Israeli troops continue to occupy territory although that means relatively little in an urban war and no one yet dares to judge whether everything is developing according to the rhythms and plans of the General Staff. Yesterday, they took over public buildings in Gaza, such as the aforementioned Parliament, the police headquarters or an engineering college where, rather than putting their elbows in, they “produced and developed weapons.” Hamas’s response had echoes of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. “They want to create the illusion of control over empty places in all cases. The battle is in its beginnings and the strongest is yet to come,” said Osama Hamdan, Hamas leader from Beirut. According to his account, 10 of the 35 hospitals in the strip are functioning and 94 public buildings and 253 schools are rubble.
And early this Wednesday, they began the invasion of the Al Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza, a symbol of this war and an object of discord. Israeli forces stormed the health center to conduct a “precise and targeted operation” against Hamas. An act that the Islamist group called a “war crime, moral crime and crime against humanity.” He also held US President Joe Biden responsible for the lives of the “thousands of displaced civilians, medical personnel and patients” at the hospital.
Medical personnel told Al Jazeera that they bombed the fourth floor of one of the buildings and ordered people to evacuate to the hospital courtyard, including the director, Dr. Munir Al Barsh, although shots were fired at some of them. “We don’t know if the Israeli army wants to kill us or just terrorize us,” Dr. Ahmed al Mokhallalati explained to the Arab media. The director opposed cooperating with Israel.
Israel insists that it houses Hamas facilities underground and allows the use of ambulances for war purposes, while doctors, NGOs and testimonies cry out to heaven.
Yesterday, under the risk of being shot, Al Shifa employees began to dig a large mass grave to bury between 100 and 120 bodies and not so much out of charity: the risk of infections. “We are sure that all types of infections will be transmitted. Burying so many corpses requires many means, it cannot be done by hand and with individual effort. It will take hours and hours,” surgeon Al Mokhallalati described to Reuters the day before. With the windows closed due to the proximity of the fighting, the air in the hospital was stinking.
A Hamas spokesman inside the center said yesterday that an Israeli military proposal for the evacuation of 36 babies in portable incubators had not materialized. “Hospitals must be respected,” Biden said Monday. Minutes after the announcement of the invasion of the hospital, a group of demonstrations gathered at the White House to call for an end to hostilities.
Israeli soldiers were photographed yesterday with Star of David flags in the Gaza Parliament, a chamber inoperative since the day of its creation and closed in 2017. Gaza City is not Berlin, year 1945, with the photo of the Russian soldier raising the Soviet flag in the Reichstag and that’s it. The war has only just begun, it has a vague end, a convoluted tomorrow, but its logic rules over everything else, from diplomacy to the conditions of the Al Shifa hospital, whose nearly 700 patients and hundreds of displaced people are currently there. at the center of the Israeli offensive.
Yesterday Israel showed its anger with the United Nations and the International Red Cross, organizations that are beginning to be treated as if they were part of an international conspiracy against the Government of Israel. Thus, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Eli Cohen, denounced in Geneva that Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the UN, “does not deserve to lead the organization” due to his bias in the war and something like being a bit lazy, “he has not discouraged any peace process in the region.”
The Israeli foreign minister criticized the International Red Cross for not pressing hard enough to reach the 240 hostages, some aged months and in their eighties. “The minimum is for the Red Cross to meet the hostages, the minimum is for them to receive evidence of their lives and the minimum is for them to receive the medicines they need,” stated the minister. In her reply, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, alleged that in order to reach them – they try to do so – prior agreements are needed. “The International Red Cross cannot force its way to where they are,” she said.
The fate of the hostages shows signs of activity, although the days pass and the signs are contradictory. Again, President Joe Biden said yesterday that “hang in there, here we go! The liberation is going to take place”, without going into more details, unlike what must have been negotiated in Egypt by the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence service, Ronen Bar. Qatar is the country, supported by Egypt, which is allowing negotiations between various groups, Hamas included, logically. Yesterday’s message from Doha conveyed a sense of urgency, of a now-or-never style. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson warned that “the deteriorating situation in Gaza complicates mediation efforts. We think that there is no other opportunity for both parties than this mediation” (Qatari).
Dozens of relatives and friends of the kidnapped people left Tel Aviv yesterday on foot towards Jerusalem, a matter of two or three days, to stand before Prime Minister Netanyahu with a message: the lives of the hostages take priority over other aspects. from the war. To date, the prime minister’s response is the same: precisely the military force favors the negotiation for his release.
Rising tension, severity of skirmishes, and heightened rhetoric from Hezbollah are raising concerns about the situation on the Israeli-Lebanese border. A prudent body in this regard made statements yesterday that corroborate the concern. After meeting in Beirut with the Lebanese Prime Minister, Spanish General Aroldo Lázaro Sáenz, commander of the Finul forces – a military peace mission under the umbrella of the UN, deployed in southern Lebanon since 1978 – expressed “my deep concern regarding the situation in the south and the possibility that hostilities will be prolonged and intensified.”
Yesterday, the pro-Iranian Hizbullah militia claimed responsibility for five new attacks against unspecified Israeli targets in northern Israel, at least one of them with missiles – a symptom of escalation – while the crossfire is getting worse every day.
