Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that there was “no certainty” over the death of Hamas military chief in Gaza, Mohamed Deif, in an attack targeting him in Mawasi, a humanitarian zone in southern Gaza.
“We still do not have absolute certainty about the death of Deif and his right-hand man, Rafaa Salameh,” Netanyahu said at a press conference, authorizing the operation after receiving intelligence that there were no Israeli hostages in the area.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry has confirmed that 90 Palestinians were killed and more than 300 wounded in the Mawasi attack this morning.
The Israeli president gave an unusual press conference on Saturday night in Tel Aviv while in Jerusalem, where his official residence is located, thousands of people protested to demand a ceasefire agreement with the Islamist group that would allow the release of Israeli hostages in the enclave.
During the protest, Andrey Kozlov, one of four Israelis rescued in an army operation in Gaza that left more than 200 Palestinians dead, spoke for the first time since his rescue to thank Netanyahu for saving him, but also to ask him to sign an agreement to bring back the rest of the hostages.
Netanyahu, for his part, has said he is not delaying the deal, after some Israeli media outlets reported that the president is proposing new demands and deliberately hardening his tone to avoid a deal.
The prime minister said it was Hamas that was trying to introduce new demands, and he argued that he would not budge one iota from the agreement proposal announced by US President Joe Biden.
He insisted, however, that the war in the Gaza Strip will not end until Israel achieves all its objectives, which include eliminating Hamas’s governing capabilities in the enclave.
In a statement, opposition leader Benny Gantz, who until recently was a voting member of Israel’s now-dissolved War Cabinet, said responsibility for any collateral damage during Saturday’s attack on Deif rests solely with the Islamists.
“The Israeli army is the most moral army in the world,” Gantz, the favourite in polls to lead an alternative government to Netanyahu, said in a statement in which he criticised Hamas leaders for hiding among Gaza’s civilian population, putting them in danger.
According to Gaza health authorities, half of the 90 people killed in the attack were women and minors.
The attack took place in the Mawasi area, west of the city of Khan Younis, designated a “humanitarian zone” by Israeli forces at the start of their operation in the southern town of Rafah in early May.
The Israeli military insisted that the site attacked was a Hamas compound located in an open area, surrounded by trees and buildings, and not the Mawasi tent camp, where thousands of displaced people are living.
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2024-07-19 08:47:02