With the front between Israel and Iran apparently frozen, at least for now, the reality of the war in the Middle East once again reminds us that the main theater of horror remains open in Gaza. There, the possibility of a short-term ceasefire is not intuited. The unknowns float more around the decision that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, finally makes regarding the southern city of Rafah, whose land invasion he irrevocably announced weeks ago. Will he carry out this operation against the judgment of even his main ally, the United States? Will you listen to the UN and the humanitarian organizations that consider it unfeasible to displace the around one and a half million refugee citizens in that area?
“I don't want to wait until the last second, before the Israeli invasion of Rafah, to leave,” says Samir Zaqout, 58, deputy director of the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, via voice messages, who, just in case, has already has escaped to the middle zone of the Strip. “We all think that this is a war against civilians and against civilian infrastructure, not against Hamas. “People think they are going to be killed or their house destroyed, especially since Netanyahu pointed out Rafah,” he emphasizes. Israel maintains that Rafah is Hamas's last remaining stronghold.
The Israeli prime minister threw himself into the middle when, with the bulk of the international community asking him for restraint, he ordered a measured and controlled attack against Iran on Friday, without officially causing casualties or damaging its nuclear program. He did it in retaliation for the one launched by Tehran in the early hours of last Sunday, which left no fatalities, although it injured a Bedouin girl. Israel has been the last to attack before this return to calm and, in some way, it has left the mark of its superiority.
But on the Gaza battlefield, Netanyahu has not achieved his objectives, essentially ending Hamas and bringing back the more than 130 hostages still there, many of them already dead. Like every Saturday, Tel Aviv has once again been the scene of a protest demonstration against the Government and in favor of the release of the kidnapped people.
Therefore, the logic of what happened with the Iranian confrontation and the possible influence of international pressure to stop a major attack cannot be applied to the war in Gaza. The carnage of some 1,200 deaths that Hamas perpetrated in Israel on October 7 opened the spigot of the conflict and represents, more than half a year later, a heavy burden under which the prime minister, increasingly unpopular, has to make decisions.
In the Strip, where Israeli forces have since killed more than 34,000 people, according to data from the Ministry of Health, controlled by Hamas, they are aware that the war steamroller is still in motion. Without knowing when or how the military operation announced by Netanyahu will be, for weeks there have been citizens escaping from Rafah, next to the Egyptian border, to try to reach safety in other areas of the Strip that they believe are safer. But they end up coming across the reality of the conflict: from one hell they jump to another. There is no shelter and no one is safe, as the NGOs that assist them on the ground remember.
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Constant drone of drones
This has been confirmed by Samir Zaqout, the deputy director of the Al Mezan Center, who, after several months hosted in Rafah by relatives, has fled again, along with his wife. In a kind of diabolical game of ping-pong, they have headed further north. They are now settled in Az Zawayda, between Deir al Balah and the Nuseirat refugee camp. There, he adds, life remains “horrible” and under “permanent risk” from attacks by occupation troops. That is why he has decided—and managed—to send his son Nada, 15, and his daughters, Salma, 22, and Farah, 32, to Egypt. The constant background hum of Israeli drones accompanies the testimony of Zaqout. “Do you hear them?” he asks.
The danger of bombings and the humanitarian crisis complicate survival in any area of the Palestinian Mediterranean enclave. “I spend most of my time trying to get water,” says Zaqout, since the municipal authorities only manage to provide them with the supply for a while and with barely any pressure every 12 or 14 days. To this we must add other problems – serious, but become everyday ones – such as the lack of electricity, which, he explains, also means that fresh foods, such as chicken or milk, cannot be preserved because the refrigerators do not work. “Eating packaged food for so many months is killing people,” he concludes while adding that food is scarce and its price has skyrocketed.
