Israel claims to have “dismantled” the “military structure” of Hamas in northern Gaza at a time when its response against the Palestinian Islamist movement enters its fourth month on Sunday amid fears of a regional conflagration. Early Sunday, witnesses reported Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younes, the main city in the south of the Gaza Strip and the new epicenter of clashes between the Israeli army and Hamas, with the Palestinian Wafa agency counting numerous deaths and injuries. .
And in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli raid left six dead on Sunday in Jenin, a stronghold of Palestinian factions, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry. On Saturday evening, the Israeli army said it was now focusing more on the center and south of Gaza after some three months of war which, according to it, allowed it to defeat Hamas in the north of this Palestinian micro-territory of around 2 .4 million inhabitants. During this raid an IDF officer was killed.
“We have completed the dismantling of the Hamas military structure in the north of the Gaza Strip (…) We are now focusing on the dismantling of Hamas in the center and south of Gaza,” declared the spokesperson for the Israeli army Daniel Hagari, specifying however that elements of Hamas were still operating in the north of Gaza “without structure and without commanders”.
The NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced overnight that it had evacuated its staff from a hospital in central Gaza. “The situation became so dangerous that some of our team members living in the neighborhood were not even able to leave their homes due to constant threats from drones and snipers,” Carolina Lopez said on X, MSF emergency services coordinator in Gaza.
Information to remember:
- Israel claims to have “dismantled” Hamas’ “military structure” in northern Gaza
- Israeli raid left six dead in Jenin on Sunday
- An Israeli officer was killed and three injured on Sunday during a raid by Israeli forces in Jenin
- Two journalists killed in Israeli strike, Hamas says
“The war must not stop until we have achieved (our objectives, editor’s note)” which are “to eliminate Hamas, recover the hostages and ensure that Gaza is no longer a threat to Israel” , declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday evening to mark three months of war. Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after its unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which killed around 1,140 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP count based on the Israeli death toll. Around 250 people were kidnapped, including around a hundred released during a truce at the end of November.
Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip left 22,722 people dead, mostly women, children and adolescents, and more than 58,000 injured, according to a latest report from Hamas.
The head of German diplomacy calls on Israel for a “less intensive” military operation
The head of German diplomacy Annalena Baerbock, visiting Jerusalem, on Sunday called on Israel for more restraint in the war being waged in the Gaza Strip, saying that “less intensive management of operations” was essential.
“The suffering of many innocent people cannot continue like this. We need a less intensive conduct of operations,” the minister told journalists, following talks with her Israeli counterpart Israel Katz and with the head of state Isaac Herzog.
Palestinians displaced from Gaza must be able to ‘return home’ as soon as possible, says Antony Blinken
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday it was “imperative” that Israel do more to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza, who must be able to “return home”.
“Palestinian civilians must be able to return home as soon as conditions allow,” he said in Doha alongside Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdelrahmane Al-Thani, as part of a new tour of countries Arabs and Israel.
Palestinian child shot dead in vehicular attack
Israeli police said Sunday they shot a Palestinian child at a checkpoint while trying to stop a vehicular attack in the occupied West Bank, with doctors later saying a three-year-old girl had died.
“After shooting at the terrorists, a girl who was in another vehicle at the checkpoint was injured,” Israeli police said. Israeli emergency services Magen David Adom said a three-year-old child “was pronounced dead” after being examined.
Al-Jazeera accuses Israel of ‘targeting’ journalists in Gaza
Al-Jazeera on Sunday accused the Israeli army of “targeting” Palestinian journalists in Gaza, after the death of two journalists working for the Qatar satellite channel, killed in a strike attributed to Israel. Hamza Waël Dahdouh, the son of Al-Jazeera bureau chief in the Gaza Strip, Waël al-Dahdouh, and Moustafa Thuraya, a freelance videographer working with the AFP, were killed on Sunday while driving in a car in Rafah, at the southern tip of the Palestinian territory.
