Israel continued to bomb several areas of the Gaza Strip on Thursday, such as the town of Rafah. The Israeli army says it is ready to carry out a large-scale ground operation against Hamas in Rafah, the Egyptian border area which is home to around a million Palestinian civilians.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip’s health ministry announced a new death toll of 34,305 people in the Gaza Strip since the war began on October 7. In twenty-four hours, at least 43 additional deaths were recorded, according to a ministry press release which reported 77,293 wounded in more than two hundred days of war.
More than 250 people have been kidnapped by Hamas and 129 remain captive in Gaza, 34 of whom have died according to Israeli officials.
The United States has begun construction of a pier in Gaza, the Pentagon announced Thursday. American military ships “have begun constructing (…) the temporary port and sea pier,” Pentagon spokesman General Patrick Ryder told reporters.
This temporary seaport should allow military or civilian ships to deposit their cargo. Aid must then be brought by logistical support boats to a jetty on the coast. U.S. officials said the operation would not involve “ground troops” in the war-torn Palestinian territory. However, American soldiers will be near the Gaza Strip during the construction of the pier, which must be supervised by Israeli troops. NGOs will probably be responsible for distributing the aid once delivered to the territory, the Pentagon had already indicated.
From Los Angeles to Atlanta, from Austin to Boston, via Chicago, the movement of pro-Palestinian American students is growing by the hour after leaving Columbia University in New York more than a week ago. Some of the most prestigious universities in the world are affected, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
The scenes across the country follow one another and are similar: students set up tents on their campus, to denounce the United States’ military support for Israel and the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. Then they are dislodged, often in a muscular manner, by police officers in riot gear, at the request of the university management.
On Wednesday evening, more than a hundred demonstrators were arrested near Emerson College, a university in Boston. Thousands of miles away, mounted officers apprehended students at the University of Texas at Austin. On the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, in the southeast of the United States, demonstrators were dislodged manu militari by the police, some thrown to the ground to be arrested. Despite everything, the movement is growing. Early Thursday, a new encampment was set up on the campus of George Washington University in the capital. At the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), more than two hundred students set up a mini-village of around thirty tents barricaded by pallets and signs.
The leaders of eighteen countries call Thursday in a joint text for “the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.” “The agreement on the table to release the hostages would allow for an immediate and prolonged ceasefire in Gaza,” states the text released by the White House. Such an agreement would also “facilitate the increased delivery of essential humanitarian aid across Gaza, and could lead to a real end to hostilities,” notes the text. “The fate of the hostages and the civilian population in Gaza, who are protected by international law, is of international concern,” the statement added.
The text was signed by the leaders of Argentina, Austria, Germany, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain and Thailand.
Negotiations conducted through mediating countries have stalled, with Israel and Hamas accusing each other of blocking them.
“Even if [Israel] enters Rafah and invades it, it will not fulfill … its two main objectives, whether to eliminate Hamas or to recover” the hostages kidnapped by Palestinian fighters in Israel on October 7, said Ghazi Hamad, member of the political bureau of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. The Islamist movement warned “Egypt, Qatar” as well as “other Arab and international countries” of the “danger of an invasion of Rafah” and that “Israel is preparing to commit more massacres.” , underlined Mr. Hamad.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says an offensive on Rafah is essential to destroy Hamas, one of the stated objectives of Israel’s war in Gaza.
According to Diab Allouh, the Palestinian ambassador in Cairo, between 80,000 and 100,000 Palestinians have arrived in Egypt since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.
The Rafah crossing point is in theory the only opening to the world of Gaza that is not under direct Israeli control. In practice, Israel retains a right of oversight over the entry and exit of goods and people and this is how humanitarian aid intended for Gaza passes, in dribs and drabs.
According to Egyptian officials, cited by The Wall Street Journal, Israel is preparing to move civilians from Rafah to the nearby town of Khan Younes, in particular, where it plans to set up shelters and food distribution centers. This evacuation would last two to three weeks and would be carried out in coordination with the United States, Egypt and other Arab countries, according to these officials.
According to the Royal Navy, the crew of HMS Diamond, currently deployed to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to “ensure freedom of navigation and make international waters safer”, destroyed a Houthi missile targeting a ship on Wednesday merchant in the Gulf of Aden.
Thanking the crew of the British ship deployed since March in the region, British Defense Minister Grant Shapps stressed that “the United Kingdom continues to be at the forefront of the international response to the dangerous attacks by the Houthis supported by the ‘Iran against merchant ships, which killed several sailors’.
For their part, the United States shot down four drones on Wednesday over areas of Yemen controlled by Houthi rebels, announced the American Military Command for the Middle East (Centcom).
Concert in support of the Palestinians at the Zénith in Paris. The “Palestine Solidarity” concert scheduled for May 22 at the initiative of several rappers, including PLK and Soolking, for the benefit of the British NGO Medical Aid for Palestinians chosen “for its religious and political independence, as well as its transparent and rigorous management interventions” was sold out on Thursday, a month before it was held at the Zénith in Paris. The room can accommodate up to 6,800 people.
Ceremony in Washington honoring seven aid workers killed in Gaza. The ceremony honoring the seven employees of the American NGO World Central Kitchen, killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza on April 1, took place at the National Cathedral, an Episcopalian church in the American capital, in the presence of the founder and director of the association, the leader José Andrés. Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice-President Kamala Harris, was also present, as was the famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma who was to play a piece for the occasion.