Following the Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure, healthcare and obtaining medicine are other problems that have become part of the obstacle course to survive, as well as the increasing difficulty of obtaining cash. “Although I have money, I haven't had access to my bank for three months,” denounces the deputy director of Al Mezan. His situation, he highlights, is not as complicated as that of thousands of impoverished families in Gaza, not only due to the current war, and who depend on the remittances that arrive from their relatives abroad.
“The only way to stop famine is through regular and sustained access [de la ayuda] and a humanitarian ceasefire,” the World Food Program (WFP) warned on Thursday through the social network X (formerly Twitter). This organization, dependent on the UN, denounces that the number of trucks that Israel allows to access Gaza continues to be insufficient. So far in the month of April, 392 trucks have entered with food, which is almost the same as in March, but half as much as in January, adds the same source.
Ceasefire stuck
If the escalation with Iran has been stopped, negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza also seem to be stalled. The political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniya, was received this Saturday by the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkish president, an Islamist like the Palestinian fundamentalist group, is not part of the hard core of mediating countries (the United States, Qatar and Egypt), but he is trying to pull strings towards the end of the conflict.
Meanwhile, the so-called Freedom Flotilla, which brings together organizations from several countries, intends to set sail from Turkey to Gaza with more than 5,000 tons of humanitarian aid and the intention of breaking the Israeli blockade. Erdogan expressed confidence that “one day Israel will pay the price” for “the oppression it inflicts on the Palestinians” and explained to Haniya that Turkey is “making every effort to establish an independent State of Palestine” and achieve “peace.” “permanent” in the region, reports Andrés Mourenza. He also asked the Hamas leader that the Palestinians “act in unity” in reference to the failed attempts to achieve a joint government with the other political factions in Gaza and the West Bank. Turkey has increased its diplomatic contacts in recent weeks to try to avoid a further escalation of tension in the Middle East, acting as an intermediary between Iran and the United States, and in meetings with neighboring countries and Hamas.
Israel's reaction to the meeting between Erdogan and Haniya has come from Foreign Minister Israel Katz, on his X account (formerly Twitter): “The Muslim Brotherhood: rape, murder, desecration of corpses and burning of babies. What a shame, Erdogan.” Seven of Haniya's relatives (three children and four grandchildren) were killed in an Israeli bombing in Gaza on April 10.
Hamas is considering abandoning Qatar as its political base abroad, according to the American newspaper The Wall Street Journalwhich, according to Israeli media, could alter contacts for the cessation of hostilities.
The Palestinian Authority will review its relations with the United States after the veto of its State at the UN
The president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), Mahmoud Abbas, announced this Saturday that he is going to rethink his bilateral relations with the United States, according to statements made to the official Wafa agency. The decision comes in reaction to Washington's veto in the Security Council of the accession of the Palestinian State as a full member of the UN.
The announcement also coincides with an increase in violence in the West Bank, with attacks by Jewish settlers and the military incursion for several days by Israeli occupation troops in the Nur Chams refugee camp, in Tulkarem. The army has reported the death of 10 Palestinians in what it considers an operation against terrorism, despite the fact that among the dead is a 16-year-old teenager who was shot in the head while riding a scooter in that refugee camp. Meanwhile, in the town of Sawiya, a volunteer health worker who worked for the Red Crescent and who was going to care for the wounded died from a gunshot to the chest during an attack by settlers, that institution reported.
The ANP “will develop a new strategy to protect Palestinian national decisions independently and pursue a Palestinian agenda instead of maintaining a US vision or regional agendas,” the president said. Palestine “will not continue to be hostage to policies that have demonstrated their failure and have been exposed to the entire world,” Abbas added. “Bilateral relations with the United States will be reconsidered to ensure the protection of the interests of our people, our cause and our rights,” he added.
The US veto on Thursday thwarted a vast diplomatic offensive at the UN in favor of Palestine. Despite the clear majority of support among the 15 members of the Security Council – 12 voted in favor and two, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, abstained – the US vote against was enough to derail it.
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