An Israeli delegation is in Paris on Saturday to try to unblock talks over a ceasefire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, where local authorities said more than 100 Palestinians were killed overnight.
While the conflict shows no signs of easing twenty weeks after its outbreak, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's “post-war plan” for Gaza has been widely criticized, including by the American ally.
The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate in the Palestinian territory, where the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) warned on Saturday of “imminent mass starvation” due to a lack of sufficient water and food supplies.
“Look, we are fighting for rice,” Ahmad Atef Safi told AFP as he queued for food in Jabaliya in the north. “We are in a hunger war.”
At least 103 people were killed in Israeli military operations overnight, Hamas' health ministry said on Saturday.
A delegation led by Mossad (Israeli foreign intelligence agency) chief David Barnea arrived in Paris the day before in the hope of “unlocking” talks on a new ceasefire, an Israeli official said.
Mr. Barnea met his American and Egyptian counterparts, as well as the prime minister of Qatar, in Paris in late January to discuss a new agreement.
According to a Hamas source, the plan then called for a six-week pause in fighting and the release of 200 to 300 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 35 to 40 hostages held by Hamas.
Talks also took place in Egypt this week.
According to Israel, there are still 130 hostages among the approximately 250 people who were kidnapped in Israel on October 7 and taken to Gaza, of whom 30 are believed to have died.
That day, Hamas commandos infiltrating from Palestinian territory carried out an attack in southern Israel, killing 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Lula persists and signs
In retaliation, Israel vowed to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement that came to power in Gaza in 2007 and which it, like the United States and the European Union, considers a terrorist organization.
According to the latest report from the Hamas Ministry of Health, the Israeli military offensive in Gaza has left 29,514 dead, the vast majority of them civilians.
On Thursday evening, Benjamin Netanyahu presented his government's security cabinet with a plan that specifically envisages maintaining Israeli “security control” over the area after the end of the war.
That plan was immediately rejected by Palestinian rivals Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, but also by the United States, Israel's main ally.
During his visit to Argentina, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated his country's opposition to any “Israeli reoccupation” of the Gaza Strip.
In Geneva on Friday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights denounced in a report “the serious human rights violations” in Gaza “by all parties” since the start of the war.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who recently sparked a diplomatic crisis by comparing the Israeli offensive to the Holocaust, insisted on Friday that he was accusing Israel of “genocide.”
“Don’t close your eyes anymore.”
According to the United Nations, the war has displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in four and a half months and pushed some 2.2 million people, the vast majority of Gaza's population, to the brink of famine.
“We can no longer turn a blind eye to this human tragedy,” warned the United Nations Agency for Assistance to Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) on the social network X.
In Rafah, home to at least 1.4 million people, most of whom have fled the fighting, and the imminent target of a large-scale operation announced by the Israeli army, concern is growing by the day.
Aid, the arrival of which depends on a green light from Israel, is still insufficient and its delivery to the north is difficult due to the destruction and fighting.
“We cannot endure because of hunger and lack of food,” Oum Wajdi Salha, another resident of Jabaliya, told AFP.
In Israel, families of hostages held for 140 days called for a widespread mobilization this Saturday to demand their release.
“Take her home, that’s all. “We can't stay there any longer, we will collapse in the end,” said Avivit Yablonka, the sister of a hostage who comes every week to a square in Tel Aviv that has become a gathering place for families.