Find here our situation update published yesterday.
On the 108th day of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, fighting continued between the Israeli army and the Islamist movement in Khan Younes, in the south of the Gaza Strip, on Monday January 22. According to Hamas, which accused the Israeli army of having targeted five structures housing 30,000 displaced people, “120 people” were killed in the area “during the last twenty-four hours”. For its part, the Israeli army claims to have taken control of Hamas command posts in the city.
On Monday morning, witnesses told Agence France-Presse of violent clashes near Al-Aqsa University and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younes. Israeli tanks are also stationed outside Al-Amal Hospital, where the Palestinian Red Crescent said it had lost contact with its staff.
The Hamas health ministry announced that 190 people had been killed in the last 24 hours in the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll to 25,295 in the Palestinian enclave, the majority of them women, teenagers and children. children, since October 7, 2023. This report could not be independently verified.
European foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels, encountered the Israeli refusal to consider a two-state solution, which they nevertheless consider essential to achieve lasting peace.
“What other solutions are they thinking of? Make all the Palestinians leave? Kill them ? “, asked the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell. Israelis “are sowing the seeds of hatred for generations to come,” he continued. “We will need a Palestinian state with security guarantees for all,” said French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné.
For his part, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said he was in Brussels to ensure European support in his country’s war to “dismantle” Hamas and obtain the release of hostages. Mr. Katz also showed two videos to European ministers: one on a planned artificial island to serve as a port for Gaza and another concerning a railway line to connect Israel to India. “The [Israeli] minister could have made better use of his time and been concerned about the security of his country and the high number of deaths in Gaza,” Mr. Borrell reacted to the press, not hiding his annoyance.
The Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyad Al-Maliki, received in the afternoon, insisted on the need to obtain a ceasefire in Gaza as quickly as possible.
Invited on Monday to several committees of the Israeli Parliament, members of families of hostages demonstrated inside the Knesset to demand that elected officials support any agreement allowing the release of their loved ones.
In particular, they held up banners during a debate in plenary session on the hostages. They also caused the interruption of a meeting of the finance committee, before the security service evacuated them. “If this was your family, what would you have done? I need my brother, you understand? NOW ! “, shouted one of its demonstrators, according to images broadcast by the Knesset.
On October 7, attackers kidnapped some 250 people, some injured, in the Gaza Strip. Around a hundred were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners during a truce in fighting at the end of November. According to the results of the Israeli authorities, 132 are still in Gaza. Among them, twenty-eight died without the bodies having been returned, according to a report established by AFP based on Israeli data.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed on Sunday his hostility to an agreement with Hamas.
Washington and London announced new sanctions against five people and a key entity in the financing of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They are now subject to an asset freeze in the United Kingdom and the United States and a “targeted arms embargo”. They are also subject to a residence ban.
These coordinated sanctions “send a clear message to Hamas: the United Kingdom and its partners are determined to ensure that those who finance terrorist activities have nowhere to hide”, underlined the head of British diplomacy, David Cameron .
Among the targeted personalities is Zuheir Shamlakh, a key financier of Hamas since 2019, who notably pushed the Palestinian Islamist movement to use cryptocurrencies. Mr Shamlakh “used digital currencies and informal money transfer systems to send large sums of money to Hamas from Iran before the tragic attacks of October 7,” the British Foreign Office said.
The United States has called on Israel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of a 17-year-old Palestinian-American killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank on Friday.
“We continue to work closely with the Israeli government to obtain as much information as possible and have requested an urgent investigation to determine the circumstances of his death and establish responsibility,” said to the press a spokesperson for the American State Department, Vedant Patel.