“Al Jazeera strongly condemns the targeting by Israeli occupying forces of Palestinian journalists’ cars,” the channel said in a statement, accusing Israel of “violating the principles of press freedom.”
Six dead and one Israeli officer killed in the West Bank
A raid was carried out in the refugee camp in the town of Jenin. But the operation went wrong: an Israeli military vehicle was targeted. A border police officer is killed in the explosion. Three others are injured, the army announces.
The Israeli Air Force intervenes and strikes. Six Palestinians are killed, including four brothers from the same family, according to local sources. The attack on Israeli forces was later claimed by the Islamic Jihad group.
Since the start of the war, violence has exploded in the occupied West Bank. They fuel fears of an extension of the war. This Sunday morning, a few hours after the Jenin raid, a Palestinian citizen of Israel was also shot and killed in a separate attack on a road north of Ramallah. Roadblocks and checkpoints: the Israeli army and police claim to have launched a vast manhunt to find the perpetrator(s) of the attack.
Hamas announces the death of two journalists killed in an Israeli strike
The Hamas health ministry in the Gaza Strip said Sunday that an Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinian journalists.
Moustafa Thuraya, a freelance videographer working with AFP, and Hamza Waël Dahdouh, a journalist for the Al-Jazeera channel, were killed while driving, the ministry and rescuers said.
“We’ve had enough!”
Israeli anti-government protesters gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday evening, calling for early elections and the resignation of the government. “We have had enough! We have had enough! The government is a bunch of idiots. They are leading us to a horrible place. They are leading us to an unspeakable future. Bibi Netanyahu and all his other idiots are ruining Israel and to destroy everything we hoped and dreamed of,” Shachaf Netzer, 54, told AFP on the spot.
“We need new elections. We need a new government. We need a new leader,” he added as the Israeli opposition called for the departure of Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that he -he did not have the “confidence” of the population to lead a military campaign in Gaza.
In Paris, and in several provincial towns in France, thousands of people marched in favor of a “ceasefire” and in support of the population of Gaza. In a cemetery in Gaza City, Palestinians on Saturday reburied bodies exhumed from their graves in this area where the Israeli army has been carrying out a ground offensive since the end of October. In the middle of a cloud of flies, a dozen men, wearing gloves and surgical masks, are busy putting them back into the ground. “We were surprised to see the bodies exhumed,” one of the men burying the bodies told AFP.
The Israeli offensive has razed entire neighborhoods of Gaza and displaced 1.9 million people – 85% of the population according to the UN – who lack water, food, medicine and care, including hospitals. mostly out of service. To the point that Gaza has “simply become uninhabitable”, “a place of death and despair”, lamented this weekend the UN humanitarian affairs coordinator, Martin Griffiths.
“Risk of conflagration”
“Israel has proclaimed its objective of eradicating Hamas. There must be another way to eradicate Hamas which would not cause so many deaths,” argued Saturday the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, visiting Lebanon. , where he deemed it “absolutely necessary” to avoid regional conflict. Since October 8, the day after the bloody attack by Hamas on Israeli soil, the almost daily exchanges of fire between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israeli forces have left 181 dead in Lebanon, including 135 fighters from the Shiite movement, according to a AFP count.
These tensions have been increasing since the elimination near Beirut of Hamas No. 2, Saleh al-Arouri, in an airstrike attributed to Israel and which led to Hezbollah’s “initial response” on Saturday with a barrage of rockets fired towards a Israeli military base. In Syria and Iraq, attacks on US military bases have also increased since October 7, while Houthi rebels in Yemen – supported by Iran like Hamas and Hezbollah – are disrupting global maritime traffic in the Red Sea by attacking ships in “support” of the Palestinians in Gaza.
The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, called on Saturday her Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, to urge “Iran and its cronies” to “immediately” stop their “destabilizing actions” while “the risk of conflagration regional has never been so important. Meanwhile, the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken is in Jordan on Sunday as part of a tour of the Middle East aimed at curbing this escalation.