2023-12-09 05:01:00
The Israeli Army deepened its offensive this Friday to control Khan Yunis, a city in the south of the Gaza Strip which they consider the main stronghold of Hamas in the Palestinian territory, where hundreds of people continue to die every day.
It is a fast, powerful and focused operation, according to a military statement, which highlighted that they are advancing “from tunnel to tunnel, from house to house.” “The troops of the 98th Division eliminated dozens of terrorists, carried out searches, destroyed tunnels and launched precise attacks on the ground and in the air,” he explained.
As part of their strategy to break Hamas lines, Israeli forces attacked dozens of its missile launch positions and observation points, while continuing to surround the city. “In a sustained raid, soldiers found many weapons in a school, including rocket and mortar launchers, explosives and intelligence materials,” the note added.
Two Israeli soldiers were seriously injured in a failed operation to rescue hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, the Army said in another statement. Of the 240 captured by the Islamist group after the terrorist attack on October 7 that killed 1,200 people, at least 137 are still captive and alive.
The destruction and deaths
Israeli bombing destroyed the Al Omari mosque in Gaza, the largest and oldest in the Strip, built in the 7th century under the rule of the second caliph, Umar ibn al Khattab, on the ruins of an ancient Byzantine church. “The mosque is one of the most prominent Islamic and historical monuments in Gaza and its destruction by the occupation is part of the barbaric Israeli aggression, which does not exclude the main monuments of the city,” the Gazan authorities denounced in a statement, who asked to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to intervene and condemn Israel’s acts against Palestinian symbols, landmarks and heritage.
According to the latest report from the Gaza Ministry of Health, the death toll rose to 17,487 – of which 70 percent were women and children – and 46,480 injured. Among those who died in the last hours is the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, one of the most active voices of the Palestinian cause. “Refaat received a phone call from Israeli intelligence to locate him at the school where he was taking refuge. They informed him that they were going to kill him. He left the school not wanting to endanger others and at 6 p.m. his apartment was bombed. his sister, where he, his sister and his four children died,” Ramy Abdu, the director of the pro-human rights organization Euro-Mediterranean Monitor, explained in a message published on the social network X.
The detainees
Israel assured that it is looking for alleged Hamas members among those detained in Gaza, whose images of dozens of them half-naked, blindfolded and handcuffed, were spread on social networks and Palestinian media. Eylon Levy, spokesperson for the Israeli government, said at a press conference that the detainees are men of military age who were discovered in combat zones where civilians were supposed to have been evacuated. Those arrested are interrogated to see whether or not they are Hamas terrorists, because they dress informally and use civilians for their terrorist objectives, Levy insisted.
Criticism for this situation did not take long to arrive. “The images we have seen are very worrying because everyone has a basic right to human dignity, and the images of how people are treated are very worrying,” said the spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric. in dialogue with the press.
Photographs and videos show dozens of men in their underwear, sitting on the ground or kneeling in places such as a street and an open field, surrounded by Israeli soldiers and armored vehicles that guard them, while others are taken away piled up in a military truck. . One of the men identified as detained among the broadcast content is a Palestinian journalist, prompting his employers to accuse Israel of carrying out invasive searches and humiliating treatment of civilians.
The uselessness of the Security Council
The United States made it clear that it will not support the call for a ceasefire in Gaza by UN Secretary General António Guterres, according to its representative, Robert Wood, before the UN Security Council. “We do not support the call for an immediate ceasefire. It would only sow the seeds of another war, because Hamas wants neither a lasting peace nor a two-state solution,” Wood said. “If Israel were to lay down its weapons today, as some Member States are calling for, Hamas would continue to hold its hostages, women and children, old and young, many of them subject to inhuman and cruel treatment,” he added.
Wood thus threw a bucket of cold water on the expectations that the organization would approve this call for a permanent truce, in a resolution presented by the United Arab Emirates and which received the support of all Arab and Islamic countries, in addition to Russia, China and France. . Shortly before the American representative spoke, the Israeli ambassador, Gilad Erdan, radically opposed a truce, stressing that “the true path to peace is to support Israel’s mission and not to call for a ceasefire at all.”
It is worth clarifying that in the two months of war, the Security Council voted on several occasions other resolutions to request the end of the war, with vetoes crossed by the United States and Russia, and only on November 15 did it manage to agree on a call for humanitarian pauses to deliver aid to the Gazan civilian population. However, the only truce declared in these two months, which lasted seven days, was not the result of that resolution, but rather of indirect negotiations between the sides of the war conflict – with mediation by Qatar, Egypt and the US – to exchanging hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
The NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) criticized the UN agency for its inaction regarding the situation in the Strip. “The inaction of the United Nations Security Council and the vetoes of the member states, particularly the United States, make them complicit in the ongoing massacre,” he said in a statement.
West Bank and Lebanon
In addition to Gaza, violence is reproduced daily on other fronts such as the West Bank, where at least six Palestinians, including a minor, died in clashes with Israeli forces, in which one soldier was wounded. According to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), two young people, aged 14 and 36, died in a clash in the Al-Faraa refugee camp.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Army announced that it successfully intercepted a suspicious aerial object crossing its border from Lebanon in a new day of artillery exchanges against the militias of the Shiite group Hezbollah. “Several launches were identified from Lebanon towards IDF (Israel Defense Forces) posts in the border areas. IDF artillery hit the source of the fire and additional targets in Lebanon,” according to a military statement.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for at least seven attacks on Israeli checkpoints on the border, in the Shebaa farms and Kfarchuba hills, as well as Israeli positions in front of the Houla and Rmeich towns in southern Lebanon, which it described as direct hits.
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