Nor does Christmas aim to provide a respite in the Gaza Strip.
The war “will be long,” insisted this Sunday the Prime Minister of Israel, Beniamin Netanyahu. And on the ground, the steps taken by the Israeli offensive indicate this, despite the daily drip of casualties in their ranks.
This weekend alone at least 15 Israeli soldiers have died; 154 since the start of the war, according to the count.
Despite this, the Israel Defense Forces have in recent days intensified their operations throughout the Palestinian enclave and a new ceasefire in the short term is believed, at present, unlikely.
In Israel the debate is not about this ceasefire, despite the reproaches that have been heard intermittently from their relatives.
However, within the international community, the critical situation in which the civilian population of Gaza finds itself, where more than 20,000 people have already died, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, does make something move.
And again Cairo is targeted as the headquarters of the negotiation.
Driven by the process this time by Islamic Jihad, which fights alongside Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Egypt late on Sunday proposed a new two-week ceasefire in exchange for 40 hostages.
Hamas said it will evaluate it. The Israeli premier reiterated in a press release, however, almost immediately, that “we are intensifying the war in the Gaza Strip and we will continue fighting until absolute victory over Hamas; “This is the only way to return our hostages: eliminate Hamas and ensure that Gaza is no longer a threat to Israel.”
According to the army, 129 of these hostages remain in Gaza. At the last minute, they reported that they found five dead in a network of underground tunnels.
Netanyahu’s words are not new. They were also repeated when last Wednesday the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniye, traveled to the Egyptian capital with the same purpose: to negotiate a new truce. Unsuccessfully.
The latest resolution of the UN Security Council, which ruled out demanding a ceasefire to avoid the US veto and which has been widely criticized as insufficient, follows the same path.
The testimonies on the ground collected by the official Palestinian agency Wafa speak, thus, of incessant bombings in several regions of the strip, in particular in Khan Younis, in the south, and in Jabalia, in the north, the area that days ago Jerusalem had announced that it controlled almost in its entirety. The complaints of the international organizations in charge of bringing aid to Gaza are also repeated due to the impediments that Israel continues to pose for its access and distribution.
But controlling the northern area of ??the strip is considered a priority objective for Israel. And for Netanyahu, who in recent days has seen even thousands of Israelis take to the streets and call for his departure from the Government, it is also a critical step.
The country is still discussing how the massacre of October 7 on the border with the strip could have happened, how its intelligence services could have overlooked it, why the attack could not be prevented.
The doubts are still there. Therefore, fulfilling his objective of ending Hamas and controlling Gaza also has internal political overtones for the Israeli prime minister, despite the fact that the army claims to have killed 8,000 Palestinian combatants in the Gaza war, as announced yesterday. The masterminds of the massacre of last October 7 remain unlocated and the war turns three months in less than two weeks.
The numbers for Gazans in recent hours, however, continue to worsen. 166 died in just 24 hours and almost half a thousand people were injured due to the intense bombing.
Israel has also ordered the evacuation of eight towns in the center of the strip and the transfer to the city of Deir al Balah. Although in the same town there have been up to five massacres in the last 48 hours.
In parallel, in recent weeks tension has increased on Israel’s northern border, which is already experiencing its most tense moment since 2006.
The Israeli army attacked positions of the Shiite group Hizbullah in southern Lebanon on Sunday with artillery in response to the launch of projectiles from across the border. Previously, Israeli aircraft had attacked their bases at several points. Days ago, the projectiles hit uninhabited Israeli territory. And rocket alerts are repeated every day.
And in the south, the Red Sea doesn’t give a respite either. While waiting for the international coalition that will predictably confront the Houthis of Yemen, the escalation of tension also led to a new episode this Sunday with accusations of crossfire between the Shiite rebels and the United States against drones or ships sailing in the area. .
Eilat, in the extreme south of Israel and where victims of October 7 are displaced, also look here.
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem asked this Sunday, on his traditional (and this year also silent to denounce the war situation in Gaza) walk to Bethlehem, for an immediate truce because “violence leads to more violence.” In the Holy Land, for now no one pays attention to it.
