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New deadly Israeli strikes targeted the south of the Gaza Strip on Thursday February 15, where Israel promised to carry out a ” powerful “ land operation in the overcrowded city of Rafah despite international pressures which are increasing day by day.
After more than four months of war against Hamas across besieged Palestinian territory, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now wants to destroy the “last bastion” of the Islamist movement in Rafah, which has become the final refuge for hundreds of thousands of civilians who have fled the fighting.
After Khan Younes, a town transformed into a field of ruins where the army continues to confront Hamas fighters, Israel is preparing a ground offensive in the overpopulated town of Rafah, a few kilometers further south, which has become the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of civilians who fled the fighting.
Operation in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes of the Israeli army
The Israeli army announced on Thursday that it was carrying out an operation in a large besieged hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip, where, according to it, Hamas hostages were being held and where doctors described a desperate situation. Surrounded by fighting between the army and the Palestinian Islamist movement, the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, the largest in southern Gaza, received thousands of civilians fleeing the war, whose evacuation began in recent days, under the bombs.
According to the army, this is a “targeted and limited operation” in the hospital, after she received “credible information” indicating that Hamas had held hostages there “and that there might be bodies of hostages” on the spot.
Videos circulating on social media show scenes of chaos in the hospital, such as paramedics trying to take patients from the orthopedic ward to safety who appear to have been hit by a strike, or people walking through an aisle narrow to try to escape the hospital.
Medical staff raised the alarm on Wednesday about the fate of the hospital, with a nurse denouncing the lack of drinking water, sewers backing up into the emergency department and Israeli snipers posted on the roofs of the establishment.
EU ‘condemns’ Israel’s demolition of Palestinian activist’s house
The European Union has ” sentenced “ Thursday the demolition by Israel of the house of a Palestinian activist in East Jerusalem, a sector of the Holy City annexed by Israel, denouncing “a violation of international humanitarian law”.
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Fakhri Abou Diab, engaged for years against the demolitions of Palestinian houses, announced that “agents of the Israeli forces” had demolished on Wednesday morning the house he had lived in for thirty-eight years near the Old Town. Part of the house dated before 1967, when Israel annexed East Jerusalem, home to Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites.
“We urge Israel to stop demolishing Palestinian homes, including in this sensitive area adjacent to the Old City. The priority must be for everyone to defuse a very tense situation”, insisted this spokesperson in a press release. For their part, the United States also condemned this demolition on Wednesday, believing that such actions “harm Israel’s image in the world”.
Antony Blinken says he still believes an agreement on hostages in Gaza is “possible”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that he still believed ” possible “ an agreement on a truce in the war between Israel and Hamas and the release of hostages.
“We are working on it intensely and I think it is still possible” to reach an agreement, he declared in Tirana alongside the Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama, while negotiations between mediators continue in Cairo.
Israeli ministers against any plan for a Palestinian state
Two influential far-right Israeli ministers firmly rejected Thursday the possibility of a peace plan, which Washington and its allies are considering, according to some media, to allow the release of hostages held in Gaza and consider the creation of a state Palestinian.
According to Washington Postthe Biden administration and a small group of its Arab allies are working to a comprehensive plan to establish lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It would notably include a pause in the fighting, the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the attacks of October 7, 2023 in Israel and detained since in Gaza, and a timetable for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state.
“An initial ceasefire, expected to last at least six weeks, would give time to announce the plan, garner additional support” And “start implementing” its provisions, including “the formation of a Palestinian interim government”, the daily said, citing American and Arab officials. The promoters of this plan hope to reach an agreement before March 10, the start date of Ramadan, the holy month of Muslims.
Three-quarters of the hundred journalists killed in 2023 were in Gaza, according to an NGO
Seventy-two of the ninety-nine journalists and media workers killed worldwide in 2023 have died “in Israeli attacks on Gaza”where Israel is at war with Hamas, one of the worst assessments drawn up each year by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
This association based in New York, financed by private donations and which for forty years has denounced murders, imprisonments, violence, censorship and threats against journalists, noted in its annual report on Thursday an increase of 44% over one year. of the number of press professionals killed on the planet.
Of the ninety-nine deaths in 2023, “the vast majority [soixante-douze] were Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza [alors] that, by contrast, outside of this conflict, twenty-two journalists and media workers were killed in eighteen countries”, CPJ is alarmed. THE “Journalists in Gaza are witnesses on the front line”notes CPJ boss Jodie Ginsberg, cited in the report.