Five trucks with medicines destined for the population of the Strip are on the road to Gaza. But the so-called “drug operation”, born from a mediation between Qatar and France, was not easy. And it inflamed the already very tense climate in the Israeli government with a new clash between Prime Minister Netanyahu and War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz. Sparks that would also have intensified on the delicate issue of the hostages with Bibi who would have decided to tighten the red lines with Hamas – the media report – without informing Gantz and Cabinet Minister Gadi Eisenkot. A climate of high internal tension while Israel could have to face a new difficult front on the ground, that with Lebanon.
“We stand ready to fight” with the probability of a “war in this region higher than in the past”, underlined Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi while visiting the troops on the border at the end of a vast exercise.
The Israeli army receives supplies from the air in Khan Yunis
Regarding the drug operation, Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzuk – whose organization reiterated its rejection of the 2-State Solution – had warned that the agreement did not provide for any control by Israel of the truckload of drugs. And he claimed – as the main reason for the Islamic faction's adhesion to the agreement – that thanks to the agreement “a thousand boxes” would go to the Palestinians, in exchange for “just one for the hostages”.
The matter, however, became complicated when Netanyahu was attacked by the protests of the radical right ministers of his government such as Itamar Ben Gvir not only for the words of Hamas, but also for the fear that something else could be hidden in that passage of medicines to Gaza . Faced with protests, Netanyahu responded that he had not dealt with the “details” and that the “technical choice” not to inspect the trucks had been made by the army and security forces. However, it was Minister Benny Gantz who retorted the prime minister: the “war cabinet” was responsible for the agreement and the army had nothing to do with it. A tough confrontation that ended with the decision to have the 5 trucks stopped at the Israeli Kerem Shalom crossing checked, before giving the green light to the entry, through Rafah, of the cargo destined for 4 hospitals in the Strip.
The material is vital both for the 132 Israeli hostages in Gaza and for the now exhausted population who risk having to face a new emergency: hepatitis A which, according to the Hamas health ministry, is spreading in the displaced persons' camps due of “overcrowding and lack of hygiene”. General conditions of suffering that the UN will address in a meeting on January 22nd. The secretary general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, admitted that the relationship with Israel is “complex and challenging”, recalling that in 3 months of war he had never managed to speak with Netanyahu.
Reinforcing the intransigence of the Islamic faction, the overseas leader of Hamas Khaled Meshal, after having expressed no to the 2-state solution, underlined that especially after 7 October the “vast majority of the Palestinian people” want “a Palestine from sea to river and from north to south” without the borders of '67.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army continues to pound the north and south of the Strip with extensive raids, especially in Khan Yunis. The deaths – according to Hamas – have reached 24,448. And tension continues to be explosive in the West Bank too: in two operations in Nablus and Tulkem directed against local militiamen, eight Palestinians were killed – according to Wafa.
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Gaza: Palestinian media, 16 dead in Israeli raid on Rafah
The Palestinian news agency Wafa says that at least 16 people, mostly women and children, were killed in Israeli shelling that late yesterday evening hit a house in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. The Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera released a video showing the arrival of the bodies of three children at the El-Najar hospital in Rafah after the bombing. In another video from the same hours you see another child being treated for head injuries in the same hospital. According to the Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Health, the death toll in the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli offensive on October 7 is at least 24,450 dead and 61,500 wounded.
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