The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, assured yesterday that in the coming days Israel will increase “the political and military pressure on Hamas” to secure the release of the 133 hostages still in the Gaza Strip.
“Instead of abandoning its extremist positions, Hamas benefits from our divisions and feels encouraged by the pressures directed against the Israeli Government”, said the president in a message on the occasion of the celebration of the Passover holiday. Jewish Passover “We will give him a painful blow and it will be soon”, he added.
The Israeli army intensified operations in the West Bank this weekend, with a massive raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp. Netanyahu spoke indirectly about rumors that the United States is considering imposing sanctions on Israeli military units that violate human rights. The digital media Axios spoke of sanctions against the Netzah Yehuda battalion, which operates in the West Bank. “If anyone thinks they can sanction an IDF unit, I will fight them with all my strength,” Netanyahu said. On Friday, the United States announced a battery of sanctions against Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Yesterday, Israel continued its attacks on the Gaza Strip, particularly concentrated on Rafah, in the south of the country. Palestinian doctors managed to deliver alive the daughter of a pregnant woman who was killed in an Israeli airstrike early on Sunday that killed a total of 19 people, including the father and sister of small
The girl, weighing 1.4 kilos, was born by cesarean section and is stable in a hospital in Rafah, explained Dr. Mohamed Salama. The little girl is in an incubator with another baby, with a piece of paper on her chest that identifies her as “the daughter of the martyr Sabrin al-Sakani”. That was the name of his mother, who was 30 weeks pregnant when she died.
Malak, his other daughter, also died in the attack. The girl wanted her new sister to be called Ruh, which means “spirit” in Arabic, explained her uncle, Rami al-Sheikh. “Malak was happy that her sister came into the world,” he said.
In the town of Khan Iunis, also in the south of the strip, the authorities announced that they have discovered a new mass grave in the yard of a hospital, with 60 corpses. According to official Palestinian data, since the beginning of the Israeli offensive in October, the dead in Gaza have already reached 34,100. A total of 210 bodies have been found at Nasser Hospital since last Friday, while around 2,000 people are still missing in the area, a spokesman for the enclave’s civil defense team, independent of Hamas, said .
The Israeli army withdrew from Khan Iunis on April 7, after four months of fighting and bombing. The two main hospitals, Amal and Nasser, were razed and inoperable after being besieged by Israeli troops, who attacked the two centers under the premise that they were harboring Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.
