The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza This Tuesday marked 200 days without signs of de-escalation nor that the terrorist movement is preparing to release its hostages or that Israel gives up on invading Rafah, in the south of the Palestinian territory.
“After 200 days, the enemy is still trapped in the sands of Gaza. Without objective, without horizon, without the illusion of victory or the release of prisoners,” said the spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, Abu Obeida, referring to the hostages taken in Israel by Islamist commandos on October 7.
“As long as a single centimeter of our land remains (subjected) to the aggression of the occupation, we will continue to strike and resist,” he added in a statement broadcast on television.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reaffirmed on Monday his “unwavering determination” to secure the release of almost 100 hostages (according to Israeli estimates) still held in Gaza.
In the last 24 hours, Israeli bombings They killed 32 Palestinians according to the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip, governed by Hamas, which brings the total toll since the start of the conflict on October 7 to 34,183 deaths, the vast majority of them civilians.
The Israeli army bombed the center of the Strip early Tuesday morning, hitting the vicinity of the Bureij refugee camp and the Nuseirat camp, according to an AFP correspondent.
AFP cameras too shelling captured in Jabaliyain the north of the Strip, and the army claimed to have attacked several Hamas positions in the south of the Palestinian territory.
The conflict began on October 7, with an incursion by Hamas militiamen that They killed about 1,170 people in southern Israel and kidnapped about 250according to a count based on official Israeli data.
Qatar, which together with Egypt and the United States acts as a mediator to achieve a truce and the release of the hostages, stated that Hamas representatives will remain in Doha as long as their presence is “useful and positive” for advancing the negotiations.
These last they are stagnant and both sides accuse each other of blocking them.
Netanyahu’s problem
Netanyahu faces increasing internal pressure to get the hostages released. On Monday night, coinciding with the beginning of the Jewish Passover, hundreds of demonstrators protested in front of his home, in the north of Tel Aviv.
To defeat Hamas, Netanyahu vowed to continue his offensive against Rafah, a city bordering Egypt that Israeli authorities say It is the last great bastion of the Islamist movement.
The international community urges you to refrain from this operation, fearing a humanitarian catastrophe in a town of 1.5 million people the vast majority displaced by the war from other areas of Gaza.
According to Egyptian officials cited by the American newspaper Wall Street Journal Israel plans to move civilians from Rafah to Khan Younis where it plans to set up tents and food distribution centers.
The evacuation of civilians It would last between two and three weeks. and would be carried out in coordination with the United States, Egypt and other Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates, according to Egyptian officials.
However, the regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for the Middle East, Fabrizio Carboni, pointed out that such an evacuation would be impossible under current conditions.
“When we see the level of destruction in the middle (Gaza) and in the north, We don’t see clearly where they could move people to. (…) so that they have decent shelters and essential services,” Carboni said. “So today, with the information we have and as we are, we do not see that this (mass evacuation) is possible.”
After more than six months of war, the almost 2.4 million inhabitants of Gaza, besieged by Israeli forces, are at risk of famine according to the UN, which demands the arrival of more humanitarian aid.
The UN called on Tuesday for an independent international investigation into the mass graves found in the Strip’s two main hospitals, Al Shifa and Nasser, denouncing the “reigning climate of impunity.”
The Gaza Civil Protection affirms that in recent days exhumed 340 bodies who had been buried by Israeli forces in mass graves dug on the grounds of the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.
Israel crossed out those accusations “unfounded”.
According to the Israeli army, during its intervention at the Nasser hospital “bodies buried by Palestinians were cautiously examined” to find out if there were hostages among them.
Violence has also increased in Israel’s border with Lebanon between the army and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas.
According to Lebanese rescuers, a woman and a girl were killed in an Israeli bombing in the border municipality of Hanine this Tuesday. A little earlier, Hezbollah said it had attacked two military positions in northern Israel with drones.