(Tel Aviv) The head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken is expected in Israel on Monday evening for difficult talks on the war in Gaza against a backdrop of renewed tension on the Israeli-Lebanese border, raising fears of a regional conflagration.
The American Secretary of State deplored on Sunday the “tragedy” of the thousands of civilians killed in this war and warned that the conflict could “easily metastasize” as tensions escalate between Israel and Lebanon.
Mr. Blinken is due to pass through the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia before landing in Tel Aviv where he will meet with Israeli leaders on Tuesday.
PHOTO MENAHEM KAHANA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Smoke billows from buildings in the Palestinian territory during an Israeli bombardment on January 7, 2024.
This is his fourth regional tour since the start of the war. While Washington supports Israel militarily and politically, American diplomacy seems to be increasing its warnings regarding Palestinian civilians.
After several prominent Israeli figures, including ministers, proposed encouraging Gazans to leave the besieged territory to settle in third countries, Antony Blinken told a press conference in Qatar that Palestinians displaced by war were to be allowed to “return home”.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after its unprecedented attack on its territory on October 7, which killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on the Israeli toll.
This Islamist movement, in power in the coastal territory since 2007, is considered a terrorist organization by the European Union, the United States and Israel.
Around 250 people were kidnapped, including around 100 released during a truce at the end of November. At least 24 of the 132 people still in captivity are believed to have been killed.
PHOTO MOHAMMED DAHMAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Palestinians mourn their loved ones killed in an Israeli bombing outside a morgue in Khan Yunis on January 7.
The Israeli offensive has left 22,835 dead in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the latest report from the Ministry of Health in Gaza. The bombings razed entire neighborhoods there, displaced 85% of the population and caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis according to the UN.
“The last three months have felt like a quarter of a century,” says Nabil Fathi, a 51-year-old Gaza resident.
“I wake up thinking it was just a nightmare, but it’s reality,” he continues, “our house and my son’s house were destroyed and our family has 20 martyrs.”
“Even if I survive, I don’t know where we will go next,” he told AFP.
Two journalists killed
PHOTO MOHAMMED SALEM, REUTERS
Al-Jazeera journalist Waël Dahdouh, with one of his boys and his daughter, during the funeral of his son Hamza Waël Dahdouh, also a journalist
Two journalists working for the Qatari channel Al Jazeera were killed on Sunday in Rafah, a Gazan town near the Egyptian border, after an attack on their vehicle, according to their employer.
Moustafa Thuraya – a videographer also working with AFP – and Hamza Waël Dahdouh were returning from reporting after going to the site of a home hit by airstrikes.
The second is the son of the head of the Al Jazeera bureau in the Palestinian territory, Waël Dahdouh, who had already lost his wife and two of his children at the end of October in an Israeli strike.
The Israeli army declared to AFP that it had “hit a terrorist who was piloting a flying device representing a threat to the troops”, adding that it was “aware of information according to which, during the strike, two other suspects who were in the same vehicle had also been hit.”
With these deaths, at least 79 journalists and media workers, the vast majority Palestinian, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
International humanitarian organizations reported having had to evacuate one of the last hospitals in the Gaza Strip that was still partially operational due to the fighting.
The World Health Organization says that in Deir al-Balah (center), more than 600 patients from al-Aqsa hospital had to leave the premises given “the intensification of hostilities”.
The day before, Doctors Without Borders staff had left the same hospital after a shooting in the intensive care unit.
During the night, eight people arrived there after a strike on a home, according to the local Ministry of Health.
“(The occupier) wants to kill more by removing healthcare structures,” says the Ministry of Health in Gaza, which estimates that 8,000 injured people must leave the territory to receive appropriate care.
Total victory
PHOTO IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA, REUTERS
A camp for displaced people has been set up near the border with Egypt, in Rafah.
The Israeli army, which claims to have dismantled Hamas’s military command in the north of the Gaza Strip, said it had killed other “terrorists” in the center of the territory, including using drones in the Gaza Strip camp. refugees from Bureij.
An army press release announces the discovery of an underground “weapons production site”, operated by Hamas, in the north of Gaza, a territory under blockade for more than ten years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again pledged on Sunday that “what happened on October 7 will not happen again.”
“This is why our soldiers on the ground give their lives. We must continue until total victory,” he added.
In the West Bank, territory occupied since 1967, violence has reached a level not seen in nearly twenty years.
On Sunday eight Palestinians were killed in Jenin (north) after Israeli strikes according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah.
PHOTO AMMAR AWAD, REUTERS
In the West Bank, a 3-year-old Palestinian girl died, killed according to Israeli authorities by police fire.
An Israeli police officer was killed when a bomb detonated near her car during a military operation in Jenin. An Israeli civilian was also killed in a shooting near Ramallah.
In the evening, Israeli police confirmed that a child had been killed by officers responding to a vehicular attack near Jerusalem.
Tensions in Lebanon
On the border between Israel and Lebanon, shooting is almost daily and the situation seems to be deteriorating.
Hezbollah said Saturday it fired 62 rockets at an Israeli military base days after blaming Israel for the death of a senior Hamas leader, Saleh al-Arouri, in Beirut.
Army spokesperson Daniel Hagari warns the Shiite movement, an ally of Hamas, against the risk of “driving Lebanon into an unnecessary war”. The Israeli army, for its part, specifies having struck Hezbollah “military sites”.
According to local media, hackers used screens at Beirut airport to display anti-Hezbollah messages: “Hassan Nasrallah, no one will support you if you drag the country into war.”