Deadly Israeli bombings hit the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, where Israel maintains its plan for a ground offensive on the crowded city of Rafah to defeat Hamas, while the mediating countries try to move towards a truce agreement associated with a liberation hostages.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, however, judged that an Israeli offensive on Rafah did not appear to be “imminent”.
Six months after the start of the war triggered by the bloody attack carried out by the Islamist movement against Israel, Israeli military operations left 153 dead in 24 hours in the Palestinian territory, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
In Cairo, the mediating countries – Qatar, Egypt, United States – put a new proposal on the table in three stages on Sunday.
The first provides for a six-week truce, the release of 42 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 800 to 900 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, the entry of 400 to 500 trucks of food aid per day and the return home of the inhabitants of northern Gaza Strip displaced by the war, according to a source within Hamas.
On the eve of Eid el-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, Hamas said on Monday it was “studying the proposal” before transmitting its response to mediators, adding that Israel “had not responded to any” of his requests.
The White House on Tuesday deemed Hamas’ statements on this proposal “not very encouraging.”
” It’s time. Let’s conclude this ceasefire. We are ready. I think Israel is ready. And I think Hamas should come to the table and be prepared to do that as well,” said US Presidential National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
“There is a date”
PHOTO FATIMA SHBAIR, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Israel announced on Sunday the withdrawal of its troops from Khan Younes, the largest city in the south of the small territory transformed into a field of ruins by Israeli bombings and fierce fighting.
Israel announced on Sunday the withdrawal of its troops from the large city of Khan Younes, in the south of the territory, destroyed after several months of fighting, in order to prepare “the continuation of their missions in the nearby Rafah zone”.
This border town with Egypt is home, according to the UN, to around a million and a half people, the majority displaced.
Despite multiple warnings from foreign capitals which fear heavy civilian losses, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is determined to launch a ground offensive in Rafah, which he presents as the last great bastion of Hamas, in power since 2007 in the Gaza Strip.
“This will be done – there is a date,” Mr. Netanyahu said on Monday, without revealing the date.
“We will complete the elimination of Hamas battalions, including in Rafah. No force in the world will stop us,” he declared again on Tuesday, visiting a military base.
Antony Blinken, however, assured Tuesday that Israel had not provided the United States, opposed to a massive offensive on Rafah, with a date for this possible operation.
The war broke out on October 7 when Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented attack in southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to a report established by the AFP based on official Israeli figures.
More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 129 remain detained in Gaza, including 34 who have died, according to Israeli officials.
In retaliation, Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union. Its army launched an offensive that has so far killed 33,360 people in the Gaza Strip, mostly civilians, according to Hamas’s health ministry.
The war has led to a massive population displacement and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the small besieged territory of 2.4 million inhabitants, where the UN fears widespread famine while humanitarian aid, strictly controlled by Israel, arrives in very insufficient quantity, mainly via Egypt.
Israel, facing intense international pressure to let more aid through, said 468 trucks entered the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the highest number in one day since the start of the war.
“A tsunami”
In the northern city of Gaza, a World Health Organization (WHO) mission summed up the dramatic reality after a visit Monday to al-Chifa hospital, destroyed during an Israeli operation in March: “This place, which was a place where life was given, now only evokes death,” said a doctor member of the delegation, Athanasios Gargavanis.
In the ruins of the immense hospital complex, the identification of corpses is a new ordeal for emergency services and families. “We lack the necessary equipment and time is not on our side, we have to finish before the bodies decompose,” the director of the emergency department, Amjad Aliwa, told an AFP correspondent.
On Tuesday, the army announced that it had destroyed “terrorist infrastructure” in several sectors and reported fighting in the center of the territory.
Since the announcement on Sunday of the Israeli withdrawal from Khan Younes, thousands of displaced people have returned to the city to discover an apocalyptic landscape.
“This house, my house, was a five-story building and housed over 80 people. There is nothing left. Here, I lived my childhood under a sycamore tree that was more than fifty years old. I can’t find him anymore,” says Mohammed Saggah, back in his town. “It’s not a war, not an aggression, it’s a tsunami that hit the neighborhood,” he adds.
In anticipation of an offensive on Rafah, Israel wants to acquire a stock of 40,000 tents to shelter nearly 500,000 people, according to a government source who did not specify where these tents would be installed.