2023-10-26 05:53:00
Israel continues to prepare for a ground offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, despite international warnings against an operation that risks worsening an already critical humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory.
“We are preparing a ground incursion,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday evening.
“When, how, how much, and the considerations we take into account, I cannot go into detail,” he added, while the Israeli army recalled 360,000 reservists massed on the borders of the Strip. Gaza.
While waiting for this probable operation, promised repeatedly since the unprecedented deadly attack by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, the Israeli army is relentlessly bombing the small territory of 362 km2 where 2.4 million Palestinians are crowded together. , also subjected to “a total siege” which deprives them of water, food and electricity.
French President Emmanuel Macron ruled on Wednesday in Cairo that a “massive” ground offensive in the Gaza Strip would be a “mistake”. His Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, called for avoiding a “land invasion of Gaza”.
“Sick with anxiety”
In the United States, President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that Israel had “the right” and “the responsibility” to defend itself but that it must do everything possible “to protect innocent civilians.”
Mr. Biden, who asked the new speaker of the American House of Representatives to quickly approve an aid program for Israel, also assured that he had not “demanded” from Mr. Netanyahu that he delay his possible offensive until ‘to the release of hostages in the hands of Hamas.
Some 220 hostages were taken to Gaza by fighters of the Palestinian Islamist movement, classified as terrorist by the United States, Israel and the European Union, according to figures from the Israeli authorities. Four women have been released since Friday evening. The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday called for all of them to be released for “health reasons”.
“We are sick with anxiety, sick with anxiety,” repeats in Paris, France, Moran Betzer Tayar, a 54-year-old woman whose nephew and his wife were taken hostage at Kibbutz Nirim, urging Hamas to ” show humanity.”
The Hamas attack killed more than 1,400 people in Israel, mainly civilians, according to authorities.
Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and has since been subject to an Israeli land, air and sea blockade, announced on Wednesday a new toll of more than 6,500 deaths, mainly civilians, since the start of the Israeli bombings.
For the United States, a ceasefire “at this stage would only benefit Hamas.” The White House instead suggested “pauses” to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, a position that the countries of the European Union, meeting Thursday and Friday at a summit in Brussels, should rally, according to diplomats.
Hospitals closed
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Tuesday for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and condemned the “clear violations of humanitarian law” in the Palestinian territory, provoking the anger of Israel.
Only a few dozen trucks loaded with humanitarian aid have arrived in Gaza since October 21 from Egypt, while at least a hundred trucks per day would be needed, estimates the UN.
The latter urgently calls for the delivery of fuel to run generators in hospitals, pump and purify water. Which Israel excludes, saying it would benefit Hamas.
According to Mohammed Abu Selmeya, the director of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the largest in the territory, “ten hospitals are already out of service” and “more than 90% of medicines and products are exhausted.”
Water supplies south of the Wadi Gaza marsh have temporarily improved, according to the latest report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), thanks to small quantities of fuel taken from the water reserves. Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) and UNICEF. “However, the fuel available at these facilities will be exhausted by October 26,” it adds.
“Oil on the fire”
On October 7, in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish rest, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel from the Gaza Strip, spreading terror during this attack of unprecedented violence and scale since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
The Israeli Prime Minister acknowledged on Wednesday that he too will have to “be held accountable” after this attack which stunned the country, but “later”. “We will examine the situation in detail, we will get to the bottom of it.”
“As prime minister, I am responsible for securing the future of the country,” he added.
Since October 15, the Israeli army has called on the population of the northern Gaza Strip, where the bombardments are most intense, to evacuate to the south, and at least 1.4 million Palestinians have fled their homes since the beginning. of the war, according to the UN.
However, strikes also continue to affect the south, where several hundred thousand civilians are massed. On Wednesday, one of them hit a supermarket in Rafah. Another strike killed the family of Al-Jazeera’s main Gaza correspondent, Wael al-Dahdouh, the Qatari channel said on Wednesday.
“I survived five wars and a million escalations,” says Jawaher al-Aqraa, an English teacher who took refuge with her brother in the Deir el-Balah camp (center). “But with this war, I feel like I’m just waiting my turn to die.”
While part of the international community fears a regional conflagration, the Israeli army announced Wednesday evening strikes against Lebanon in response to a surface-to-air missile attack. Earlier, it said it had struck military infrastructure in Syria after shots fired towards its territory.
Tension is also very high in the West Bank where more than a hundred Palestinians have been killed in violence since October 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Mr Biden called for attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank to “stop now”. “This is adding fuel to the fire. They are attacking Palestinians in places that are rightfully theirs…and this must stop now.”
26/10/2023 05:51:47 – Jerusalem (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
#Israel #continues #prepare #ground #offensive #Hamas #warnings