Israel continued to mobilize its troops on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip on Sunday, with a view to an all-out offensive on the enclave, a scenario feared for several days which raises fears of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis when the fuel comes. not enough to supply hospitals on the Palestinian side.
What there is to know
- An Israeli ground offensive is expected on Palestinian territory;
- Israel ordered the evacuation of all civilians from northern Gaza on Friday;
- One million inhabitants of this Palestinian territory have been displaced since the start of the conflict;
- The humanitarian situation in the enclave deprived of water and electricity is increasingly deteriorating;
- Around 150 people are believed to be detained by Hamas, “including foreigners”;
- The war left 4,070 dead on both sides, according to official reports.
“We will dismantle Hamas,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated to his ministers on Sunday during a first meeting of the government war cell, according to his office.
On the ground, preparations for this offensive continued on Sunday when 360,000 reservists were called up to the flag.
Israeli commanders, most of whom have not set foot in the Gaza Strip since its occupation ended in 2005, were shown aboard helicopters flying over the territory, the report said. The Times of Israel.
The Israeli army said it was preparing for a “coordinated offensive from air, land and sea” after several days of continuous bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Despite its apparent military superiority, the offensive raises fears of significant losses for the Jewish state in the urban mazes of the Gaza Strip, where around 2.4 million Palestinians reside.
The enclave is made up of densely populated urban areas with extremely tight streets, as noted in The Press this week Alain Pirot, independent journalist specializing in defense issues and former correspondent in Jerusalem.
Human distress
Meanwhile, inside the enclave itself, human distress was acute on Sunday. In addition to the death toll which increases every day, more than 1,000 Gazans are missing under the rubble and 600,000 of them have fled to the south after Israel’s call to evacuate the northern sector of the territory for the offensive.
Medical authorities have warned that hundreds of civilians could die in hospitals due to lack of treatment, while fuel and basic supplies are running out. Victims of incessant airstrikes continued to flood into Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex.
But moving them south is a mission impossible, the New York Times the director of the establishment, Dr Muhammad Abu Salima.
No place in Gaza can accommodate the number of patients we have in our intensive care and neonatal care, or even in our operating rooms.
The Dr Muhammad Abu Salima
Water and food were also running out in this densely populated territory following the blockade imposed by Israel for a week now, in response to the bloody Hamas attack last Saturday.
“The destruction in Gaza is immense. We’ve never seen anything like this. This is unprecedented,” Palestinian Red Crescent Director General Erin Burnett told CNN from Ramallah in the West Bank, preaching for a ceasefire.
The Middle East is “on the edge of the abyss,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday. He also called for the release of Israeli hostages from Hamas and the establishment of a humanitarian corridor towards Gaza, two “legitimate” demands which must not become “negotiating arguments”.
“A big mistake”, according to Biden
As a sign of his undeniable support for the Jewish state, American President Joe Biden plans to visit Israel in the coming days. In a final gesture to prevent an escalation of the conflict, he urged his ally not to occupy the Gaza Strip, saying this would be “a big mistake”.
“What happened in Gaza, in my opinion, is due to Hamas, and Hamas extremists do not represent the entire Palestinian people. It would therefore be a mistake for Israel to occupy Gaza again,” he explained in an interview on the program 60 Minutes.
Unsurprisingly, Joe Biden, however, reiterated the need “to get rid of the extremists” while his administration refused to criticize the airstrikes which caused the death of 2,670 civilians in the enclave during the last week, according to the Palestinian authorities.
And this, while pressing Israel, Egypt and several other nations to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
An expected breach
After a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi earlier Sunday, American Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the Rafah border crossing, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, , would be open.
PHOTO JACQUELYN MARTIN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State
The closure of the two borders with Israel, which maintains a blockade of the enclave, means that this is the only remaining route to flee Gaza. According to the Palestinian Embassy in the United States, the Rafah border crossing would open to nationals at 9 a.m. (local time) this Monday, NBC reported on Sunday. However, such an operation ended in failure last Friday.
For a week, Egyptian authorities have claimed that the Rafah border crossing was hit by Israeli missile fire from the Gaza side, causing the accumulation of tons of humanitarian aid material along the road on the Egyptian side, due to fault of an alternative way to enter.
On Sunday, the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, political leader in the West Bank, disassociated himself from Hamas again, saying that “Hamas’s policies and actions do not represent the Palestinian people.”
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which he heads, is the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, he declared according to the official Palestinian news agency during an interview with the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro.
With Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, The New York TimesNBC, CNN, The Times of IsraelReuters