(Jerusalem) French President Emmanuel Macron ruled on Tuesday that “nothing can justify” the “suffering” of civilians in Gaza, alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, after a solidarity visit to Israel where he insisted on the release of the hostages and pleaded for an international coalition against Hamas.
“A Palestinian life is worth a French life which is worth an Israeli life,” declared Mr. Macron alongside the president of the Palestinian Authority, who asked him to work towards an end to Israel’s “aggression” in Gaza.
Mr. Macron is the first Western leader to visit the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority since the start of the war on October 7 between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. He arrived in Amman, Jordan, on Tuesday evening, the second stop on this regional tour.
The Palestinian Authority has no longer exercised any power in the Gaza Strip since Hamas ousted it in 2007.
As in Israel a little earlier, the French president proposed to the Palestinian president that the international coalition created in 2014 under the leadership of the United States to fight the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, in which France participates, “can also fight against Hamas. This proposal nevertheless promises to be extremely complex to implement, according to several experts.
In Jerusalem alongside Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Mr. Macron affirmed that “the first objective that we should have today is the release of all the hostages, without any distinction”.
Hostages released
After the release of two American hostages three days earlier, Hamas released two Israeli women on Monday evening. One of them, Yocheved Lifschitz, aged 85, told the press in Tel Aviv on Tuesday that she “went through hell” when she was kidnapped by men on motorcycles in the Nir Oz kibbutz.
She added that she was “beaten” and then taken to “a network of underground tunnels” but was then “treated well” during her more than two-week captivity in the Gaza Strip.
Qatar, involved in efforts to free some 220 hostages taken by Hamas during its attack on Israel, said on Tuesday it was “hopeful” to achieve further releases.
Hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel from Gaza, spreading terror during this attack, of violence and scale unprecedented since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
PHOTO MOHAMMED ABED, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The town of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 24, 2023
Israel, which is relentlessly shelling the Gaza Strip in response to this attack, has intensified its bombings in recent days as a prelude to a probable ground offensive.
“We are before the next stage, it is on its way […] we have one mission, to crush Hamas,” the Israeli Prime Minister reaffirmed to his troops on Tuesday.
After sixteen days of implementation and excitement, they are chomping at the bit. On the edge of the Gaza Strip, a sandy area in the middle of the fields has been transformed into a parking lot for around 500 armored vehicles and Merkava tanks of the Israeli Army, stationed in around fifteen columns of around ten vehicles. everyone, AFP observed on Tuesday.
“Humanitarian ceasefire”
In the Gaza Strip, besieged and deprived of everything, the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned on Tuesday that it would be forced to cease its operations in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday evening due to lack of fuel.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and condemned “clear violations of humanitarian law” in the Gaza Strip, drawing criticism from the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Affairs, Eli Cohen. “Mr. Secretary General, what world do you live in,” the latter said during a Security Council meeting devoted to the conflict.
PHOTO MOHAMMED DAHMAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The town of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 24, 2023
The United States reiterated on Tuesday that a ceasefire would “only benefit Hamas”, suggesting instead “pauses” to deliver humanitarian aid, which is still too slow to arrive according to American President Joe Biden.
International aid has begun to trickle in from Egypt via the Rafah border crossing, the only crossing point into Gaza not under Israeli control, with around fifty trucks since Saturday, when the The UN demands 100 per day.
According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, the bombings left 140 dead during the night from Monday to Tuesday in the Palestinian territory, the heaviest toll since the start of the war.
On Tuesday evening, he announced that 50 people had been killed in one hour in “several sectors” of the Gaza Strip.
Faced with a risk of the conflict flaring up, the French president called on Iran, a powerful supporter of Hamas, and its regional allies, Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, to “not take the risk of opening new fronts”, pleading for “a decisive relaunch of the political process with the Palestinians”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a warning to Iran on Tuesday, saying the United States would act “decisively” in the face of any attack, after strengthening its military presence in the region.
Heavy tolls
More than 1,400 people were killed in Israel, most of them civilians massacred on the day of the attack, according to Israeli authorities.
PHOTO MOHAMMED SALEM, REUTERS
The town of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 24, 2023
On Tuesday, Hamas claimed that 5,791 Palestinians, mostly civilians including 2,360 children, had been killed by Israeli retaliatory bombings since the start of the conflict, which destroyed entire neighborhoods and led to massive population displacement.
Israel has imposed a land, sea and air blockade on the Gaza Strip since Hamas, classified as a “terrorist” organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, took power there in 2007.
Rocket warning sirens sounded again on Tuesday in southern Israel, bordering the Gaza Strip, and in the center of the country.
Since October 15, the Israeli army has called on civilians in the north of the Gaza Strip, where the bombardments are most intense, to flee to the south.
However, strikes also continue to affect the south, close to the Egyptian border, where displaced people are massed by hundreds of thousands in catastrophic humanitarian conditions.
PHOTO HATEM ALI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A Palestinian carries the body of a child killed in an Israeli strike in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, October 24, 2023.
“We call on the whole world to intervene and stop the war. Most of those who die are children,” said Ibrahim Abou Jazar, who took refuge in a school in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.
In total, at least 1.4 million Palestinians have fled their homes since the start of the war, according to the UN.