Israel bombed the southern Gaza Strip again this Saturday, in Rafah, a city in the extreme south of the territory where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are trying to take refuge from the fighting, after almost three months of a war with Hamas, which has turned the besieged Palestinian territory in a “place of death” simply “uninhabitable”, according to the UN.
The conflict unleashed by the bloody attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7, which left some 1,140 dead in Israel, also threatens to spread in the region.
The Gaza Strip has become “simply an uninhabitable place”, “a place of death and hopelessness”, and its inhabitants are “facing daily threats before the world's eyes”, denounced on Friday the head of humanitarian operations of the UN, Martin Griffiths.
Israel's offensive, which vowed to “destroy” the Palestinian Islamist movement, left at least 22,722 dead, mostly civilians, according to the Health Ministry of Hamas, in power in Gaza.
There, Abu Mohamed, a 60-year-old Palestinian who fled from the Bureij refugee camp (center), declared that, as the war enters its fourth month, the future of Gaza appears “dark, gloomy and very difficult”.
According to Israel, some 132 hostages of the 250 kidnapped on October 7 by Hamas, a group classified by the European Union and the United States as “terrorist”, remain captive in the Palestinian territory.
Malnutrition
Unicef warned that the fighting, malnutrition and the health situation created a “cycle of death that threatens more than 1.1 million children” in that territory.
The World Health Organization (WHO) indicated that most of the territory's 36 hospitals were out of service due to the fighting, and those that continue to function face shortages.
A UN team delivered medical supplies to Gaza authorities in Khan Younis on Friday. It was “the first time we were able to make this delivery in about 10 days,” said Sean Casey, WHO coordinator.
The Israeli army declared on Saturday that its forces “killed several terrorists (…) and destroyed some tunnel entrance shafts” in Yan Yunis in the last 24 hours and that they found military vests “hidden (…) in a medical clinic” in Gaza City.
Israel accuses Hamas of using civilian infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, to hide an underground network.
In Syria and Iraq, attacks on military bases of the United States, Israel's main ally, have skyrocketed in recent weeks.
And in Yemen, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels — like Hezbollah — have multiplied their attacks on ships in the Red Sea in “support” for the Palestinians in Gaza.
In this context, the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, was in Turkey this Saturday to talk with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the Gaza war.
Blinken will also visit several Arab states before heading to Israel and the occupied West Bank next week.
His European counterpart, Josep Borrell, will meet with Lebanese officials this weekend, also in the hope of avoiding a regional conflagration.
The diplomats will likely address another issue: the long-term future of Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday publicly presented proposals for the post-war Palestinian territory that advocates an administration without Hamas, but without an Israeli civilian presence. The plan still does not have the endorsement of the Government, which is divided on this issue.
For two far-right ministers – Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – the future of Gaza is the departure of the Palestinians and the return of the Jewish settlers.
“It is not up to Israel to determine the future of Gaza, which is Palestinian land,” French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna told CNN on Friday.
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, the number of settlements and new routes for settlers has seen an “unprecedented” increase in the occupied West Bank, according to a study by the NGO Peace Now.
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