With no sign of respite, the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas entered its fourth month on Sunday, January 7th. Israel vowed to destroy Hamas when it attacked its territory on October 7, killing 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) count based on an Israeli assessment. Around 250 people were kidnapped, around 100 of whom were released in late November as part of a ceasefire.
According to the Hamas Health Ministry, the Israeli offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip has left 22,835 dead, mostly civilians. This assessment could not be independently verified. The bombings destroyed entire neighborhoods, forced 85% of the population to flee and sparked a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, according to the UN.
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Two Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza, Hamas announces
The Hamas Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip said on Sunday that an Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinian journalists in Rafah. Moustafa Thuraya, a freelance videographer who has worked with AFP since 2019, and Hamza Waël Dahdouh, a journalist with Al-Jazeera channel, were killed while driving. The latter had already lost his wife and two children in another Israeli attack in the first weeks of the war. In a statement, the Qatari broadcaster condemned “the attacks and killings” of journalists in Gaza. A third journalist traveling with him, Hazem Rajab, was seriously injured.
The Israeli army told AFP it had “encountered a terrorist who was piloting an aircraft that posed a threat to the troops,” adding that it was aware of “information that two other suspects were killed during the attack The same vehicle was also hit.” It was an “unimaginable tragedy,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who began a new trip to the region.
Witnesses also reported Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younes, the capital in southern Gaza and the new epicenter of fighting between soldiers and Hamas, with the official Palestinian agency WAFA counting scores of dead and injured.
In the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, an attack by Israeli forces left eight Palestinians dead in Jenin and two Israelis, a policewoman and a civilian, according to the Palestinian Authority.
After the northern Gaza Strip, Israel is continuing its offensive in the south
On Saturday, the army, which launched its ground offensive in Palestinian territory on October 27, announced that it had “completed the dismantling of the Hamas military structure in the north.” “We are now concentrating on the center and the south,” said army spokesman Daniel Hagari, specifying, however, that Hamas elements in the north were still operating “without structure and without a commander.”
Designated a “terror group” by the United States and the European Union, Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007, two years after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the territory after 38 years of occupation. Israel subsequently imposed an air, sea and land blockade on the area from 2007 before imposing a total siege from October 9th.
Despite international pressure and calls for a ceasefire, Israel remains inflexible. “I have a clear message to our enemies: What happened on October 7 will never happen again,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday. “This is the commitment of my government and our soldiers on the ground are giving their lives for this. We must continue until complete victory,” he continued. On Saturday evening, Israeli demonstrators gathered in Tel Aviv called for early elections and the resignation of the government.
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Antony Blinken in Jordan wants to prevent “an endless cycle of violence”.
In this context, Antony Blinken, who began a new tour of Arab countries and Israel in Amman, called for avoiding a flare-up of the conflict at all costs and preventing “an endless cycle of violence.”
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Mr. Blinken, whose country is Israel's biggest political and military supporter, will hold talks with Jordan's King Abdullah II and visit a World Food Program center after visits to Turkey and Crete. “We have to ensure that the conflict does not spread,” he said on Saturday evening in Crete. One of the real concerns is the border between Israel and Lebanon (…). »
Lebanon's Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, fired dozens of rockets at a military base in northern Israel on Saturday, an attack portrayed as an initial response to the elimination attributed to Israel of Hamas's number two political appointee, Saleh Al-Arouri was killed on Tuesday in a drone strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold. Since October 7, there have been almost daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Israel-Lebanese border. In Syria and Iraq, attacks on U.S. military bases have also increased since October 7, while Houthi rebels in Yemen – backed by Iran like Hamas and Hezbollah – are disrupting global maritime traffic in the Red Sea by attacking ships to ” US support is attacking Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Blinken also stressed that it is “essential” to increase humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population in Gaza, “reduce civilian casualties, work toward lasting peace in the region and advance the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
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Doctors Without Borders evacuates hospital in central Gaza
On Sunday, the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced that it had evacuated its staff from a hospital in central Gaza. “The situation became so dangerous that some of our team members living in the neighborhood were unable to even leave their homes due to the constant threat of drones and snipers,” said Carolina Lopez, a member of Doctors Without Borders.
According to the United Nations (UN), the Israeli offensive has led to the displacement of 1.9 million of the approximately 2.4 million Palestinians, who live in terrible conditions, without water, food, medicine and care, and hospitals that are largely out of order . Gaza has “simply become uninhabitable,” “a place of death and despair,” complained the UN humanitarian coordinator, Martin Griffiths.
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