2024-01-06 16:03:50
► Three months of a spreading war
As the relentless war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas enters its fourth month on Sunday, January 7, the Israeli Air Force carried out new strikes on January 6 on the besieged and devastated Gaza Strip. , now described by the UN as “uninhabitable place of death”. According to the Hamas health ministry, the toll in Gaza now stands at 22,722 dead, mostly women, children and adolescents, and more than 58,000 injured.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after its unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which killed 1,140 people, mainly civilians, and the kidnapping of 250 people, around a hundred of whom were released during a truce at the end of November.
The conflict is now raising fears of spillover with the increase in violence almost everywhere in the region. On Saturday January 6, Lebanese Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets towards a military base in Meron in northern Israel, in response to the elimination, attributed to Israel, of Hamas number two on January 2 near Beirut. Visiting Lebanon, the head of diplomacy of the European Union, Josep Borrell declared: “ It is imperative to avoid regional escalation in the Middle East, it is absolutely necessary to prevent Lebanon from being drawn into a regional conflict.” “I also address Israel: no one will win from a regional conflict”he added during a press conference in Beirut on January 6 with the head of Lebanese diplomacy Abdallah Bouhabib.
In Sanaa, Yemen, the capital under the control of the Houthi rebels, a huge crowd of Yemenis participated on January 5 in a march in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. The crowd, partly armed, chanted the slogan “Death to America, death to Israel” flown over by helicopters and fighter planes. Supported by Iran, Israel’s enemy, the Houthis have also increased attacks in the Red Sea against commercial ships since the start of the conflict. Finally, in Syria and Iraq, attacks against American military bases have increased in recent weeks.
► The American Secretary of State in Türkiye
The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, began his fourth trip to the Middle East in 4 months, and stopped off in Turkey on January 6. He met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to plead for increased aid for Gaza and discuss ways to avoid a regional conflagration.
He must then go to Israel, the occupied West Bank and five Arab countries. Among other things, he intends to press Israel on the next phase of military operations and begin dialogue on the post-war period. Antony Blinken will also call on countries in the region to make it clear to Iran that the United States is not seeking escalation, but that it will defend its interests when attacked, according to an American official speaking under covered by anonymity.
France and Jordan drop seven tonnes of aid on Gaza
France and Jordan have dropped seven tons of humanitarian and health aid on the Gaza Strip, where the approximately 2.4 million inhabitants lack everything after almost three months of conflict, French President Emmanuel announced on January 5. Macron, a fortnight after his official trip to Jordan on December 21 and 22.
According to the Élysée, the drop operation was carried out on the night of January 4 to 5 by two C-130s, military transport planes, one French and the other Jordanian, “with mixed teams of both Jordanian and French in both aircraft”. The “humanitarian and health freight” was stacked on pallets and was dropped with a system to direct the packages so that they landed in secure areas as close as possible to the target, the Jordanian field hospital in the Gaza Strip, according to the presidency French. These two planes left from an air base in Jordan where 250 French soldiers are based as part of Operation Chammal launched in 2014 with the international coalition against the Islamic State (IS) group coordinated by the United States.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains critical. In a difficult context, France and Jordan provided aid by air to the population and to those assisting them. pic.twitter.com/RXQYgPa9Ep
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) January 5, 2024
This airdrop aims to alleviate the very great difficulties in transporting humanitarian aid by road in this territory where the Israeli army only allows aid trucks to enter in dribs and drabs. And this, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding their access to Gaza.
► Israeli families upset at music festival site attacked by Hamas
After three months of absence ” intolerable “, Relatives of the Israeli victims killed or kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023 visited for the first time Friday, the site of Reïm in the Negev desert, location of the Tribe of Nova music festival. Nearly 3,500 young people came to dance there, in the open air, five kilometers from the border with Gaza, on Friday October 6, to the sound of psytrance and techno music, before being brutally attacked by terrorists, five kilometers from the border with Gaza. Among these young people, 364 were killed that day. A memorial with portraits of the victims, flowers, candles and Israeli flags was set up at the site.
The visit was organized by the Hostage Families Forum, some of whom, upset, testified at a press conference. Asaf Pozniak, one of the founders of the Hostage Families Forum, lost his two nieces, Haodya and Tair, 27 and 23, in the Hamas attack. So the 30-year-old young man clings to the “ lives that can be saved. We must do everything to keep the pressure on the international community and the Israeli government to bring them home now.”he insisted.
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