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New deadly Israeli strikes targeted the south of the Gaza Strip on Thursday, February 15, where Israel promised to carry out a “powerful” ground operation in the overcrowded town of Rafah despite international pressure which is increasing day by day.
After more than four months of war against Hamas across the besieged Palestinian territory, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now wants to destroy the “last bastion” of the Islamist movement in Rafah, which has become the final refuge for hundreds of thousands of civilians who fled the fighting.
After Khan Younes, a town transformed into a field of ruins where the army continues to confront Hamas fighters, Israel is preparing a ground offensive in the overpopulated town of Rafah, a few kilometers further south, which has become the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of civilians who fled the fighting.
The Israeli army announced on Thursday that it was carrying out an operation in a large besieged hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip, where, according to it, Hamas hostages were being held and where doctors described a desperate situation. Surrounded by fighting between the army and the Palestinian Islamist movement, the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, the largest in southern Gaza, received thousands of civilians fleeing the war, whose evacuation began in recent days, under the bombs.
According to the army, it is a “targeted and limited operation” in the hospital, after it received “credible intelligence” indicating that Hamas had held hostages there “and that there would be perhaps bodies of hostages” on site.
Videos circulating on social media show scenes of chaos in the hospital, such as paramedics trying to take patients from the orthopedic ward to safety who appear to have been hit by a strike, or people walking through an aisle narrow to try to escape the hospital.
Medical staff raised the alarm on Wednesday about the fate of the hospital, with a nurse denouncing the lack of drinking water, sewers backing up into the emergency department and Israeli snipers stationed on the roofs of the establishment.
The European Union “condemned” Thursday the demolition by Israel of the house of a Palestinian activist in East Jerusalem, a sector of the Holy City annexed by Israel, denouncing “a violation of international humanitarian law”.
Fakhri Abou Diab, engaged for years against the demolitions of Palestinian houses, announced that “agents of the Israeli forces” had demolished on Wednesday morning the house he had lived in for thirty-eight years near the Old City. Part of the house dated from before 1967, when Israel annexed East Jerusalem, home to Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites.
“We urge Israel to stop demolishing Palestinian homes, including in this sensitive area adjacent to the Old City. The priority must be for everyone to defuse a very tense situation,” insisted this spokesperson in a press release. For its part, the United States also condemned this demolition on Wednesday, saying that such actions “harm Israel’s image in the world.”
The American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said Thursday that he still believed “possible” the conclusion of a truce in the war between Israel and Hamas and the release of the hostages. “We are very focused on this and I believe it is possible,” Blinken said during a joint news conference with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in Tirana.
“We are currently, with our counterparts from Qatar, Egypt and Israel, working on this, very intensively, with the aim of trying to find an agreement,” he continued. There are “very, very difficult issues that need to be resolved,” but “we are determined to do everything we can to move forward and see if we can reach an agreement,” the secretary added. American state.
Two influential far-right Israeli ministers firmly rejected Thursday the possibility of a peace plan, which Washington and its allies are considering, according to some media, to allow the release of hostages held in Gaza and consider the creation of a state Palestinian.
According to the Washington Post, the Biden administration and a small group of its Arab allies are working on a comprehensive plan aimed at establishing lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It would notably include a pause in the fighting, the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the October 7, 2023 attacks in Israel and held since then in Gaza, and a timetable for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state.
“An initial ceasefire, expected to last at least six weeks, would allow time to announce the plan, garner additional support” and “begin implementing” its provisions, including “the training of ‘a Palestinian interim government,’ the daily said, citing American and Arab officials. The promoters of this plan hope to reach an agreement before March 10, the start date of Ramadan, the holy month of Muslims.
Seventy-two of the ninety-nine journalists and media workers killed worldwide in 2023 died “in Israeli attacks on Gaza,” where Israel is at war with Hamas, one of the worst tolls drawn up each year by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
This association based in New York, financed by private donations and which for forty years has denounced murders, imprisonments, violence, censorship and threats against journalists, noted in its annual report on Thursday an increase of 44% over one year. of the number of press professionals killed on the planet.
Of the ninety-nine deaths in 2023, “the vast majority [seventy-two] were Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza [while] by contrast, outside of this conflict, twenty-two journalists and media workers have been killed in eighteen countries,” CPJ warns. “Journalists in Gaza are witnesses on the front lines,” notes CPJ boss Jodie Ginsberg, quoted in the report.
