For the second consecutive day, Palestinians of Gaza they took to the street a protest against Hamas, asking for the end of the war. After the events of yesterday a Beitous and in the refugee camp of Jabalia ea khan yunis, tens this morning they gathered in the neighborhood Shejaaiya of Gaza City and again hundreds of Beit Lahiya in the North, shouting “outside Hamas”.
From the resumption of Israeli military operations in the strip, 830 people have been killed for a total of at least 50,183 deaths since the beginning of the conflict, in the majority of civilians. Life conditions are dramatic in the enclave and the population is strembled after 17 months of war. After winning the elections in 2006, the year after Hamas took power to Gaza, sparkling the Fatah party linked to the president of the Palestinian National Authority Abu Mazen and since then no vote has been held anymore.
The levels of discontent in the strip are difficult to evaluate, also due to the repression of Hamas towards dissent, and the protest events are extremely rare. Munther al-Hayek, Fatah’s spokesman in Gaza, urged the militant group to “get aside for the public good”. Last week, the same exhortation had been launched, always by Al-Hayek, in the name of the protection of the existence of the Palestinian population.
Faced with the intense bombings on the strip, the militant group warned the Israeli armed forces not to try to recover the hostages because they would end up killed. “We are doing everything possible to keep prisoners alive, but the random Zionist bombings are jeopardizing their lives. Every time the occupation tries to recover his prisoners forcefully, he ends up bringing them back to the coffins,” he said.
From the Knesset, the counter-mechanical counter-meter has arrived of the Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu: “The more Hamas persists in his refusal to release our hostages, the stronger the pressure we will exercise”, he assured, quoting among the measures to be undertaken also “the confiscation of the territories”. Last week it was the Minister of Defense Israel Katz who threatened the annexation of Gaza parts if the 58 kidnapped still prisoners had not been freed.
Two missiles were fired this morning from Gaza, claimed by the Islamic Jihad: one was intercepted and the other fell into an open area near the border, without making victims or damage. Shortly after the Arab spokesman for the Idf, Avichay Adraee, urged the inhabitants of a series of neighborhoods of Gaza City to evacuate south, denouncing the launch of “rockets from civil areas”.
Meanwhile, from Beirut, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has said that no one in Lebanon wants normalization with Israel, ensuring that the diplomatic pressure of the international community and the Arab countries on the Jewish state continues so that it ceases its attacks.