(Rafah) Israeli aerial bombardments and artillery attacks targeted the Gaza Strip from north to south on Tuesday, with Western and Arab powers urging Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to accept the latest ceasefire plan.
The contradictory demands of the two camps, however, seem to doom this plan presented Friday by American President Joe Biden to failure, after almost eight months of war.
Israel has promised to eliminate Hamas, in power since 2007 in the Gaza Strip and author of an attack of unprecedented scale on its soil on October 7, while the Palestinian movement is demanding a total ceasefire.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Tuesday evening that the Israeli war cabinet was meeting, without giving further details.
Nearly a month after the start of a ground offensive on Rafah, a border town with Egypt in the south of the besieged Palestinian territory, presented by Israel as the final stage of its war against Hamas, the fighting continues across the Gaza Strip.
On Tuesday, airstrikes targeted eastern and central Rafah, according to witnesses and a local official.
Deadly bombings hit Gaza City in the north and the Palestinian camp of Bureij in the center of the territory. In Deir el-Balah, still in the center, eight police officers were killed, according to the Hamas press service.
The army announced that its air force had struck “65 terrorist targets” the day before.
The plan presented by Joe Biden, which he says was proposed by Israel, provides for a six-week ceasefire accompanied by an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas of Gaza, the release of some hostages, including women and the sick, and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
This plan aims to establish a “permanent” ceasefire in a later phase, provided that Hamas “respects its commitments”, according to Mr. Biden.
But Qatar, one of the mediating countries, said on Tuesday it was waiting for “a clear position” from Israel, which seemed to distance itself from this plan. He also stressed that Hamas had not responded.
French President Emmanuel Macron called on the Palestinian movement on Tuesday to accept this proposal, according to the Élysée.
Denouncing a “more than catastrophic” situation in Gaza, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he supported this ceasefire plan, as did the G7 countries the day before.
This plan “would lead to an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all hostages, a significant and lasting increase in humanitarian aid distributed to Gaza […] ensuring Israel’s security interests and the security of Gazan civilians,” according to a G7 statement.
Under very strong pressure from public opinion and his far-right allies, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed, after the announcement of the plan, his intention to “destroy” Hamas and obtain the release of “ all hostages” removed on October 7, before a ceasefire.
On Monday, hundreds of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv accused the government of “abandoning” the hostages. “The blood is on each of them, these are people who could have returned home alive, not in coffins,” said Yifat Kalderon, a cousin of hostage Ofer Kalderon.
“I urge all parties to immediately reach an agreement to achieve a ceasefire and release the hostages… any delay costs lives every day,” UN Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland said on Tuesday.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians killed on October 7, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures. Of the 251 people taken as hostages on October 7, 120 are still detained in Gaza, of whom 41 have died according to the Israeli army.
In retaliation, Israel declared war on Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union.
His army launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip that has so far killed 36,550 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-led Gaza government, which recorded 71 people killed on Tuesday. in 24 hours.
Israeli forces entered Rafah on May 7, forcing a million people to flee, and have since taken control of strategic areas, such as the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and the Philadelphia Corridor, a route that borders the border on the Palestinian side.
But over the weeks, fighting has resumed in several sectors of the north and center of the Gaza Strip, which the army had nevertheless assured to control, testifying to a “failure” of the Israeli strategy, underlines Michael Milshtein, specialist Palestinian issues at Tel Aviv University.
Worsening the humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory, the offensive on Rafah led to the closure of the crossing with Egypt, crucial for the entry of international aid.
The NGO Oxfam denounced on Tuesday the “terrible” sanitary conditions in the Al-Mawasi area, near Khan Younes, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are refugees who have on average only one toilet for 4,000 people.
“There is no clean water, people are forced to use sea water,” describes Meera, an Oxfam worker who has taken refuge in Al-Mawasi.
While “1.7 million residents are now concentrated in less than a fifth of the Gaza Strip,” Israeli bombings and “deliberate” blockades “make it virtually impossible” to access civilians “trapped and hungry,” denounces Oxfam.
Gaza residents are reduced to “drinking sewage” and eating animal food, the WHO regional head denounced on Tuesday, pleading for an immediate increase in humanitarian aid.
