The Health Ministry of Hamas announced today a new death toll of 28,985 in Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian movement.
He also added that in the last 24 hours, 127 people were killed, while another 205 were injured. The injured since October 7 amount to 68,883.
Nasser Hospital is out of operation
The second largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, Nasser, has been put “completely out of order”, a spokesman for the Hamas Health Ministry said today.
“There are only four staff members providing patient care” at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis, Ashraf al-Kindra explained.
“The Nasser Medical Complex is the backbone of healthcare in the southern Gaza Strip. Shutting it down is tantamount to a death sentence for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis and Rafah,” al-Kindra emphasized.
He explained that the hospital was shut down due to the lack of fuel and the conflicts raging in the area around it.
Nasser was until today the largest operating hospital in the Gaza Strip. This week it found itself under siege by the Israeli army, with Israeli forces raiding it on Thursday.
The US is threatening a veto
The prospect of a temporary halt to the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip receded today as the United States threatened to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for the declaration of immediate humanitarian ceasefire, while the prime minister and foreign minister of Qatar, the main mediator in the negotiations between the parties, did not hide in Munich his pessimism about the chances of concluding an agreement.
In the field, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that he is determined to launch a ground offensive in Rafah, where some 1.4 million Palestinians are trapped, despite calls from part of the international community not to proceed.
The draft resolution of the SA, which began to be drawn up by Algeria after the decision in late January of the International Court of Justice (IC) of the United Nations in The Hague that it was worth not to commit “genocide” in the Gaza Strip, “demands an immediate humanitarian cessation of fire, which must be respected by all parties”, according to the most recent version of the text, which came to the knowledge of the French Agency.
Algiers wants the plan to be put to a vote the day after tomorrow, Tuesday. But the US has already followed through on a threat to veto it, as it did in previous such attempts, in mid-October and early December, despite pressure from the international community in the face of the worsening humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
“If the current plan is put to a vote, it will not be adopted,” US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement.
The draft resolution rejects “the forced displacement of the Palestinian civilian population” and demands that this “violation of international law” cease immediately. It also calls for the release of all hostages.
Yesterday, Mr. Netanyahu reiterated his intention to conduct a large-scale ground operation in Rafah.
“Anyone who wants to stop us from conducting business in Rafah is actually telling us to lose the war. We are not going to give in to this demand,” he said.
In recent days, an Egyptian NGO and the Wall Street Journal noted that the Egyptian authorities are building a closed camp in the Sinai desert, surrounded by high walls, in case it needs to receive tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees when an Israeli offensive is launched in Rafah.
Negotiations ‘not promising’
Talks have been held in recent weeks, brokered by Qatar and Egypt and backed by the US, to broker a new truce and exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
The negotiations “are not very promising in recent days,” but Qatar’s prime minister and head of diplomacy, Mohammed bin Abdel Rahman al-Thani, acknowledged in Munich. However, “we will do our best to get closer” to an agreement, he added.
Hamas, in power in the enclave since 2007, has threatened to abandon talks on a possible ceasefire “unless (humanitarian) aid is distributed to the northern Gaza Strip”.
Its leader Ismail Haniya reiterates that the movement seeks a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the enclave as part of negotiations.
Those terms have been repeatedly rejected by Israel, whose military action in the Gaza Strip has turned entire neighborhoods into rubble, displaced 1.7 million of its 2.4 million residents and caused a major humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations. Nations.
On the morning of October 7, the military arm of Hamas launched an unprecedented attack from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, which
Risk of famine
Although some aid arrived in Rafah yesterday, the UN continues to warn that residents of much of the Palestinian enclave are at risk of starvation.
“We will not die from the bombs, but from hunger,” predicted Mohammed Nassar, 50, in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip.
In Tel Aviv, thousands of Israelis demonstrated against the Netanyahu government and again called on it to strike a deal to free the hostages.
“I’m begging the prime minister and the government to negotiate (…) Do not sentence my husband to death,” Sharon Aloni-Cunio, a hostage who was freed with her twins but left her husband behind, said during the rally , who remains a prisoner in the Gaza Strip.
Abroad, demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinians took place yesterday in many cities, notably in Rome, London, Stockholm, Istanbul and Mexico.
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