The Israeli war council yesterday, Saturday, gave its approval for the continuation of talks aimed at concluding a new agreement for a cease-fire in Gauzeaccording to Israeli media, as fears of famine in the Palestinian enclave grow due to a lack of adequate humanitarian aid.
The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate in the besieged Gaza Strip, where 2.2 million people, the vast majority of the population, face the threat of “mass starvation”, according to the UN.
Aid that drips in through the border post at Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, is subject to Israeli approval, and its transport to the northern part of the Palestinian enclave is nearly impossible because of the destruction and fighting.
See also – Gaza: Two-month-old boy dies of starvation – 2.3 million Palestinians on the brink of starvation
Abu Jibril fled with his family to Jabaliya, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, after his home was destroyed. They escaped the fighting, but “hunger is what is killing us,” the 60-year-old villager, who had to decide to slaughter his two draft horses to feed his family and their neighbors, told AFP.
Last night, the Israeli war cabinet gave, according to officials and Israeli media, the green light to soon send a delegation to Qatar to continue talks held in recent days in Paris aimed at reaching a new ceasefire agreement in Gaza to be accompanied by the release of hostages.
Israel’s Mossad intelligence chief David Barnea traveled to the French capital on Friday at the head of an Israeli delegation to continue talks on a truce plan, which he discussed in late January with his US and Egyptian counterparts and the prime minister. Catarrh
“The terms”
For an agreement to be reached, Israel is making a condition “the release of all the hostages, starting with all the women,” according to Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Tchai Hanegbi.
“An agreement of this kind does not mean the end of the war,” warned the advisor to the Israeli prime minister speaking to the N12 network.
Hamas, for its part, claims a “complete ceasefire” and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
According to a source in the Palestinian Islamist movement, the plan discussed in January calls for a six-week ceasefire and the release of 200 to 300 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 35 to 40 hostages.
On October 7, Hamas militants infiltrated southern Israel from Gaza and carried out an unprecedented attack on Israeli soil, killing at least 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
During this attack, approximately 250 people were taken hostage and kidnapped in Gaza. According to Israel, 130 hostages, 30 of whom are believed to be dead, are still being held in the Palestinian enclave after about 100 were freed during a truce agreed in late November in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
In retaliation, Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas, which came to power in Gaza in 2007 and has been designated a terrorist organization by itself, as well as the US and the EU.
The Israeli army has launched an offensive that has killed 29,606 people in Gaza, the vast majority of them civilians, since the war broke out on October 7, according to the latest tally released by Hamas’ health ministry.
“Action plan” for Rafa
The Palestinian Islamic Movement’s Ministry of Health announced yesterday that a two-month-old infant, Mahmoud Fattuh, died of malnutrition at Al-Sifa Hospital in Gaza City.
On Friday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk denounced in a report “gross violations” of human rights “on all sides”.
He pointed out in particular the “blockade and siege imposed on Gaza” by Israel, which could “represent the use of starvation as a method of war”, which is, he reminded, a “war crime”.
Concerns are growing particularly for Rafah, on the closed border with Egypt, where at least 1.4 million people, most of them displaced, are crowded in precarious conditions and face the threat of a large-scale ground military operation.
Netanyahu said yesterday that he would convene “at the beginning of the week the cabinet to approve the operational plans of action in Rafah, including the removal of the civilian population.”
According to an AFP journalist, at least six airstrikes were carried out last night in the city.
The Hamas Health Ministry announces daily around 100 dead in Gaza.
The Israeli army announced yesterday that its soldiers had neutralized “dozens of terrorists” in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, where military operations against the rebel city held by the Palestinian Islamist movement are focused.
“There is no safe place in the entire Gaza Strip. We are all targeted, wherever we are,” Hassan Hamad Kesta told AFP after a strike destroyed a building in Rafah.
In Tel Aviv, thousands of people gathered last night in the “hostage square” demanding the release of the 130 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
“We think about them all the time, we want them to come back to us alive and as soon as possible,” 60-year-old Orna Tal, a friend of whom is among the hostages being held in Gaza, told AFP.
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