Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced this Monday that the war in the Gaza Strip will not end until the death of the Hamas leaders. which he predicted “will take months, not years,” despite new fighting in the northern and central areas previously under military rule.
“Our goal is a complete victory over Hamas. We will kill the Hamas leaders, so we must continue to act in all areas of the Gaza Strip. The war must not end before that date. It will take us time, months, (but) not years,” the president said at a meeting of his party, the Likud coalition.
Members of the families of the 136 people who, after 122 days of war, are still kidnapped in the Gaza Strip, could not attend this meeting, local media reported this Monday, despite the fact that their access was guaranteed in previous meetings.
Behind closed doors, Netanyahu took credit for the November release of 110 hostages, telling members of his party that he “will continue to act on this issue,” but that Hamas seeks to impose demands that it will not accept.
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“The key to their freedom (of the hostages) should be similar to the previous agreement,” explained the president, who repeated that “it will not be carried out at any price.”
In the November exchange, a total of 105 hostages (following five earlier ones) were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners, many of them in administrative detention without trial.
Protesters demand the return of hostages held by Hamas.
But according to leaks from the latest negotiations, and although the draft agreement has not been made public, The Palestinian factions are now demanding the release of some 100 or 150 hostage detainees, among them high-profile prisoners like Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences.
On January 30, Netanyahu already announced, while new negotiations were taking place in Paris under the mediation of Qatar and Egypt, that He was not going to free “thousands of terrorists” or withdraw his troops from the Strip, another of Hamas' requirements, until “absolute victory.”
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The Israeli prime minister also assured on Sunday that his government “will not accept any agreement, nor at any price.”
“Many things are said in the media as if we agreed with them, such as things related to the release of terrorists, we simply will not accept them,” the president reiterated.
Relatives of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip demand an immediate agreement that allows their release.
In the Gaza Strip, The death toll increased this Monday, after 113 fatalities in the last 24 hours, to 27,478 dead and at least 66,835 injured, according to the latest data released by the Gazan Ministry of Health, controlled by Hamas.
The Israeli Army confirmed that fighting has intensified in the north and center of the Strip, after Israel focused its offensive on Khan Younis (south), in order to prevent “Hamas from rebuilding its capabilities” in these areas, a military statement detailed.
During a raid last week on Gaza City, reduced to smithereens after months of bombing, and on the Al Shati refugee camp, both in the north of the enclave, the army claimed to have killed “hundreds of terrorists and arrested dozens”.
“This is an area that initially required three divisions and three days to reach it. Now, two combat teams reached this area in an hour and a half,” detailed in a statement the commander of the 162nd division, Itzik Cohen, which operates in the north.
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Bodies of a family killed during Israeli airstrikes in Deir Al Balah (Gaza).
The presence of troops in these areas has also been felt by overwhelmed medical teams that operate under extreme danger, when they are not directly attacked by soldiers as in the Al Amal Hospital (south), every time they try to move to help the patients. wounded.
In the center of the enclave, at least four civilians were killed and dozens wounded in a combined attack by aircraft and artillery against a house in the Al Hakar neighborhood, the official Palestinian Wafa agency reported.
In another attack on a house in the Al Zawaida area, north of Deir Al Balah, an Israeli aerial bombardment also killed eight Palestinians, most of them children, according to local medical sources; in a war that will still claim the lives of more civilians.
EFE
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