Deadly strikes, ferocious fighting, incessant displacement and scarce humanitarian aid: “exhausted” by almost three months of war, the population of Gaza dreams of the “end” of the fighting this New Year’s weekend.
Published yesterday at 9.52pm
Adel ZAANOUN with Margaux BERGEY Agence France-Presse
“People celebrate the arrival of the new year, but we can’t. We are deprived (of celebrations). Bombs continue to fall on us every day and every night,” says Oum Louay Abou Khater, 49, displaced by the fighting in Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip.
“I hope the war ends soon. Enough of this war! We are totally exhausted. When it’s cold we are constantly moved from one place to another,” she adds, speaking of an improvised camp to accommodate displaced people.
“2023 was the worst year of my life. It has been a year of destruction and devastation. We experienced a tragedy that not even our grandparents experienced,” adds Ahmed al-Baz, 33.
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Relatives of victims killed by Israeli bombing cry at Al-Najar hospital in Rafah.
“I hope that the war will end and that we will return to our homes and our normal daily lives before 2024. That’s all we ask,” sighs this Palestinian, also displaced in Rafah due to the fighting.
The approximately 2.4 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, of whom 85% have had to flee their homes according to the United Nations, continue to face a disastrous humanitarian situation.
The “traumatised” and “exhausted” population is accumulating on “an increasingly smaller piece of land” in the south of the territory, in the Rafah sector, the head of operations on X (formerly Twitter) said on Friday. Business, Martin Griffiths.
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Children try to console each other as people flee the ruins of a building hit by Israeli forces in Rafah.
“The quantity of necessary and urgent aid delivered continues to be limited and encounters numerous logistical obstacles,” reported the general commissioner of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini.
The International Court of Justice also announced on Friday that South Africa had accused Israel before the United Nations judicial body of being involved in “acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” charges immediately rejected “with disgust” by Israel.
From Gaza they have Lebanon
In the 85th day of the war, triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7 that left some 1,140 dead in Israel, mostly civilians, airstrikes and ground fighting show no signs of abating in the Gaza Strip.
Overnight, the Palestinian Islamic Movement reported violent clashes in Khan Younes, the main city in southern Gaza, and in the center of this besieged territory, including deadly airstrikes in the Nuseirat sector.
According to the Hamas administration’s Health Ministry, 187 people were killed in the Gaza Strip on Friday, bringing the local death toll since the start of the war to more than 21,500.
Shortly after midnight on Saturday, the Israeli army announced strikes in Syria, in retaliation for rockets fired from this neighboring country falling into border territories under its control.
The Israeli military rarely claims attacks in Syria, but has repeatedly said it will not allow its archenemy, Iran, to expand its presence in that country, including through militias or armed groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Since October 7, the Israel-Lebanon border has been the scene of almost daily firefights between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, with Israel’s army chief speaking this week of a possible “expansion of fighting” there.
PHOTO JALAA MAREY, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Smoke rises from sites hit by Israeli forces in Lebanon on December 27.
“Over the past two days we have carried out a series of large-scale operations against Hezbollah sites with our fighter planes, tanks and artillery […] Southern Lebanon will never be what it was before,” Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said Friday evening.
Towards a ceasefire?
In this context of clashes in Gaza and regional tensions, a Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Friday, according to a source close to the Palestinian movement, to discuss an Egyptian plan that should lead to a ceasefire.
Divided into three phases, the Egyptian plan calls for renewable truces, staggered releases of Palestinian hostages and prisoners and, ultimately, a cessation of hostilities.
The Hamas delegation – a movement classified as terrorist by the European Union, the United States and Israel in particular – was supposed to convey “the response of the Palestinian factions” to this plan, in particular regarding the conditions for the release of the hostages and prisoners, a leader of the Islamic movement told AFP.
Around 250 people were kidnapped on October 7 during Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israeli soil. A week-long truce at the end of November allowed the release of a hundred of them, in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in Israel.
But efforts by Qatari and Egyptian mediators to renew this pause in fighting have so far been unsuccessful. And this, while the families of the hostages continue to put pressure on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to guarantee their release.
This was reported by the main Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot and US website Axios, Qatari mediators told Israel that Hamas had “agreed in principle” to resume discussions to allow the release of more than 40 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for a pause of up to a month in fighting .
The US government also announced on Friday that it had “urgently” approved the sale of 155mm shells and other materials from its army stockpile to Israel for $147.5 million.
2023-12-30 02:52:26
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