Twenty-six people, including 15 children, died Thursday in Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, according to Civil Defense, shortly after Israel gave the green light to the resumption of negotiations for the release of hostages held in the Palestinian territory.
The decision to continue these discussions comes after the release of a video showing the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by fighters from the Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, during its unprecedented attack in Israel that sparked the war.
On the ground, airstrikes and artillery fire were heard overnight across the Gaza Strip, particularly in Rafah, Jabalia and Gaza City, according to AFP journalists, doctors and witnesses.
Gaza City Civil Defense said two airstrikes before dawn left 26 people dead, including 15 children. Sixteen people were killed in a strike that hit their home and ten others in a bombing of a mosque and a school, according to the same source.
When contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately respond.
In Jabalia, the Israeli army said it had “targeted several Hamas terrorists during strikes on military infrastructure used to store weapons”.
” Never again “
In Nousseirat, children inspected the rubble of a house destroyed by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday. “When I saw the flames, I was in the school transformed into a shelter, I said to myself “poor people were hit by the missile”, without knowing that it was in fact my husband, his first wife and their children,” says Fatima Hathat.
In Rafah, Israeli forces continued to operate in the Brazil and Shabura neighborhoods, according to the army.
They began ground operations in this city on May 7, which caused the flight of 800,000 people according to the UN, with the stated objective of annihilating the last Hamas battalions and saving the hostages.
The families of five soldiers held hostage in Gaza on Wednesday authorized the broadcast of images, taken from a video filmed by Hamas commandos, on which we can see these young women, some with bloody faces, sitting on the ground in their pajamas, hands tied behind the back.
“The images reveal the violent, humiliating and traumatic treatment that the girls suffered on the day of their kidnapping,” said the Hostage Families Forum in a press release.
These images will “strengthen my determination to fight with all my strength until the elimination of Hamas, to guarantee that what we saw this evening will never happen again,” responded the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin. Netanyahu, on his Telegram account, before meeting his war cabinet late on Wednesday.
He “instructed the team of negotiators to return to the negotiating table to obtain the return of the hostages,” according to a senior government official.
In early May, indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel, via mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States, failed to reach an agreement for a truce in Gaza associated with the release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Aid delivery hampered
The October 7 attack, carried out by Hamas from the Gaza Strip, resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Of the 252 people taken as hostages on October 7, 124 are still being held in Gaza, including 37 dead, according to the army.
In response to the attack, Mr. Netanyahu vowed to wipe out Hamas, with his army launching a devastating offensive in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union and the United States, United took power in 2007.
At least 35,709 Palestinians, mostly civilians, died in this offensive, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-led Gaza government.
More than seven months of war have caused a disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza. Since the deployment on May 7 of the Israeli army on the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing, Israelis and Egyptians have blamed each other for the paralysis of this crossing through which most of the fuel essential to hospitals and humanitarian logistics entered. .
ICJ decision expected
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court of the UN, also announced on Thursday that it would rule on Friday on a request from South Africa to order Israel a ceasefire to Gaza.
Pretoria wants the court to order Israel to “immediately” cease all military operations in Gaza, including in Rafah, where Israel launched ground operations on May 7 despite opposition from the international community.
“A public session will take place at 3 p.m. (1 p.m. GMT) at the Peace Palace in The Hague,” where the jurisdiction sits, the ICJ announced in a press release.
The orders of the court, which decides disputes between states, are legally binding, but it has no way of enforcing them.
A decision in favor of Pretoria, however, would constitute a new legal setback for Israel after the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan on Monday requested arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, at the same time as against three Hamas leaders, for alleged crimes committed in the Gaza Strip and in Israel.
Since Israel took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on May 7, the delivery of humanitarian aid has virtually stopped, particularly fuel, essential for hospitals and the humanitarian logistics.
Before its incursion on the ground, the Israeli army had ordered massive evacuations from Rafah where it claims to want to destroy the last battalions of Hamas, its network of tunnels, and save the hostages.
According to the UN, these operations have caused the displacement of 800,000 people, while a million Palestinians in Gaza face “catastrophic levels of hunger”.
“Genocide”
South Africa is calling for urgent action pending resolution of the merits of the case, the accusation that Israel is violating the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.
The ICJ, seized at the end of December by South Africa, ordered Israel in January to do everything in its power to prevent any act of genocide and allow the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
But she did not go so far as to order a ceasefire. However, for Pretoria, the evolution of the situation on the ground – particularly in Rafah – requires a new order from the ICJ.
Pretoria, which is approaching the ICJ for the fourth time in this case, declared during hearings last week that “the genocide” committed by Israel had reached a “horrific level”, referring in particular to mass graves, acts of torture and a blockage of humanitarian aid.
The Israeli operation in Rafah “is the latest stage in the destruction of Gaza and its Palestinian people,” said Vaughan Lowe, a South African lawyer.
The next day, Israel retorted before the judges that the “genocide” case is “completely disconnected” from reality.
Gilad Noam, deputy attorney general, argued that there was no “large-scale” assault in Rafah, but “specific and localized operations, preceded by evacuation efforts and support for humanitarian activities “.