On Wednesday February 14, international mediators intensified their efforts for a truce between Israel and Palestinian Hamas in the hope of avoiding an Israeli ground assault in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, subject to new deadly Israeli raids .
Since Tuesday, Egypt has hosted representatives from the United States, Israel’s main supporter, and Qatar, where the Hamas leader is based, for talks about a truce including a new release of hostages.
French President Emmanuel Macron told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday that Israeli operations in Gaza “must stop” because “the human toll and the humanitarian situation” are “intolerable,” the Elysée reported.
In a telephone call, he “expressed France’s firm opposition to an Israeli offensive in Rafah, which could only lead to a humanitarian disaster of a new magnitude, as to any forced displacement of populations, which would constitute violations of international humanitarian law and would pose an additional risk of regional escalation.”
And he insisted on “the extreme urgency that there was to conclude, without further delay, an agreement on a ceasefire which finally guarantees the protection of all civilians and the massive entry of aid emergency”. According to the French head of state, it is “imperative to open the port of Ashdod, a direct land route from Jordan and all crossing points” in order to deliver aid to the Palestinian territory. The lack of humanitarian access is “unjustifiable”, he insisted.
Spain and Ireland have asked Brussels to “urgently” investigate Israel’s “respect” for human rights in Gaza, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on the social network X on Wednesday.
“Faced with the critical situation in Rafah”, in the south of the Gaza Strip, the Spanish and Irish governments sent a letter to the European Commission asking it to examine “urgently whether Israel is fulfilling its commitments to respect human rights humans in Gaza,” the socialist asserts in this message.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday urged Hamas to “quickly conclude” a deal to protect the Palestinian people from “the repercussions of another catastrophe, no less dangerous than the 1948 Nakba,” he said. – he said, quoted by the Palestinian news agency WAFA, in reference to the “catastrophe” that was for the Palestinians the creation of Israel in 1948, following which seven hundred and sixty thousand of them were forced into exodus during the first Arab-Israeli war.
He also called on “the American administration and the Arab brothers to work seriously towards the conclusion of the agreement (…) in order to spare the Palestinian people the horror of this devastating war”, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA . The president of the Palestinian Authority, whose headquarters is in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, added to hold “everyone responsible for any obstacle erected by any party to disrupt the agreement”.
Less than half of World Health Organization missions to deliver aid to Gaza have been authorized while hospitals there are “completely overwhelmed,” one of its officials said Wednesday.
“Hospitals are completely overwhelmed, overwhelmed and insufficiently supplied,” said the WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, Doctor Rik Peeperkorn, speaking by videoconference from Gaza. Staff, he described, are forced to carry out amputations due to a lack of means to care for patients whose limbs could otherwise be saved by surgery.
Around a hundred relatives of hostages still held in the Gaza Strip went to The Hague on Wednesday to file a complaint against Hamas for crimes against humanity with the International Criminal Court (ICC), their representatives announced. Some two hundred and fifty people were kidnapped in southern Israel during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and one hundred and thirty of them are still being held in Gaza, twenty-nine of whom are believed to have died, according to Israel.
“It’s not just our story. If we don’t stop this, tomorrow it will be the story of the whole world,” said Ofri Bibas, whose brother is among the hostages, shortly before boarding a special flight to The Hague. “All humanity must stand firm in the face of a global terrorist army of which Hamas is only one of the battalions carrying out its mission,” she added.
