2024-02-07 14:31:10
Five months of war already in the Gaza Strip, and a new tour in the Middle East for the American Secretary of State. After visiting Egypt and Qatar on Tuesday, two countries at the heart of mediation efforts, Antony Blinken met this Wednesday, February 7, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss a truce in the fighting. Hamas confirmed on Tuesday that it had submitted its response, without detailing it, to the Egyptian and Qatari mediators to a proposed agreement formulated at the end of January in Paris by American, Qatari and Egyptian officials.
Information to remember
⇒ Blinken hopes for hostage deal but “much work remains”
⇒ Bombings continue in Khan Younes and Rafah
⇒ A ceremony honoring the 42 French victims of Hamas attacks
Blinken in Tel Aviv to discuss Gaza truce deal
The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, indicated this Wednesday that he hoped for an agreement on the hostages held in the Gaza Strip but stressed that there remained “a lot of work” to achieve it, after talks with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem . “We are very focused on this work to, we hope, be able to resume the release of the hostages which was interrupted,” added Antony Blinken, in reference to the hundred hostages already freed during a week of truce at the end of November.
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Hamas announced Tuesday that it had submitted its response to Egyptian and Qatari mediators to a truce proposal formulated at the end of January in Paris by American, Qatari and Egyptian officials.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdelrahmane Al-Thani described Hamas’ response as “overall positive”. In Israel, this was “carefully examined by the officials involved in the negotiations”, according to Benjamin Netanyahu’s services.
UN describes Gaza as a ‘place of death’
In the Palestinian territory devastated by Israeli strikes and described as a “place of death” by the UN, Israeli bombings continue in particular in Khan Younes, a town that it presents as a Hamas stronghold, and in the neighboring town of Rafah, refuge for hundreds of thousands of terrified displaced people, who now fear a ground assault.
“We did not sleep all night. The noise of the planes did not stop. The bombings became so close and so violent. I am terrified that Israel will launch a ground operation on Rafah,” he said. told AFP Dana Ahmed, a 40-year-old woman who fled Gaza City in the north and is living in a tent in Rafah.
Since the start of the war, entire neighborhoods have been destroyed by Israeli bombings and 1.7 million people have been displaced among the approximately 2.4 million inhabitants of the small territory. More than 1.3 million displaced people are crowded into desperate conditions in Rafah, five times the original population of this city backed by the closed border with Egypt, according to the UN.
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This city could be Israel’s next objective. On Monday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that the army would “reach places where it has not yet fought […] to the last Hamas bastion, namely Rafah.
High tensions in the region
Outside Gaza, tensions remain high in the region between Israel and its allies on the one hand and Iran and its “axis of resistance” on the other, including, in addition to Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. On Tuesday evening, the Israeli army claimed to have got its hands on documents “proving” transfers of 154 million US dollars from Iran to Hamas from 2014 to 2020.
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During the night, Israeli strikes on the Homs region in Syria left five people dead, including three civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
National tribute to the French victims of October 7 in Paris
In the courtyard of the Invalides, 55 portraits and 55 families: President Emmanuel Macron paid a national tribute on Wednesday to the French victims of the attack carried out on October 7 by Hamas in Israel, in the presence, very controversial, of elected officials from the left radical. Emmanuel Macron denounced “the greatest anti-Semitic massacre of our century”, adding that “all lives are equal” in the “tearings” of the Middle East.
This tribute, unprecedented outside Israel, comes four months to the day after the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement, which led to the death of more than 1,160 people, killed by bullets, burned alive or mutilated, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
READ ALSO: Tribute to the victims of Hamas: when LFI tramples on consent
With 42 fellow citizens or Franco-Israelis killed, three still missing and presumed hostages, four hostages released and six injured, this is the heaviest death toll on the French side since the Nice attack on July 14, 2016 (86 dead and more than 400 wounded). Three hostages of French nationality are still being held in Gaza, according to Paris: Orion Hernandez-Radoux, also of Mexican nationality and kidnapped at the Nova rave party, Ohad Yaalomi whose son Eitan was released in November and Ofer Calderon, both of whom children were also released.
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