The fate of the Nasser hospital, the largest in the south of the Gaza Strip, in Khan Younes, was still causing growing concern on Friday February 16, after an operation by the Israeli army which took control of it.
Meanwhile, the international community is increasing its calls to dissuade Israel from launching an offensive in the overcrowded city of Rafah, where nearly a million and a half civilians are trapped against the closed border with Egypt.
The Israeli army said Friday it had arrested “more than twenty terrorists who participated” in the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, among “dozens of suspects” arrested at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, in the Gaza Strip. . “[Israeli] troops found weapons inside the hospital” in Israel, the Israeli army said in a statement. She added that she was continuing her operation in this hospital, which she said had been used in recent weeks by Hamas fighters to fire on Israeli forces.
According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, five patients at this hospital died following power cuts following the fuel shortage, which caused the distribution of oxygen to stop after this assault. The ministry added that it feared for the lives of seven other patients in intensive care and the nursery, and held Israeli forces “responsible” for the deaths.
For its part, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) described on Friday the “chaotic, catastrophic” situation which reigned the day before in the Nasser hospital. During the Israeli raid on Thursday, all MSF staff were forced to flee the premises, he said, noting that one of the team members was still missing.
Hostages in the Gaza Strip are “fighting for their survival,” Hamas’ military wing said Friday. “Wounded and sick enemy prisoners are living a very difficult situation and struggling to survive, and this is not surprising, because everything from which our people suffer – whether it is hunger, thirst, or lack of medicine -, they also suffer from it,” said Abou Obeida, the spokesperson for the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.
“We always strive to keep [in a safe place] enemy prisoners by all possible means and we have already warned dozens of times about the risks to which they are exposed (…), but time is running out,” he said. he adds. These statements come after the release earlier this week of two Israeli-Argentinian hostages during an Israeli operation in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, which left “around a hundred dead” on the Palestinian side, according to the ministry. of the health of Hamas.
Israel will coordinate with Egypt before its military operation in Rafah, in the far south of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli foreign minister assured Friday in Munich. “Egypt is our ally. We have a peace agreement with Egypt and we will operate in a way that does not harm Egyptian interests,” Israel Katz said during the Munich Security Conference.
“We will operate in Gaza after coordinating with Egypt,” he added, also assuring that Israel would “keep US President Joe Biden informed” of the military offensive.
For his part, Joe Biden said Friday evening that “a temporary ceasefire was needed” in the Gaza Strip “to get the hostages out,” adding that he “always hoped that this could happen.” realize “. “I hope that in the meantime the Israelis will not carry out a massive ground invasion,” he added.
Egypt is building a closed and secure camp in the Sinai to accommodate Palestinians from Gaza fleeing the war in the event of an Israeli offensive on Rafah, according to the Wall Street Journal and an Egyptian NGO. The American daily claims, citing Egyptian officials and security experts, that “a closed enclosure of 13 square kilometers” is being built on the border with the Palestinian territory devastated by more than four months of war between Israel and Hamas.
This camp is therefore part of the “emergency plans” for the reception of these refugees, after the announcement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of an upcoming military offensive on Rafah. It could house “more than 100,000 people,” according to the American daily.
We must “avoid at all costs” that the Gazans massed in the south of the Palestinian territory flee to Egypt, because this would sign the “death warrant” of a peace process, the head of the Palestinian Authority told the BBC on Friday. UN agency responsible for refugees. “People should not cross the border,” urged Filippo Grandi, from Germany where he is attending the 59th Munich Security Conference.
“It would be catastrophic for Palestinians, especially those who would be forced to move once again; “it would be catastrophic for Egypt in every way and, more importantly than anything else, a new refugee crisis would spell the end of a future peace process,” the UNHCR chief stressed. Mr. Grandi believes that once refugees leave Gaza, they will not be able to return there, as happened with the great exodus of 1948, and that this would ruin the possibility of a two-way solution. States.
The French president on Friday provided strong support, that of France, to supporters of unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, ensuring that it was no longer “a taboo”, despite Israel’s warnings against to this perspective which is emerging among certain Western allies.
Receiving King Abdullah II of Jordan at the Elysée, the French president also warned of the “unprecedented humanitarian disaster” and the “turning point” that an Israeli offensive against the Palestinian town of Rafah would cause, where nearly a million and a half Palestinians are trapped on the border with Egypt.
The National Court of Asylum (CNDA) announced on Friday that it considered that the Gaza Strip was experiencing “a situation of indiscriminate violence of exceptional intensity”, paving the way for protection of Palestinians from this region.
By a decision of February 12, the CNDA granted asylum to a national from Khan Younès, considering that he ran “a real risk of suffering a serious threat against his life or person” due to “d “a situation of violence, resulting from the armed conflict between Hamas forces and the Israeli armed forces likely to extend indiscriminately to civilians as well as the humanitarian situation,” the CNDA said in a statement. This type of decision by the CNDA, which rules on appeal on asylum requests, generally sets a precedent for all similar cases in France.
