On the 177th day of the war between Israel and Hamas, dozens of deadly Israeli strikes hit the besieged Gaza Strip and threatened by famine on Sunday March 31 at a time when a new round of negotiations for a truce between Israel is due to begin. and Hamas.
After announcing on Saturday the death of several fighters, including a leader of the Palestinian movement, in the Al-Chifa hospital complex in Gaza City, the largest in the Palestinian territory, the Israeli army claimed on Sunday to have discovered “numerous weapons hidden in the pillows, the beds” or even the ceilings of the establishment. According to Hamas, one hundred and seven patients are still “detained” in Al-Chifa where the Israeli army is located for the 14th consecutive day. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one hundred patients and fifty healthcare workers are still in the complex.
According to the Islamist movement’s health ministry, at least seventy-seven people were killed overnight from Saturday to Sunday, bringing the death toll to 32,782 since the start of the conflict.
Negotiations for a truce between Israel and Hamas are due to resume on Sunday in Cairo, according to the pro-government Egyptian media outlet Al-Qahera News, close to the Egyptian security services. “An Egyptian security source confirmed to Al-Qahera News the resumption of negotiations for a truce between Israel and Hamas in the Egyptian capital,” the channel reported.
Al-Qahera News also insisted on “the joint efforts of Qatar and Egypt”, mediators in this conflict, “to preserve the progress” of previous rounds of negotiations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is to have a hernia operation on Sunday, announced on Friday that he had given the green light to new talks with a view to a truce in Gaza. “Benyamin Netanyahu spoke with the director of Mossad [Israeli foreign intelligence service] and the director of Shin Bet [internal security service], and approved a new round of negotiations in the coming days, in Doha and Cairo “, his office said in a press release.
At the same time, anti-government demonstrators and families of hostages plan to meet on Sunday evening, and every evening until Wednesday, in front of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem. The day before, thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv to demand the release of the hostages.
Israeli police said Sunday they had shot dead a man who injured two people in a stabbing attack Sunday at the main bus station in the southern city of Beersheva. Medics rescued a 20-year-old man who suffered a “stab wound” before taking him to hospital. Another person was also slightly injured, according to police.
According to Israeli media, the attacker was a young Arab Bedouin, an Israeli citizen originally from the Negev, a desert region of which Beersheva is the largest city. A series of deadly knife attacks have taken place in Israel and the occupied West Bank since the start of the Gaza war.
Pope Francis on Sunday renewed his call for the release of Israeli hostages and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, during his Easter message to the Vatican. “I once again call for humanitarian access to Gaza to be guaranteed, again urging the rapid release of the hostages kidnapped on October 7, as well as an immediate ceasefire in the Strip of Gaza”, declared the Argentine Jesuit, during his blessing urbi et orbi, “to the city and to the world” in Latin.
“War is always nonsense and defeat! Let us not let the winds of war blow ever stronger across Europe and the Mediterranean. Let us not give in to the logic of weapons and rearmament,” added the Argentine pope from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Calls for a new demonstration on Sunday in front of the Israeli embassy in Amman were launched on social networks in Jordan, the day after a rally in support of Gaza which brought together thousands of Jordanians in front of the diplomatic representation. Linked to Israel by a peace treaty since 1994, the kingdom, half of whose population is of Palestinian origin, shares its border with Israel and the occupied West Bank.
