2024-01-08 13:35:45
MONDE – The conflict in Gaza began its fourth month on Sunday January 7, 2024, with no sign of respite on the horizon. “We must continue until total victory,” says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli army announced that it had “completed the dismantling of the Hamas military structure in the north” of the Palestinian enclave. The movement’s Ministry of Health now reports more than 22,800 deaths, mostly civilians. Two journalists, including a freelance videographer working with the AFP, were killed in an Israeli bombing. International pressure and calls for a ceasefire are intensifying as US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken makes another visit to the Middle East. At the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Tel Aviv plans to plead “not guilty” to genocide charges.
The Gaza Ministry of Health announced on Saturday January 6, 2024 that 122 people were killed and 256 others injured by the Israeli army in 24 hours. The same day, the IDF announced that it had “completed the dismantling of Hamas’ military structure in the north.” According to army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, the Hamas elements still operating in the north do so “without structure and without a commander”.
“We must continue until total victory”
“We are now focusing on the center and the south”, where the Israeli army says it is continuing its operations, particularly in Khan Younes, the main city in the south, considered one of Hamas’s strongholds. But in this region, “we are going to do it differently,” he said, explaining that refugee camps in central Gaza are “crowded and full of terrorists.”
Tel Aviv remains inflexible, rejecting calls for a ceasefire and international pressure. “I have a clear message for our enemies: what happened on October 7 will never happen again,” says Benjamin Netanyahu. “This is the commitment of my government and this is why our soldiers on the ground give their lives. We must continue until total victory,” he added, referring to the total destruction of the Palestinian movement. “We must not end the war before we have achieved these objectives,” he said.
These statements come as Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, begins a new tour of Arab countries and Israel. After having visit Turkey to talk about Sweden’s accession to NATO, he called, from Amman, capital of Jordan, to avoid an escalation of the conflict and an “endless cycle of violence”, in reference to Lebanon. “We need to make sure that the conflict does not spread… One of the real concerns is the border between Israel and Lebanon,” he said.
The number two in the Hamas political bureau, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed on Tuesday January 2 in a drone strike attributed to Israel in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold. On Saturday January 6, 2024, Hezbollah responded by firing dozens of rockets at a military base in northern Israel. Exchanges of fire on the Israeli-Lebanese border have been almost daily since October 7. The escalation of the conflict is also evident in Syria and Iraq, where American military bases are targeted, as well as in the Red Sea, where the Houthis have disrupted global maritime traffic.
“Uninhabitable place of death”
Antony Blinken also insisted on the “imperative” to increase humanitarian aid to the population of Gaza, “to reduce the number of civilian casualties, to work towards lasting regional peace and to move towards the establishment of a Palestinian state.” The humanitarian situation is “catastrophic” according to the UN, which describes the enclave as an “uninhabitable place of death”. The bombings destroyed entire neighborhoods and forced 85% of the population to flee.
Gaza has “simply become uninhabitable”, and its inhabitants “face daily threats before the eyes of the world”, deplores the UN humanitarian affairs coordinator, Martin Griffiths. “We continue to demand an immediate end to the conflict not only for the people of Gaza and its threatened neighbors, but for generations to come who will never forget the 90 days of hell and attacks on the most fundamental principles of humanity,” he added.
On Sunday January 7, an Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinian journalists in Rafah. They are Moustafa Thuraya, a freelance videographer working with AFP since 2019, and Hamza al-Dahdouh, journalist for the Al Jazeera channel, specifies the Ministry of Health. The Qatari channel condemned, in a press release, “the targeting and assassination” of journalists in Gaza.
The NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced that it had evacuated its staff from a hospital in central Gaza, where “the situation became so dangerous that some members of our team living in the neighborhood were not even able to leave their homes due to constant threats from drones and snipers”.
For its part, France, for the first time, dropped seven tons of humanitarian aid into the enclave on the night of January 4 to 5, as part of a Franco-Jordanian military operation. “It is good to do humanitarian work when we are a State, but we are also waiting for a firmer diplomatic posture to condemn this situation,” reacted Jean-François Corty, vice-president of Médecins du monde.
It is South Africa which has adopted, until then, a “firmer stance”, by initiating proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the Hebrew State for “genocide” against the Palestinians in Gaza. Tel Aviv will be represented in The Hague by a retired Israeli Supreme Court judge, Aharon Barak.
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