The bubble of a ground invasion of Gaza by Israeli troops to defeat Hamas shortly after the Oct. 7 attack has burst, but airstrikes on the Gaza Strip are increasing, coinciding with the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron in the country. According to Palestinian authorities, Gaza is facing the bloodiest day of the war with more than 700 dead. “Hamas are the new Nazis, they also threaten Europe,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday in front of Macron, whom he received in Jerusalem. The French president asserts that the two countries face the same terrorist enemy, referring to Hamas in Palestine, the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq or the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. France is proposing that the same international coalition that is already fighting the Islamic State should now try to put an end to Hamas.
17 days have passed since the Hamas attack that killed around 1,400 Israelis, and the Israeli army’s tanks and soldiers are still stationed on the edge of the Gaza Strip, without carrying out the major attack so trumpeted by the country’s highest authorities. That doesn’t mean aviation and artillery aren’t stepping up the accelerator in the Palestinian enclave, where the army says they hit around 400 Hamas targets in the last 24 hours, killing dozens of militants. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which considers this day to be the deadliest in the territory since the outbreak of the current conflict, these attacks have left at least 704 people dead (305 of whom are minors). In total, there have been 5,791 deaths in the Gaza Strip since October 7, including more than 2,300 minors, the same source adds.
In the midst of war, Israel is multiplying its diplomatic agenda. During his visit, Macron emphasized that the release of those abducted in Gaza was the top priority. According to Israel, there are 220, not counting four women who were released on Monday evening, the last two – two elderly people. The French President arrived in Israel with a message of solidarity towards that country with which he will stand “shoulder to shoulder”. According to Elysée sources, he is also traveling with the intention of stopping a possible regional war escalation and facilitating a new international consensus on the conflict.
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Macron confirmed that nine French hostages were captured or missing in the Hamas attack. Another 30 were killed. The president met with some of the victims’ families at Tel Aviv airport. “You will not be alone in this war against terrorism,” Macron said after being welcomed by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, to whom he reiterated his support in the current war situation but added that this fight must be fought. without increasing this conflict.”
Macron is clear that Israel has the right to defend itself and that the people of Gaza have access to humanitarian aid. “The fight must be ruthless, but not without rules, because we are democracies fighting against terrorists, democracies that respect the laws of war and guarantee humanitarian access to the people of Gaza,” he commented. At the same time, he defended the “decisive reactivation of the political process with the Palestinians.”
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The prevailing tension ignores the possibility of a ceasefire that would allow us to address the humanitarian crisis that is shaking the population of Gaza, more than 2.3 million inhabitants. Two-thirds of hospitals and a third of clinics in Gaza have ceased operations due to the Israeli blockade, the World Health Organization warned on Tuesday about the enormous health pressure in the area.
The French president believes that the fight against Hamas must also become a goal of the coalition that has been fighting against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq since 2016, which includes France and is led by the United States. “It’s about drawing inspiration from the experiences of the global coalition against the Islamic State and seeing what aspects can be replicated against Hamas,” Elysée sources said. France and Israel have a common enemy, Macron said after a meeting with Netanyahu.
The Hamas attack means that France is now facing a larger number of hostages in this conflict than in the rest of the world. The number of nationals killed on October 7 is the highest in an operation of this kind since the Nice attack in 2016, in which a truck killed 84 people.
In the wake of this massacre, Israel insists that Hamas operates under the same ideology and modus operandi as the Islamic State. The army assures that the attackers of the Palestinian fundamentalist militia carried several flags of this terrorist group, which were found in the attacked locations on Israeli territory.
The presence of more than 200 kidnapped people in the hands of the jihadists could determine what kind of land occupation the army will carry out. The military and politicians insist that the goal is to release everyone safely. So far, four of them have been released through diplomatic negotiations with the fundamentalist militia. They are gestures, as military spokesman Daniel Hagari suggested, that attempt to show a humanity that the kidnappers do not have.
“I went through hell,” said Yocheved Lifschitz, 85, one of the two kidnapped women who were released Monday evening. The woman did not shy away from criticizing her country for the security failure that allowed Hamas to operate despite the fence that separates Israel from Gaza and cost $2.5 billion, “but it didn’t help at all.” The Israeli army, as announced on the social network and which includes various ways to contact us.
Macron’s agenda also includes a trip to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The background is his loss of popularity in the Arab world after the government he led in France banned demonstrations, protests and demonstrations of solidarity on the streets with the Palestinian people before the courts warned that it was an illegal measure.
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