An Egyptian delegation arrived in Israel on Friday to try to relaunch negotiations on a truce in the Gaza Strip associated with the release of hostages, while an Israeli offensive on Rafah is being prepared, according to Egyptian and Israeli media.
The war between Israel and Hamas, which has raged since October 7 in the Palestinian territory, has left at least 51 dead in 24 hours, according to the Islamist movement’s Ministry of Health. An AFP correspondent witnessed a missile attack on a house in Gaza City on Friday, which left at least three people dead.
The war is accompanied by an outbreak of violence on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where the Israeli army announced the death of a civilian on Friday.
Israel is meanwhile preparing to launch a ground offensive in the crowded town of Rafah, bordering Egypt in the southern Gaza Strip, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considers Hamas’s last major stronghold.
Many capitals and humanitarian organizations fear a bloodbath in this city, which has become a refuge for nearly a million and a half Palestinians, many of them crammed into tent camps, without water or electricity, where they are beginning to suffer from the warmth after enduring the cold of winter.
A delegation from Egypt, one of three mediating countries with Qatar and the United States, arrived in Israel on Friday to discuss a “comprehensive framework for a ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, according to the Egyptian media close to intelligence Al-Qahera News, which cites a senior Egyptian official.
According to Israeli media, the delegation must try to relaunch the stalled negotiations and plead for a truce agreement involving the release of “dozens” of hostages held in Gaza.
The war between Israel and Hamas will also be at the center of meetings with senior Arab and European diplomats expected this weekend in Riyadh, including the heads of diplomacy of Germany and France.
Shooting at the Lebanese border
On the Israeli-Lebanese border, exchanges of fire have become daily between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, a powerful armed movement allied to Hamas and supported by Iran.
Tens of thousands of residents have fled communities on both sides of the border.
The army announced Friday that an Israeli civilian working on a construction site had been killed near the border by missiles fired from southern Lebanon.
“During the night, terrorists fired anti-tank missiles at the Har Dov area in northern Israel,” the army said.
Har Dov is the Israeli name for Shebaa Farms, a disputed area on the border between Lebanon and the Syrian Golan Heights, annexed by Israel.
Hezbollah, for its part, claims to have carried out “a complex ambush” against an Israeli convoy in the “occupied Shebaa Farms” and to have “destroyed two vehicles”.
The army announced airstrikes and tank fire against targets belonging to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
“A missile” then another
The war in Gaza was triggered on October 7 by an unprecedented attack carried out against Israel by Hamas commandos, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report based on data Israeli officials.
More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 129 remain captive in Gaza, 34 of whom have died according to Israeli officials.
In retaliation, Israel promised to destroy Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007 and which it considers a terrorist organization, as do the United States and the European Union. His army launched an offensive that has so far killed 34,356 people, mostly civilians, according to the Islamist movement’s health ministry.
At midday on Friday, an AFP correspondent saw aircraft firing missiles at a house in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, in the north of the territory, and the bodies of a man, a woman and a child were extracted from the rubble.
“I was sitting selling cigarettes and suddenly a missile fell, shaking the whole area, followed by another missile, shaking the area again. We rushed to see what had happened, and we found martyrs, a man, a woman and a little girl,” a witness who did not give his name also told AFP.
The AFP correspondent then saw two successive airstrikes hitting the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City. A thick plume of smoke rose from the neighborhood.
Democracy “
After six and a half months of bombings and ground fighting, the war devastated the Gaza Strip where the UN estimates the mass of debris and rubble to be cleared at 37 million tonnes. Starting from the hypothesis of the use of a hundred trucks, it “would take 14 years to clear”, underlined in Geneva Pehr Lodhammar, an official of UNMAS, the UN agency responsible for demining .
The conflict has also caused a humanitarian disaster in the territory of 2.4 million inhabitants, besieged by Israel and threatened with famine.
Faced with difficulties in transporting international aid by road from Egypt, due to the very strict controls imposed by Israel, the United States began to build a temporary port and a pier facing the coast of Gaza, where military or civilian ships will be able to deposit their cargo.
In the United States, a country allied to Israel, a protest movement against the war in Gaza is becoming widespread on campuses, after leaving Columbia University in New York more than a week ago.
These demonstrations by pro-Palestinian students are part of “democracy”, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, visiting China, said on Friday.