Israel announced that it was tightening its “grip” on the city of Gaza, in the north of the Palestinian territory, where its soldiers continued their advance on Wednesday in order to crush Hamas fighters, without hope of respite for the trapped Palestinian civilians.
Israel vowed to “destroy Hamas” in retaliation for the bloody attack carried out on its soil on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement, in power in the Gaza Strip, and has since relentlessly shelled the territory despite multiple calls for a truce.
After a month of war, soldiers are now “in the heart” of Gaza City, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday evening.
“Gaza is the largest terrorist base ever built,” he said, adding that soldiers were “tightening their grip” around Gaza City, the most densely populated part of the territory where, according to Israel, there is the “center” of Hamas entrenched in a network of tunnels.
Israeli soldiers are advancing “with a single target: Hamas’ infrastructure, its commanders, its bunkers, its communications centers,” Gallant added.
Images released Wednesday by the Israeli army show tanks and bulldozers advancing through the smoking ruins of the Gaza Strip. Soldiers infiltrate the shattered buildings as explosions erupt from the ground.
In Gaza City, where entire neighborhoods have been transformed into fields of ruins, dozens of residents, waving white flags, flee on foot towards the south, hoping to escape the bombs.
The bodies of Palestinians killed by the strikes were transported to hospitals, some in donkey carts, witnesses said, others loaded into bulldozers.
Israel refuses any humanitarian truce until the more than 240 hostages held by Hamas have been released, despite urgent calls from the UN, NGOs and foreign capitals for a ceasefire or a pause which would make it possible to deliver emergency aid to the population deprived of water, electricity, food and medicine.
On the Israeli side, at least 1,400 people have died since the start of the war, according to the authorities, the majority of them civilians killed on the day of the attack carried out by Hamas commandos, of unprecedented violence and scale since the creation of Israel in 1948.
On the Palestinian side, 10,569 people, mostly civilians, including 4,324 children, were killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli bombings, according to a report published Wednesday by the Hamas Ministry of Health.
The war has caused immense destruction in the small territory where 1.5 million people, according to the UN, have left their homes.
“Cemeteries full”
Hamas’ communications service said Tuesday evening on Telegram that several cemeteries “are full and there is no more space for burials.”
“Our incessant demands for the establishment of an immediate ceasefire have remained unanswered,” lamented Doctors Without Borders, which announced the death of one of its employees in a bombing against the refugee camp in Chati, on the outskirts of Gaza City.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced on Tuesday that one of its humanitarian aid convoys to the Palestinian Red Crescent’s al-Quds hospital had been targeted by fire, which it did not specify. the source.
The idea of a ceasefire is rejected by the United States, close allies of Israel, which instead advocates “humanitarian pauses”.
Foreign ministers from the G7 countries, meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday, expressed support for “humanitarian pauses and corridors” in Gaza.
” Save us “
Trapped in their territory of 362 square kilometers, under incessant bombardments, the 2.4 million inhabitants of Gaza have suffered since October 9 a total siege imposed by Israel, which has cut off deliveries of water, electricity and food.
“Stop this destruction machine. Save us,” implored Tuesday Hicham Koulab, a displaced Palestinian, caught up in the bombings in Rafah, in the south of the territory.
The territory, undermined by poverty, was already subject to an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since Hamas took power there in 2007.
In the north, “many people desperately seeking food entered the last three bakeries where stocks of wheat flour remained” on Tuesday, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which counted 650 humanitarian aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip since October 21 via Egypt.
In the south, it takes “four to six hours of waiting on average to receive half of a normal portion of bread,” said OCHA, according to which some 600 people, holders of foreign passports, and 17 injured people were were evacuated on Tuesday to Egypt through the Rafah border post.
On Wednesday, Ukraine announced that 43 of its nationals had been evacuated, as well as 36 Moldovan citizens. Further evacuations are expected on Wednesday.
In the Gaza Strip, effectively cut in two, the Israeli army has increased calls for civilians to leave the north, where the fighting is most intense, to take refuge in the south where hundreds of thousands of people are crowded together. displaced.
No “occupation”
While Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years of occupation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed that his country would take, after the war, “for an indefinite period, general responsibility for security” in the territory to prevent a return of Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
“It will not be an occupation,” Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer insisted on Tuesday.
To achieve “lasting peace and security” in the region, the United States believes that it is necessary to ban “forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza”, prevent this territory “from being used as a platform for terrorism” while avoiding “reoccupying” it at the end of the conflict, indicated for his part American Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tokyo.
While the international community fears an extension of the conflict, Mr. Netanyahu warned on Tuesday that Lebanese Hezbollah, ally of Hamas, would make “the mistake of its life” if it entered the war head on.
There are daily exchanges of fire on the Israeli-Lebanese border, between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, supported by Iran.
The G7 on Wednesday urged Iran not to support Hamas and Hezbollah, and not to do anything that could “destabilize the Middle East”.
Violence is also increasing in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, where more than 150 Palestinians have been killed by fire from Israeli soldiers or settlers since October 7, according to the Palestinian Authority.