2023-12-25 21:44:48
Around a hundred Palestinians have been killed in the last few hours in intense Israeli attacks, according to Hamas, in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the region this Monday (25) and promised to intensify the offensives in the already devastated and besieged territory.
Entering its 80th day, the war offers no respite to Palestinian civilians threatened with starvation, according to the UN, despite urgent calls for a ceasefire.
According to the latest report from the Ministry of Health of Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, 20,674 people died in Israeli military operations, the majority of them women, children and teenagers, and around 55,000 people were injured.
The offensive, the bloodiest ever carried out by Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, was launched in retaliation for the October 7 attack, which left around 1,140 people dead, most of them civilians, according to official Israeli data. Hamas also kidnapped around 250 people, 129 of whom remain detained in Gaza.
This Monday, before dawn, Israeli planes bombarded Gaza intensely. The region has been subject to an Israeli blockade since 2007, two years after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2005 from the territory it occupied for 38 years.
One of the attacks, near the village of Al-Zawaida (center), left 12 dead, while another left at least 18 dead in Khan Younis (south), according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
On Sunday night (24), at least 70 people were killed in an attack on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp (center), according to the same source. The Israeli Army said it was “verifying the incident.”
“What if it was your son!”
On the Israeli side, the Army announced the death of two soldiers, bringing to 156 the number of soldiers killed since the start of the ground offensive in Gaza, on October 27, 20 days after the start of aerial bombardments. “A very high price for war”, according to Benjamin Netanyahu.
Despite growing calls for a ceasefire, a high number of victims and a humanitarian crisis described as catastrophic by the UN and NGOs, the Israeli prime minister remains inflexible.
After traveling to Gaza on Monday, he declared before the elected representatives of his Likud party: “I am now returning from Gaza. We have not stopped, we continue to fight and we will intensify the fighting in the coming days. It will be a long war (.. .)”.
Later, during a speech in Parliament in which he explained that troops needed “more time” to secure the release of the hostages, Netanyahu was questioned by families of the victims, who shouted “Now, now!”.
“What if it was your son?”, “80 days, every minute is hell”, could be read on the posters hung by these families.
In the Gaza Strip, subject to a total siege by Israel since October 9, the situation of the 1.9 million displaced people – 85% of the population – is desperate, according to UN agencies, which say that no place in the territory is safe.
“Like an earthquake”
“The Israeli Army does not spare civilians”, accuses Ziad Awad, in the al-Maghazi camp, referring to the night attacks. It was like an “earthquake”.
Despite the vote, on Friday (22), in the UN Security Council, of a resolution that calls for the “immediate” and “large-scale” delivery of humanitarian aid, this did not register a significant increase and residents lack all.
The head of the UN, Antonio Guterres, and his team, who continue to warn of the catastrophic situation in Gaza and call for a ceasefire, have attracted the ire of the head of Israeli diplomacy, Eli Cohen, who considers that “the conduct of the The UN is a shame for the organization and the international community.”
The UN has warned that most hospitals are out of service in Gaza and that in the next six weeks the entire population is at risk of facing a high level of food insecurity, including hunger. Following missions to hospitals in Gaza in recent days, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it found desperate and hungry Palestinians, some of whom attacked one of its aid convoys.
Despite the intransigent positions of the protagonists, Egyptian and Qatari mediators continue to try to negotiate a new truce, after the week-long one at the end of November that allowed the release of 105 hostages against 240 Palestinian prisoners and the entry of important humanitarian aid into Gaza. .
The war also ends up extending beyond Palestinian territory. Yemen’s Huthi rebels, reportedly backed by Iran, have been attacking ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with the Palestinians. On the other hand, this Monday, the official Iranian agency IRNA announced the death of General Razi Moussavi, a high-ranking officer of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, killed in an attack attributed to the Israeli army near Damascus.
Israel rarely comments on its operations in neighboring Syria but says it wants to prevent Iran, its sworn enemy, from establishing itself on its doorstep.
(With information from AFP)
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