The Israeli army intensified its strikes on Rafah on Thursday, heightening fears over the fate of more than a million Palestinians stuck in this city in the Gaza Strip, against a backdrop of new negotiations to reach a truce between Israel and the Hamas.
The head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken, who concluded a regional tour on Thursday aimed at encouraging efforts to stop the fighting, urged his Israeli ally the day before to “protect” civilians in its military operations in Gaza, launched in retaliation for the unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered preparations for an offensive on Rafah, a town in the very south of the Gaza Strip, on the closed border with Egypt, where there are 1.3 million Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are people displaced by the clashes of recent months.
Mr. Blinken left Israel early in the afternoon after pleading during his tour for a truce agreement allowing the delivery of more aid to the besieged Gaza Strip, where the humanitarian situation is “nightmare” according to the UN, and for the release of Israeli hostages held in the Palestinian territory.
“Humanitarian nightmare”
On the ground, witnesses and hospital sources reported deadly nighttime strikes in the south of the territory, particularly in Rafah, with the Hamas Ministry of Health counting a total of 130 deaths over the past 24 hours.
According to an AFP journalist, the Israeli army carried out seven airstrikes in Rafah. The house of a local police chief was notably hit according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
“These bombings are proof that Rafah is not a safe place,” says Oum Hassan, 48, whose nearby house was damaged by the strike.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that an assault on Rafah would “exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare.”
For Bob Kitchen, of the NGO International Rescue Committee (IRC), if Rafah experiences the same fate as the towns of Gaza and Khan Younes, further north and intensely shelled since October 7, aid agencies could no longer be able to meet the basic needs of the population.
“If civilians are not killed in the fighting, Palestinian children, women and men risk dying of hunger or disease,” he warned.
“Regarding Rafah […] Israel has […] the obligation to do everything possible to ensure that civilians are protected and that they have access to the assistance they need,” Mr. Blinken said on Wednesday after meeting Mr. Netanyahu.
“Terrorists” killed
The war was sparked on October 7 when Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip, where the movement took power in 2007, carried out an attack in southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,160 people. , mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Around 250 people were also kidnapped and taken to Gaza. According to Israel, 132 hostages are still held there, of whom 29 are believed to have died.
In retaliation, Israel, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization, like the United States and the European Union, vowed to “destroy” this group and launched an offensive that left at least 27,840 people dead in the territory. Palestinians, the vast majority of them women, children and adolescents, according to the latest report from the Hamas Ministry of Health, also reporting 67,317 injured.
The army said Thursday that it was carrying out operations in the north and south of the Gaza Strip, saying it had notably arrested two “terrorists” who took part in the October 7 attack.
For his fifth tour of the region since the start of the war, Mr. Blinken supported a truce proposal drawn up by American, Qatari and Egyptian officials in late January in Paris, to which Hamas responded.
Although he considered that elements of Hamas’ response were “unacceptable”, he nevertheless said he hoped for a second truce after that of a week in November which had notably favored the release of hostages in Gaza and detained Palestinian prisoners. in Israel.
Discussions in Cairo
In Cairo, a “new round of negotiations”, sponsored by Egypt and Qatar with the participation of Hamas, began Thursday to obtain “calm in the Gaza Strip” as well as an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and hostages, an Egyptian official announced to AFP.
“We expect negotiations to be very […] difficult, but Hamas is open to discussions and eager to reach a ceasefire,” explained an official close to the Palestinian Islamist movement.
The war in Gaza is also exacerbating tensions in the Middle East between Israel and its allies, including Washington, on the one hand, and Hamas and its supporters on the other.
The Israeli army reported Thursday fire from Lebanon on northern Israel, seriously injuring a soldier. Since October 7, the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, has regularly claimed fire towards Israel, which retaliates.