An Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip has killed three children and three grandchildren of Ismail Haniya, political leader of Hamas, as reported this Wednesday by the Shehab agency, dependent on that Palestinian fundamentalist movement, and Haniya himself has subsequently confirmed both like the Israeli army. This is Israel's biggest blow to the Hamas leadership in the Strip in the six months of armed conflict. In those first statements to the Qatari network Al Jazeera, Haniya wanted to show toughness by ensuring that the attack will not change the group's position of demanding a permanent ceasefire from Israel in the negotiations that are being developed for a possible truce in Loop.
The Israeli army and the Shin Bet (internal secret service) have subsequently reported the multiple murder and have justified it by indicating that the three sons were part of the Hamas military apparatus and that they were on their way to commit an attack in the central area of Gaza. , reports the newspaper Times of Israel.
The attack occurred against a vehicle that was traveling through the Al Shati refugee camp, in Gaza City, and in it were the three children who died: Hazem with his daughter Amal; Amir with his son Khaled and his daughter Razan, and Mohamed, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Channel 14 of Israeli television. This chain adds that the army launched a missile from a plane at the car. “If they think that attacking my children at the height of the talks, before the movement's response is presented, will make Hamas change its positions, they are delusional,” he told Al Jazeera.
Haniya represents one of the key pieces in negotiating the ceasefire, the release of hostages and the end of the war in Gaza. In those first words he said that the lives of his children are not worth more than the lives of the rest of the Palestinians—more than 33,000—who have died from Israeli attacks throughout the current war. While he was making these comments, images of the bombing site with bodies covered in blankets were shown.
The Hamas leader was informed by telephone directly from Gaza when he was visiting wounded Palestinians in a hospital in Doha (Qatar), where he has resided for years, according to a video recorded at that time in one of the rooms of the medical center. . Haniya decided to continue with the visit. “Praise be to God who honored me with the martyrdom of three of my children, along with several of his children, to unite them with the group of martyrs in my family, whose number reaches approximately 60. Yes, with the blood of the martyrs, the wounds of the wounded and the pain, we create hope and we create freedom and independence for our people, our cause and our nation,” the Hamas leader said on Al Jazeera.
In the current war, Israel has not managed to eliminate any of the senior Hamas commanders in the Strip, although one of the objectives of the conflict is to destroy this movement on a political and military level. He did manage, however, to kill the number two, Saleh al Aruri, exiled in Lebanon, in an attack in Beirut on January 2.
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This Wednesday's attack, however, shows very close monitoring by its secret services of the entire environment of the top officials of the Palestinian fundamentalist group within Gaza. The main objective that Israel is pursuing is Yahia Sinwar, head of the group in the Palestinian enclave, considered the mastermind of the attack in which Hamas killed some 1,200 people on October 7 and which was the trigger for the conflict.
Criticism of Biden
Before the attack against the Haniya family was carried out, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, had considered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's management of the Gaza war “a mistake,” in an interview broadcast this Tuesday. on the Spanish-language network Univisión, in which he has also urged that the parties in conflict agree to a ceasefire of between a month and a half and two months. “What I am demanding is that the Israelis ask for a ceasefire, allowing for the next six, eight weeks, full access to all food and medicine in the country,” he said, delving into the same argument he used last week. to pressure Netanyahu.
The hardening of Biden's criticism occurs at the same time that the threats between Iran and Israel increase in tone, although, for the moment, without jumping from words to actions. The dialectical clash occurs amid growing fear that the dispute will spread into a regional conflict. The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, took advantage of his speech this Wednesday on the occasion of the end of the holy month of Ramadan to reiterate that Israel will be punished for bombing the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which also took place on April 1. Israel, in its almost immediate response, has assured that if the Shiite power carries out attacks from its own territory, there will be a direct armed response, according to Foreign Minister Israel Katz.
“When the Zionist regime attacks an Iranian consulate in Syria, it is as if it had attacked Iranian soil. That malicious regime has taken a wrong step. He must be punished, and he will be punished,” the Iranian leader published on his profile on the social network . “If Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will respond and attack Iran,” the head of Israeli diplomacy responded in the same way, directly labeling the Iranian leader in a text repeated in Hebrew and Persian.
Subsequently, Khamenei has published two new messages asking Muslim countries to cut economic and political relations with Israel, at least temporarily, while criticizing “some Muslim governments” for collaborating with that country. “Zionists suck the blood of a country for their own benefit,” he wrote, “those who help the Zionist regime are contributing to their own destruction.”
Of the dozen killed in the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, seven were members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Three days earlier, another bombing attributed to Israel killed about 40 people near the Damascus airport. Threats of revenge have led thousands of Israelis to stock up on food, water and electricity generators in the face of possible retaliation from Iran. Iran backs and supports both the Palestinian fundamentalists Hamas and the Shiite guerrilla Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The US president has also considered “outrageous” the murder on April 1 of seven employees of the NGO World Central Kitchen (WCK), founded by the Spanish chef José Andrés. Likewise, he has emphasized that “there is no excuse” for his ally to maintain the blockade of food and medicine for the Palestinians in the Strip, after pointing out that he has confirmed with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt that everything is ready for these supplies to reach the Gazan population. “It must be done now,” Biden said.
The latest proposal offered by the United States to the parties to reach a ceasefire and to which there is still no response would be accompanied, in a first phase, by the release of 40 of the 133 hostages remaining in the Strip in exchange for 900 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, about a hundred of whom would be considered high-ranking, according to the Israeli press. There are, however, serious doubts about the number of abductees who remain alive in the hands of the different Palestinian factions in Gaza. Hamas has come to recognize, according to Israeli media, that it cannot gather 40 live hostages including women, minors, the elderly, the sick and the wounded.
The US president and the Israeli prime minister held a telephone conversation last week in which Biden told Netanyahu that US support depended on Israel allowing access to food and medicine to Gaza. Israel announced the opening of the Erez border crossing, which separates the north of the Strip from Israel, and the port of Ashdod, something that has not occurred so far.
Risk of escalation in Lebanon
Nor has the level of tension decreased on the border with Lebanon, another of the fronts that Israel has kept open since the major Hamas attack on October 7. There, “the danger of escalation is real,” according to the general in command of the United Nations Interim Force for Lebanon (UNIFIL), the Spanish Aroldo Lázaro. “There is no military solution to the current confrontation and violence. A political and diplomatic solution is the only way forward,” he declared in a statement in which he requests the parties, Israel and Hezbollah, to end the fighting. “With the end of Ramadan, on the occasion of Eid El Fitr [nombre en árabe que recibe esa festividad]UNIFIL calls for the cessation of hostilities to be reestablished and for progress to be made towards a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution to the conflict,” Lázaro has published in the social network.
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