More than 200 Palestinians have been killed in relentless Israeli bombings and ground operations in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, Hamas said, after a UN resolution on humanitarian aid failed to find a solution. Call for a ceasefire.
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Almost three months after the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, it announced the discovery of the bodies of dozens of killed Palestinians, some of whom it said were “executed” during an Israeli ground operation in Jabaliya, north of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army announced the deaths of five soldiers, four on Friday and one on Saturday, during fighting with Hamas in Gaza. This brings the number of soldiers killed since the Israeli ground offensive in this area began on October 27th to 144.
It was an attack of unprecedented scale and violence by Hamas commandos who had crossed into southern Israel from the neighboring Gaza Strip and sparked the latest war between the Palestinian group and the Israeli army.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after that attack, which killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to the latest official Israeli figures. Israel said Palestinian fighters also kidnapped about 250 people, 129 of whom are still being held in Gaza.
According to the Hamas Health Ministry, Israeli retaliatory attacks in the Gaza Strip, in which thousands of bombs were dropped, left 20,258 people dead, mostly women, teenagers and children, and more than 53,000 injured.
That included 201 people killed in the past 24 hours at several locations in the small, overpopulated area besieged by Israel, he said. An attack killed 18 people in the Nousseirat refugee camp in the center of the area where Hamas seized power in 2007.
In Khan Younes (south), bodies and wounded are being transported to Nasser Hospital. Men accompany a woman in tears after she sees the bodies of her loved ones, a man crouches and places his hand on a black body bag in tears. Outside, others pray in front of a corpse.
In addition to the airstrikes, Israeli troops entered the Gaza Strip and captured several areas there.
“Cruel massacres”
On Saturday, Hamas health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidreh accused them of carrying out “several cruel massacres” in the Jabaliya and Tal Al-Zaatar region this week. They “executed dozens of citizens in the streets.”
When contacted by AFP, the army did not respond specifically to the allegations of execution, but assured that its attacks “against military targets were in accordance with international law.”
The army released images showing its soldiers advancing through the ruins and opening fire on targets in Gaza City. “Armed terrorists who tried to attack the soldiers were eliminated” and “buildings used as military sites were destroyed,” she said.
After laborious negotiations, the UN Security Council adopted a text on Friday calling for the “immediate” and “large-scale” delivery of aid to the population of the Gaza Strip, which the UN says is at great risk of famine.
The resolution, rejected by Israel and its American ally, which refrains from calling for a “ceasefire,” calls for “creating the conditions for a permanent cessation of hostilities.”
Aid, whose entry into the Gaza Strip is controlled by Israel, comes in small quantities from Egypt and the Israeli border crossing at Kerem Shalom, but it falls far short of the immense needs.
UN chief Antonio Guterres criticized what he said were “massive obstacles” to the distribution of aid caused by the Israeli “offensive” in the Gaza Strip and again called for a ceasefire.
In this context, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to reach a compromise on a new ceasefire that would allow greater aid and the release of Palestinian hostages and prisoners held by Israel.
In late November, a week-long ceasefire enabled the release of 105 hostages and 240 Palestinian prisoners, as well as other aid.
Nevertheless, the belligerents remain adamant.
negotiation
Hamas is calling for an end to the fighting before negotiations over the hostages take place.
Israel is open to the idea of a ceasefire, but rules out a ceasefire before the “elimination” of the Islamist movement, which is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and especially Israel.
According to Hamas military wing spokesman Abu Obeida, his group has “lost contact” with the militants responsible for guarding five Israeli hostages, including three elderly men, who were captured in a video released on December 18 can be seen. “We believe these hostages were killed during a Zionist attack,” he said in a statement.
No confirmation could be obtained from Israel.
In pouring rain, thousands of demonstrators, including relatives of hostages, again gathered in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Caesarea to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demand that he negotiate the release of the hostages.
Two days before Christmas, religious authorities in Bethlehem, a city in the occupied West Bank where, according to Christian tradition, the birth of Jesus Christ took place, renounced any “unnecessarily festive” celebration in solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
In this area, which was occupied by Israel from 1967 to 2005 and was under Israeli blockade since 2007 before Israel imposed a total siege on October 9th, entire neighborhoods have been destroyed and 1.9 million residents displaced since October 7th.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, recalled that “hunger, famine and the spread of disease” largely threaten this 362 km2 area.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have found refuge, especially in Rafah (south), and are housed in makeshift camps.
With their plastic bowls or small cooking pots in hand, Palestinians, many of them children, wait to receive food in a camp in Rafah, overlooking steaming pots.
“My children have lost a lot of weight and hunger wakes them up at night. I cry when they ask me for food in the evening,” says Nour Barbakh, a displaced person from Khan Younes.