This Tuesday, the Israeli army increased the severity of its bombing raids on the Gaza Strip, killing two leaders of Hamas, the armed Islamist organization that claimed at least 900 lives on Saturday in the deadliest attack Israel has ever experienced on its territory. In the pictures from the Palestinian territory you can see entire blocks of houses reduced to rubble. At five o’clock in the afternoon local time (four o’clock in mainland Spain), Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezedín al-Qasam Brigades, fired rocket fire at Ashkelon, a city in southern Israel with 170,000 inhabitants, as announced.
Israel claims to have regained control of all of its territory, stopped new infiltrations and recovered 1,500 bodies of Hamas militants who crossed the border in a surprise operation on Saturday. Around 200,000 of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents have already sought refuge, either because they have lost their homes or because of the intensity of Israeli air and naval bombardment and predictable ground attacks. Many of them attend schools run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. The Gaza Strip, where the death toll currently stands at 788, has been completely surrounded since Monday as Israel cut off supplies of food, electricity and fuel.
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The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says mass displacement has increased in the last 24 hours and is expecting an increase. This Tuesday, Egypt closed “until further notice” the only border crossing with the Gaza Strip that Israel does not control, Rafah. By Monday it was barely functioning after a recent bombing. Under normal conditions, few Palestinians manage to get there (after long queues and often with bribes). On Monday, only those who had previously had an exit permit were allowed to leave.
An Israeli emergency service worker stands next to a window damaged in a Hamas attack in Ashkelon on Monday. RONEN ZVULUN (Portal)
Israeli army spokesman Richard Hecht this morning recommended that Gazans who can “exit” via Rafah do so as a “disruptive and serious” offensive is imminent. “We will be very strict. “This is not the usual subdued exchange that Qatar mediates,” he said in a video conference with journalists. The army later clarified that Rafah was closed and that it was not “an official call for Gazans to go to Egypt.”
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On Monday, Hamas’s armed wing spokesman Abu Obaida announced that for every bombing Israel launches without warning, he would execute one of the at least 130 Israelis captured in the operation. This involves the firing of small rockets – usually with a very low explosive charge – shortly before the actual bombing, so that the residents flee.
According to the Israeli military, two of those killed in an airstrike were Hamas officials. Yoad Abu Shmala was Minister of Economy in the Gaza government (in the hands of Hamas since 2007) and Zakaria Abu Maamar was in charge of the internal relations department. Both belong to the political office, not the military department. An official Hamas source confirmed the deaths to Portal.
Three journalists dead
Three Palestinian journalists, Said al-Taweel, Mohammed Sobboh and Hisham Nawajhah, were also killed in a bomb attack on a residential building near the capital Gaza’s fishing port, the local journalists’ union reported.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has condemned this tightening of the siege, which Israel began more than a decade ago with years of support from Egypt. “The imposition of blockades that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of essential goods is prohibited by international humanitarian law,” he stressed in a statement.
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