US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on Monday evening with the arduous mission of containing the war in Gaza: both the high death toll, which already exceeds 23,000 dead in three months of the conflict (1% of the Gaza Strip's population). ), as hostilities spread throughout the region. As he landed at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, he was greeted by news that nearly 250 Palestinians had been killed in attacks in the past 24 hours, the highest number in a week. Echoes of intensifying Israeli bombing raids in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah targets were also still reverberating, killing at least eight Shiite militiamen since Saturday, including Wisam al Tawilk, commander of the elite Radwan force, which was responsible for firing rockets into northern Israel .
Blinken, who has just toured major Middle East capitals and still has to visit the West Bank and Egypt to conclude his diplomatic trip, is also being received in Israel without Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government giving a clear response to Washington's demands over the future of the Palestinian enclave after the conflict. Since Friday, Israel has announced post-war plans in which the Palestinians would have only limited administration over the coastal enclave, which will remain under Israeli military control.
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The army has considered dismantling the military structure in northern Gaza, which was destroyed after weeks of fighting and from which more than a million civilians, almost all residents, have fled. His chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told The New York Times hours before Blinken's arrival that the armed forces had begun “a new, less intense phase” of the invasion of Gaza, with smaller numbers of troops on the ground and fewer airstrikes. Shortly thereafter, Gaza's Health Ministry reported the deaths of 247 Palestinians, the highest number so far this year, in Israeli attacks recorded between midday Sunday and midday Monday.
Tens of thousands of Israeli reservists are being demobilized as part of large-scale military operations in the North End. Last Friday, the Minister of Defense, former General Yoav Gallant, announced the start of the third and final phase of the war, in which troops will focus on attacking specific targets in the center and south of the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of people live through the People displaced by conflict are crowded together.
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In Jordan on Sunday, Blinken lamented “the tragedy” suffered by civilians in the Gaza Strip in a war that will “metastasize” in Lebanon, the West Bank or the Red Sea. Internal divisions in the emergency government, which decides on the conflict in Israel, appear to have prevented the approval of the so-called “Morning After Plan” presented by the defense minister. Radical ministers such as ultra-nationalist Itamar Ben Gvir have suggested “encouraging” Gazan Palestinians to emigrate to other countries and rebuild Jewish settler settlements destroyed in the enclave in 2005. Other centrist ministers, led by former general Benny Gantz, are boycotting cabinet meetings while being asked to leave by the opposition leader, former prime minister Yair Lapid.
Military spokesman Hagari also warned in an interview with the New York Times that if a diplomatic solution to Hezbollah's withdrawal from the area near Lebanon's border with Israel is not found, the warplanes would be limited to “exploring the strategy used against them.” copy and meet”. Hamas in Gaza. After the attack with more than 60 rockets that severely damaged the Maron Air Control Center in the border area on Saturday, Israeli fighter jets responded with waves of bombs.
On the same northern front, Prime Minister Netanyahu on Monday addressed soldiers from the region who remain at their posts while their relatives were evacuated from the range of rockets fired from Lebanon. “Hezbollah has already made a mistake [la guerra] “In 2006, and he will do it again now,” Netanyahu warned.
In the Palestinian Strip, nearly 90% of the population has been forced from their homes, while the last operating hospitals in the center and south of the territory are being evacuated due to their proximity to the fighting. The World Health Organization also reported the departure of 600 patients admitted to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah, in the central area of the enclave. Around 8,000 wounded people are waiting in Rafah for treatment in Egypt. The Israeli peace NGO B'Tselem warned on Friday that more than a million people are at risk of famine.
The army, meanwhile, claimed it had discovered an underground factory producing medium-range missiles in the El Bureij refugee camp, south of the Gaza Strip capital. “The fighting will continue in Gaza in 2024,” Rear Admiral Hagari limited himself to confirming, without clarifying the duration of the conflict.
The war appears to be far from entering a new phase in Gaza, as military spokesmen assure us, given the rising death toll and the desperation of thousands of wounded who can no longer be treated in hospitals. The offensive now threatens over Khan Younis (the largest urban area in the south) and Rafah, on the border wall where displaced people are crowding. More than 65,000 homes were destroyed in the three months of war and another 300,000 suffered significant damage. Half a million Gazans will have nowhere to return when the fighting ends. The lack of food and water, medicine and warm clothing is already threatening the rest of the population.
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