Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday (30) that Israel will soon launch a ground offensive against the Gaza Strip, whether or not there is a truce with Hamas, ignoring warnings about the risk of a bloodbath in that location. .
Netanyahu made these statements despite calls from the United States, his main ally, to avoid invading Rafah, a refuge for 1.5 million people displaced by the war, and hours before the arrival of American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in Israel .
“The idea that we are going to stop the war before achieving all objectives is out of the question,” said the Israeli president to family members of hostages kidnapped since October 7 by the Islamist movement Hamas, in power in Gaza.
We will enter Rafah and eliminate the Hamas battalions with or without a (truce) agreement, to achieve total victory,” he added.
Netanyahu considers it essential to invade Rafah, in the south of the Strip, to eliminate Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union, and release the hostages.
Hamas must respond to an Israeli proposal for a 40-day truce, with an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
Blinken, on his seventh regional tour since the start of the war, said on Monday that he expected a favorable response from the Islamist group to what he called Israel’s “extraordinarily generous” proposal.
– “ASAP” –
A Hamas delegation returned to Doha after meeting on Monday in Cairo with representatives from Egypt and Qatar (which, alongside the United States, mediate the conflict), and will respond to the truce proposal “as quickly as possible”, he said. a source from the Islamist movement told AFP.
Israel will wait for that response “until Wednesday night” before deciding whether to send a delegation to Egypt, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday.
The proposal comes after months of blockage in indirect negotiations.
A week-long truce at the end of November allowed the exchange of 100 hostages for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli authorities estimate that 129 people remain in captivity in Gaza, of which 34 have been killed.
In the unprecedented attack against southern Israel, Hamas militiamen kidnapped more than 200 people and killed 1,170, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data.
In retaliation, Israel began an offensive against the territory to annihilate Hamas, which left 34,535 dead, most of them civilians, according to the territory’s Ministry of Health, governed since 2007 by the Islamist movement.
Hamas demands a permanent ceasefire before any agreement on the release of hostages, which Israel has always rejected.
The Islamist movement’s demands include Israel’s “withdrawal” from the territory, the return of displaced people and a clear timetable for the start of reconstruction, one of the group’s negotiators, Zaher Jabareen, told AFP on Monday.
– We will rebuild –
The Israeli Army bombed Rafah, Khan Yunis, also in the south, and Gaza City, in the north, this Tuesday, according to AFP correspondents.
According to the territory’s Ministry of Health, at least 47 people died in the last 24 hours in the territory.
In Nuseirat, a displacement camp in the center of the Strip, residents removed rubble with their bare hands.
“We will rebuild it, we will rebuild everything with the help of young people and children. Look at them, it’s difficult to end the will of a generation like that”, promised a displaced person, Bilal Shalabi.
In Jordan, the last stage of his tour before reaching Israel, Blinken asked to increase humanitarian aid for the territory, which is under harsh Israeli control and close to a famine crisis, according to the UN.
The United States government is putting pressure on Israel to facilitate the entry of aid, which arrives in small numbers and is insufficient, and has begun construction of a floating dock along the coast of Gaza.
China, which historically sympathizes with the Palestinian cause and supports the two-state solution as a way out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, indicated on Tuesday that Hamas and its rival Fatah – which partially administers the occupied West Bank – held reconciliation talks in Beijing .
On a legal level, the UN’s highest court rejected a request for urgent measures presented by Nicaragua, which accuses Germany of violating the 1948 genocide convention by supplying weapons to Israel for the Gaza war.
2024-04-30 19:50:23