When rescue teams working in the Gaza Strip found this Tuesday the bodies of the Neteel family, from the Al Nuseirat refugee camp, they realized that the children’s bodies had their names written on their hands and feet.
This is something that your adult relatives possibly did to guarantee your identification in case you die in Israeli bombings, as it finally happened, and to ensure that they can be buried together.
The Neteel died this Tuesday in Gaza, which became the bloodiest day since the outbreak of war on October 7, when Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israel that caused more than 1,400 deaths. Since then, Tel Aviv has besieged the enclave with intense bombings.
According to Gaza health authorities, In 24 hours (between Monday and Tuesday) there were more than 700 deaths from the attacks, a number of victims in a matter of one day that had not been seen until now. In the afternoon alone, the bombings killed 50 people in one hour.
And the attacks on Gaza do not stop and increasingly punish its civilian population, at a pace that Israel wants to maintain “to crush Hamas,” according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also stated that Tuesday’s attacks were “the harshest” since the beginning of the outbreak.
(Also read: ‘I lived through hell’: the harsh story of an 85-year-old former hostage who was in the hands of Hamas)
“We are attacking our enemies with tremendous force,” said Netanyahu in a visit to the soldiers mobilized to the dividing line with Gaza, who for more than two weeks have been waiting to see if they will carry out a ground incursion into the enclave that for now does not exist. has occurred.
While days ago this operation seemed immediate, the Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli Army, Herzi Halevi, admitted this Tuesday that this step, which would take the conflict to a new military phase, could be delayed even further due to “strategic and tactics.”
(You may be interested in: The Gaza neighborhood that was reduced to rubble in a single night: ‘This is genocide’)
We are attacking our enemies with tremendous force
“We have prepared for this. The Israeli Army and the Southern Command have prepared quality offensive plans to achieve the objectives of the war,” said Halevi, who then clarified that There are “tactical and strategic” issues that delay the invasion, while Israel continues to attack Hamas targets to “kill terrorists, destroy infrastructure and collect intelligence for the next stage.”
According to some media, among the concerns of a ground operation are the traps that could be left by the militias, the combats in the field of urban guerrillas in a place that Israel does not control or the kilometers of underground tunnels in the Strip whose existence is unknown.
Added to this is another delicate issue: the at least 220 hostages who remain captive inside Gaza, another of the elements that could have limited the Israeli ground offensive.
And although the invasion seems to be portrayed, the situation in the Palestinian enclave is already critical. So far, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, the dead in the Palestinian enclave are at least 5,800, including more than 2,300 children, against whom the war takes a special toll.
According to the NGO Save the Children, there could also be almost 900 children among some 1,550 missing people in Gaza who are under the rubble of destroyed buildings, and that emergency teams cannot rescue due to incessant bombings and lack of fuel.
(Also: Israelis’ trust in their government is at the lowest level in 20 years: survey)
There are also more than 16,200 injured, and according to the WHO, two-thirds of hospitals and a third of clinics have stopped operations. Added to this is a growing “wave of epidemic diseases” that already affect more than 3,000 people, many of them children.
According to Health, which also reported 12 hospitals and 32 primary care centers “out of service” due to attacks or lack of fuel that leaves them without electricity, “the epidemics include diarrheal diseases, food poisoning, skin diseases, scabies and bronchial infections, in addition to dozens of cases of chickenpox.”
Tensions at the UN
Meanwhile, In the geopolitical field, Israel entered into an open crisis with the UN this Tuesday, with requests for the resignation of the Secretary General, António Guterres.
In holding an open debate on the situation in Gaza in the Security Council, which made it clear that the Palestinian conflict has returned to the center of world geopolitics, Guterres denounced the Hamas attacks in Israel but affirmed that “they do not come from nowhere,” because “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
His statements motivated the anger of the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, who in his massive.”
Erdan later said his country will be forced to “reconsider” its relationship with the UN, while Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced that he was canceling a meeting he had scheduled with Guterres and a group of relatives of the Hamas hostages.
(You can read: ‘We do not have enough shrouds to cover the bodies’: horror in Gaza hospitals)
Criticism of the UN also came from the Palestinian side, whose Foreign Minister, Riyad al Maliki, said that the inaction of the Security Council is “unforgivable.”
“Isn’t your human conscience wounded by the crimes of the Israeli occupation during 56 years of colonial occupation, or by the terrorist murders, destruction and hunger to which the Palestinian population is subjected today?” he expressed.
(Read on: How far is Israel willing to go with its grip on Gaza and against Hamas?)
Tuesday’s Council session was an “open debate” where each country could present its position, but it also served for the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to announce that his country now supports “humanitarian pauses” that allow food, water and medicine to be brought into Gaza (he did not mention fuels), and that this will be the substance of the next resolution that he presents to the Council, but which, however, does not convince other nations such as Russia and China.
For its part, The French president, Emmanuel Macron, made a visit to Jerusalem this Tuesday and then to Jordan, where he proposed to the Israeli prime minister and the president of the Palestinian Authority to fight the Islamist movement Hamas with an international coalition.
The French president also called on Iran, which supports Hamas, and its allies “not to run the risk of opening new fronts,” advocating relaunching “the political process with the Palestinians.”
INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL
*With AFP and EFE
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