Israeli strikes targeted the Gaza Strip on Wednesday on the eve of new talks on a ceasefire, strongly demanded by the United States, which hopes for a truce agreement to dissuade Iran from launching an attack against Israel.
Faced with the risk of the war spreading to the entire Middle East, the international community is increasing pressure on Iran to renounce an armed response against Israel, accused by Tehran of having assassinated the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in the Iranian capital on July 31.
The Israeli army is meanwhile continuing its offensive in the Palestinian territory where the war, triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas against Israel on October 7, has left nearly 40,000 dead, according to the Islamist movement.
US President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a ceasefire could prevent an Iranian attack on Israel. “That’s what I believe,” he said, assuring that he was “not giving up” on that goal even though negotiations are becoming “difficult.”
There is “no more time to lose,” said an American envoy, Amos Hochstein, in Beirut on Wednesday, to reach a ceasefire that would also put an end to the exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas and Iran.
Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen have been threatening Israel with retaliation since the assassination of the leader of Hamas and that, on July 30, of Fouad Chokr, the military leader of Hezbollah, killed in an Israeli strike near Beirut.
On Tuesday, Iran rejected a call from several Western countries to stop attacking Israel.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on X on Wednesday that his country remained “on high alert.” “I want to express my gratitude […] to our allies who stand with us in the face of the heinous threats from the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies,” he added.
The United States, which has been strengthening its military presence in the region, approved on Tuesday the sale of arms worth more than 20 billion dollars to Israel.
Consultations
At the call of the mediating countries, Qatar, the United States and Egypt, new discussions on a ceasefire are to open on Thursday, based on a plan announced on May 31 by Joe Biden.
The first stage of the plan calls for a six-week truce accompanied by an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas of Gaza and the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Israel announced that its negotiators would participate in the talks.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office detailed its conditions on Tuesday, including “a veto on certain prisoners.”
A Hamas official said Wednesday that the movement was “continuing its consultations with the mediators.”
“Hamas really wants an end to the war and a ceasefire agreement based on the Biden plan,” another Hamas official said.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 and which it considers a terrorist organisation along with the United States and the European Union, after the attack on its soil that killed 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.
Of the 251 people abducted on October 7, 111 are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom are dead, according to the army.
The Israeli retaliatory offensive on the Gaza Strip has left at least 39,965 dead, including at least 36 in 24 hours, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza government, which does not detail the number of civilians and fighters killed.
“No safe place”
The Israeli army announced on Wednesday that it had carried out more than 40 airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on “terrorist infrastructure.”
It said it was continuing its operations in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah, in the south of the territory, as well as in Khan Younis, also in the south, and in the center of the Gaza Strip.
The Civil Defense announced that it had pulled four bodies from the same family from the rubble of a bombed apartment in Hamad, a huge residential complex built by Qatar near Khan Younis.
In Nousseirat, in central Gaza, Palestinians said a bombing had caused “a terrible explosion” in the middle of the night.
“We were sleeping and we were surprised by a missile that hit the neighbors, the children, their father and mother,” said one man, Jihad Al-Sharif, adding that his family had found the remains of children in the street.
The war has plunged the Gaza Strip, besieged by Israel, into a humanitarian disaster and displaced almost all of its 2.4 million inhabitants.
Since the 1er August, “approximately a third of humanitarian missions inside Gaza were refused by the Israeli authorities,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Wednesday.
“The situation for civilians remains dire. No place is safe in Gaza, but civilians continue to be evacuated to ever-shrinking areas,” UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary Di Carlo said on Tuesday.