“This is not a prospect for tomorrow,” warns former officer Guillaume Ancel

Stop this carnage [] is clearly neither the plan of Hamas, nor the plan of Benjamin Netanyahu,” analyzes the writer.

“This is not a prospect for tomorrow”, said former officer and writer Guillaume Ancel on Monday February 26 on franceinfo, regarding a truce in Gaza. While a “middle ground” was found on Sunday during negotiations in Paris aimed at securing a truce in the Palestinian enclave, new bombings targeted the town of Rafah, in the far south of Gaza and fighting rages in the ruined town of Khan Younès, a few kilometers further north.

“I am afraid that I will have to be very careful on this subject of truce”warned the former soldier, believing that negotiations can “still last for weeks”. “I believe that all of us, the international community, would love to think that this war, which is real carnage, ends as quickly as possible, but that is clearly neither Hamas’ plan nor Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan.”he added.

No escape for Rafah civilians

According to Guillaume Ancel, Israeli Prime Minister “is totally locked into this logic of war”. Even if a truce came “to delay” the planned offensive on Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, Benjamin Netanyahu assured Sunday that Israel was “a few weeks away from total victory.”

If the Israeli army presented a plan to evacuate civilians from “combat zones” in the Gaza Strip, “there is no space” to welcome them, decided the ex-officer. “Or they would have to go to Egypt, but Egypt always said that was out of the question.”, he recalled. Nearly 1.5 million people, according to the UN, are massed in the town of Rafah, located on the closed border with Egypt.