Israel and Hamas exchanged fire again on Thursday before the arrival of the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken, who came to support his ally, but also to call for restraint to protect Palestinian civilians, in a war which has already claimed thousands of deaths.
Israel has vowed to “crush” and “destroy” the Palestinian Islamist movement, responsible for the bloody attack launched on October 7 against this country and which holds 150 hostages.
During the night, Israeli strikes continued against the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas, from which several rocket salvos were launched towards southern Israel.
Hamas also fired rockets at Tel Aviv, saying it was responding to Israeli strikes that targeted “civilians” in two refugee camps in the Gaza Strip.
AFP correspondents witnessed dozens of airstrikes towards the Al-Shati camp and in northern Gaza.
All this a few hours before the arrival in Israel, Thursday morning, of the American Secretary of State.
“We are determined to ensure that Israel obtains everything it needs to defend itself,” Antony Blinken, who is due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declared before his departure.
Washington has already provided additional military aid to Israel since the start of the war. President Joe Biden, however, asked Israel to respect “the laws of war” in its response against Gaza.
Mr. Blinken is also due to meet King Abdullah II and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Jordan on Friday.
Pile of corpses
At dawn on October 7, in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish rest, and on the last day of the Sukkot holiday, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel in vehicles, by air and sea, sowing terror under a barrage of rockets.
In the streets, in homes, even breaking into a music festival, they killed more than a thousand civilians during this attack of extreme violence and an unprecedented scale since the creation of Israel in 1948.
Israel responded by declaring a war to destroy Hamas’s capabilities, relentlessly shelling the Gaza Strip and deploying tens of thousands of troops around the Palestinian territory and on its northern border with Lebanon, where exchanges of fire are frequent with pro-Iranian Hezbollah, ally of Hamas.
The army reported 1,200 deaths in Israel, most of them civilians. In the Gaza Strip, at least 1,200 people, including many civilians, were killed in Israeli raids, according to local authorities.
The army also claimed to have recovered the bodies of 1,500 Hamas fighters who had infiltrated several locations near the Gaza Strip.
“Every member of Hamas is a dead man,” Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday during a first solemn speech with his emergency government, formed the same day with Benny Gantz, one of the main opposition leaders.
“Hamas is Daesh (the Islamic State jihadist group, Editor’s note) and we are going to crush and destroy it like the world destroyed Daesh,” he added after describing the attack as “unseen savagery.” since the Shoah.
At the entrance to Kibbutz Beeri, less than five kilometers from the border with Gaza, a pile of corpses testifies to the scale of the attack inside the village, more than a hundred residents of which were killed , according to the army.
“The devastation here is absolutely immense,” laments Doron Spielman, spokesperson for the Israeli army. “And that’s without counting the many members of the kibbutz who were taken hostage and taken to Gaza,” added another army spokesperson, Jonathan Cornicus.
Hostages threatened
During this offensive which stunned the country, Hamas fighters kidnapped several dozen Israeli hostages, foreign and binational, whom it threatened to execute.
Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that his country would not allow the entry of basic necessities or humanitarian aid into Gaza, which is under siege, until Hamas has not released the hostages.
“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switches will be turned on, no water taps will be turned on and no fuel trucks will enter until the kidnapped Israelis return home,” he said.
Israeli authorities identify 150 hostages, while hundreds of people are still missing and bodies are being identified.
Among these hostages are young people captured during a music festival where Palestinian fighters burst into Saturday, killing 270 people according to authorities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Thursday that it was in contact with Hamas to work for the release of the hostages.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also launched a process of negotiations with the Islamist organization, according to an official source.
The Gaza Strip, a poor and cramped territory crowded with 2.4 million Palestinians who have suffered a land, air and sea blockade since 2007, is now deprived of water, electricity and food supplies, cut off by Israel. .
The region’s only power plant is shut down due to lack of fuel.
Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC regional director for the Near and Middle East region, called on both sides to “reduce the suffering of civilians”, particularly in the Gaza Strip.
“Without electricity, hospitals risk turning into morgues,” he said, saying he feared in particular for newborns placed in incubators and patients on oxygen or dialysis.
Fewer rockets
“We are preparing for the next steps. We hit a large number of targets,” Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Cornicus said at dawn on Thursday.
In the past 24 hours, there were “fewer rockets” fired toward Israel and “that’s always a good sign,” he noted.
The bombings hit dozens of buildings, factories, mosques and stores, according to Hamas.
“It’s like an apocalypse or an earthquake […] They (the Israelis) came to destroy, as if these people did not deserve to live. As if they were not human,” said a resident of the Karama neighborhood in Gaza, who did not want to give his name, in the middle of the ruins.
More than 338,000 people have been displaced by strikes on the Gaza Strip, according to the UN.
The concentrations of troops on the border raise fears of a ground offensive in the territory, from which Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005 and which has been governed by Hamas since 2007.
A terrifying prospect of fighting in the heart of an extremely densely populated city, underground and in the presence of hostages.
“When you enter Gaza, you never know in what state you will come out,” political commentator Akiva Eldar told AFP.