The Israeli air force carried out new strikes on Saturday on the besieged and devastated Gaza Strip, where dozens of Palestinians have died in the past 24 hours, with the UN calling the territory an “uninhabitable place of death”.
The relentless war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which enters its fourth month on Sunday, is raising fears of an overflow with the increase in violence on the Israeli-Lebanese border, in Iraq, Syria and the Red Sea.
On Saturday, Lebanese Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets towards a military base in Meron in northern Israel, an attack presented as its first response to the elimination, attributed to Israel, of Hamas number two on Tuesday near Beirut. The Israeli military confirmed that a base had been targeted by rockets from neighboring Lebanon.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after its unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which killed 1,140 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP count based on the Israeli death toll. Around 250 people were kidnapped, including around a hundred released during a truce at the end of November.
Incessant Israeli bombardments have left 22,722 people dead in Gaza, mostly women, children and adolescents, and more than 58,000 injured, according to a latest report from the Hamas Ministry of Health. Among them are 122 people killed in the last 24 hours, according to this source.
According to AFP journalists, strikes targeted Rafah at night and early Saturday, a town at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have taken refuge in recent weeks trying to escape destructive bombings. .
In northern Gaza, where the Israeli army launched its ground operation on October 27, Israeli bombings have not stopped either.
“They killed our children, they killed our children, they killed our loved ones,” laments a woman in front of the European hospital in Khan Younes (south), where the bodies of killed Palestinians were transported, according to images from AFPTV.
Inside the hospital, parents cry near the remains of their children and outside, relatives try to console each other. Twenty-two Palestinians were killed in the strikes in Khan Younes according to the Hamas government.
“90 days of hell”
Classified as a “terrorist group” by the United States and the European Union, Hamas took power in Gaza in 2007, two years after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from this territory following a 38-year occupation. Israel then imposed an air, sea and land blockade on the territory from 2007, before a total siege since October 9.
The Israeli offensive has destroyed entire neighborhoods of Gaza and displaced 1.9 million people, or 85% of the population according to the UN, who live in terrible conditions, lacking water, food and medicine. and care. And hospitals no longer operate or operate with great difficulty.
The Gaza Strip has “simply become uninhabitable”, and its inhabitants “face daily threats before the eyes of the world”, lamented the UN humanitarian affairs coordinator, Martin Griffiths.
According to UNICEF, the fighting, malnutrition and the health situation have created “a cycle of death which threatens more than 1.1 million children” in this small, overpopulated and impoverished territory.
Sean Casey of the World Health Organization (WHO) said WHO and the UN Population Fund were able to deliver medical supplies to the ministry’s central pharmacy for the first time in 10 days of Health in Khan Younes.
“We continue to demand an immediate end to the conflict not only for the people of Gaza and its threatened neighbors, but for generations to come who will never forget the 90 days of hell and attacks on the most fundamental principles of humanity,” Mr. Griffiths said.
“2024, a year of fighting”
Israel, however, remains inflexible and affirms that it wants to continue its offensive until the “return” of the hostages and the “elimination” of Hamas’ military capabilities, which remain “important” according to the American ally.
“2024 will be a year of fighting,” Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari warned on Friday. The army continues to “fight in the north, center and south” of the Gaza Strip.
Rocket fire from the Gaza Strip towards Israel continues but with less intensity, and warning sirens, mainly in southern Israel, close to Palestinian territory, sound almost every day.
And in the north, on the border with Lebanon, Mr. Hagari reported a “very high level of preparation” of the troops.
Since October 8, Hezbollah has launched daily attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon, mainly targeting border military positions, in support of Hamas, its ally. Israel responds by bombing targets in southern Lebanon.
These tensions crescendoed with the elimination on Tuesday of Hamas number two, Saleh al-Arouri, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Borrell in Lebanon, Blinken in Türkiye
“The response is inevitable,” warned Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.
She didn’t have to wait. “The Islamic resistance targeted the Meron military radar observation and air control base on Saturday with 62 missiles,” Hezbollah said in a statement.
In Syria and Iraq, attacks against United States military bases have increased since October 7. And Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched attacks on ships in the Red Sea and fired missiles toward Israel in “support” of the Palestinians.
In this context, the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell held talks in Lebanon, where he considered it “absolutely necessary to avoid Lebanon being dragged into a regional conflict”.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in Istanbul with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who denounces American support for Israel, before starting a tour of Arab countries and Israel on Sunday in Amman.
In a video message addressed to the head of American diplomacy, the leader of Hamas, Ismaïl Haniyeh, based in Qatar, called on Mr. Blinken to “focus on ending” the Israeli offensive and the “end of the occupation of the entire Palestinian land.