,” stressed Yoav Gallant, whose plan did not received at this stage the approval of the Israeli government, divided on this thorny issue. “Gaza is Palestinian land which is intended to be part of the future Palestinian state […]it is not up to Israel to decide the future of Gaza,” the head of French diplomacy, Catherine Colonna, told CNN on Friday.
For Ziad Abdo, 60, a Palestinian who fled the fighting to take refuge in Rafah, “the future will above all be reconstruction. Look at the destroyed hospitals, the ruined schools. There is nothing left “. But, for two far-right Israeli ministers – Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – the future of Gaza depends more on the departure of Palestinians there and the return of Jewish settlers.
Moreover, in the occupied West Bank, the number of new illegal settlements and roads for settlers has experienced an “unprecedented” increase since the start of the war in Gaza, maintains in a study the Israeli NGO Peace Now. NOW). “The three months of war in Gaza are being exploited by settlers in order to create a state of affairs on the ground and thus take control of larger areas” of the West Bank, underlines the NGO, citing a “political environment” favorable to settlers.
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