Deadly Israeli strikes, fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian Hamas, humanitarian disaster: the relentless war in the Gaza Strip entered its tenth month on Sunday with a relaunch of mediation efforts aimed at a ceasefire.
A senior Hamas official told AFP on Sunday that the Islamist movement agreed to negotiate on the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners in the absence of a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
“Hamas demanded Israel’s agreement to a complete and permanent ceasefire as a condition before negotiating,” he said. “This point was overcome, with the mediators committing that as long as negotiations are ongoing, the ceasefire remains in effect.”
While Hamas had announced new “ideas” on Wednesday to end the war, relaunching the diplomatic marathon, Israeli emissaries will return to Doha in the coming days for talks with Qatari mediators, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said, stressing the persistence of “gaps” with Hamas.
Talks with US mediators are also taking place in Egypt, according to Egyptian media outlet Al-Qahera News.
On the ground, fighting continues in the small, devastated and besieged Palestinian territory, which was targeted by new deadly Israeli strikes on Sunday.
PHOTO EYAD BABA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A Palestinian man after Israeli shelling in Zawaida, central Gaza Strip, on July 7.
Triggered on October 7 after an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil, the war threatens to take on a regional dimension with daily exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. On Sunday, the powerful Lebanese formation, allied with Hamas, claimed responsibility for dozens of rockets on northern Israel.
“Reduced to pieces”
The Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data. Of the 251 people kidnapped at the time, 116 are still being held in Gaza, 42 of whom are dead, according to the Israeli army.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007 and which it, along with the United States and the European Union, classifies as a terrorist organization.
His army then launched a major offensive that devastated the Palestinian territory and left 38,153 dead, mostly civilians, according to the latest report Sunday from the Health Ministry of the Gaza government led by Hamas.
On Sunday, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported that six people, including two children aged three and four, were killed in their home in Zawaida (center).
Sami Mohammed told AFP he was woken up by the collapse of the house. “I ran and found my nephews […] my brother, my sister-in-law and their young children. They were torn to pieces and their blood was all over the floor.”
PHOTO EYAD BABA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A Palestinian boy walks in front of a school used as a shelter for displaced people in Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on July 7.
Nine other Palestinians were killed in strikes on buildings in the northern Gaza City, according to rescue workers and the Gaza Civil Defense.
Israeli bombings continued in Khan Younes (South) and in the Nusseirat camp (Center) where 16 people died on Saturday in a raid on a school sheltering thousands of displaced people, managed by the UN, according to Hamas.
Israel said its aircraft had targeted “several terrorists” in the area of the school, from where its soldiers had been attacked.
In the narrow strip of land, where Israel is besieging some 2.4 million people in conditions the UN has called “dire”, water and food are in short supply. According to the UN, 80% of the population is displaced and many residents, including children, have died of malnutrition.
After nine months of war, Israeli troops are still battling in several areas that the army had previously said it controlled, such as in Shujaiya, an eastern district of Gaza City where it claims to have “eliminated several terrorists”, and in Rafah (South).
The army is also carrying out operations in the Khan Younis municipality building, which “Hamas is using”, according to it, and Israeli warplanes have also launched a raid on an area of the Boureij refugee camp (center), according to witnesses.
“Day of Disruption” in Israel
On another front, Hezbollah said it had targeted four military sites in a barrage of fire on northern Israel, the day after one of its fighters was killed in an Israeli drone strike near Baalbek, in eastern Lebanon some 100 kilometers from the border.
A man was injured near Tiberias, about 30 kilometers from the border with Lebanon, according to the Israeli army. Israeli strikes targeted several areas of southern Lebanon on Sunday, according to the Lebanese news agency ANI.
While the new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called on Sunday for all parties to exercise “caution”, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, arrived in Israel to advocate a de-escalation.
As for Gaza, the mediators have so far only managed to extract from the two parties a single truce in the war at the end of November, which allowed the release of 80 Israeli hostages in exchange for that of 240 Palestinian detainees.
Benjamin Netanyahu has always said he wants to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all hostages are freed. Hamas has demanded a definitive ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza before any settlement agreement.
In Israel, protesters blocked roads in Tel Aviv as part of a “day of disruption” to demand that the government accept a ceasefire deal to free the hostages.
PHOTO ELOISA LOPEZ, REUTERS
Protesters in the streets of Tel Aviv
“The entire nation wants them back and an absolute majority supports a deal on the hostages. The duty of the state is to return them and that is at the heart of the consensus,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on X.
For weeks, thousands of people have been taking part in anti-government protests, mainly in the coastal city.