By Alexia Cafetzis
The Israeli armed forces launched new aerial bombardments overnight in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, an AFP journalist reported, while complex talks continue in Cairo with the aim of declaring a second truce between Israel and Hamas in the small enclave.
At a time when 2.2 million residents of Gaza, the vast majority of the enclave's population, are threatened with starvation, according to the UN, humanitarian aid organizations have denounced the bombing of their facilities.
During the night, the Israeli Air Force launched approximately ten bombing raids on Rafah, with no casualty reports reported so far.
Rafah is the “last stronghold” of Hamas, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says he is determined, despite international protests, to order an assault on the city to “defeat” the Palestinian Islamist movement and free the remaining hostages.
Almost 1.5 million Palestinians, according to the UN, or more than half the enclave's population (2.4 million), have taken refuge in Rafah, in closed borders with Egypt.
US President Joe Biden's adviser on the Middle East, Brett McGurk, is expected in Israel today, after the stop he made in Egypt for new talks on the truce.
“We want to reach an agreement (…) as quickly as possible,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told the press.
Yesterday in Cairo, Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniya was expected to hold talks with Egypt's intelligence chief, Abbas Kamal, about the “first phase” of a plan drawn up in January, an AFP source in Hamas said from Gaza.
The plan calls for a six-week truce, an exchange of hostages with Palestinian prisoners in Israel and more humanitarian aid entering the enclave.
Hamas wants a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, the lifting of the Israeli blockade and safe haven for the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by the war. Israel, for its part, declares that the war will continue until Hamas is eliminated and all the hostages are returned.
Sexual violence
According to Israeli sources, more than 130 Israeli hostages remain in the hands of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but an army spokesman recently said that at least 31 of them are believed to be dead, out of about 250 abducted on October 7.
On that day, Hamas' military arm launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel, killing more than 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.
< p class="text-paragraph">According to a report by an Israeli organization released on Wednesday, there were many cases of systematic and premeditated sexual violence during the attack.
On Monday, UN human rights experts called for an independent investigation into violence, including sexual violence, against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Israel's civil-military leadership vowed after the October 7 attack to “wipe out” Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, which the US and EU label a “terrorist” organization. Israeli military operations in reprisals have claimed the lives of at least 29,313 people in the Gaza Strip, the vast majority of them women and children, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.
Yesterday the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, approved by a large majority a text submitted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and rejects any “unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state”. Mr. Netanyahu has said that recognizing a Palestinian state would be tantamount to rewarding Hamas' “unprecedented terrorism.”
A few days earlier, the Washington Post reported that the US and Arab states are preparing a comprehensive plan for lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace after the Israel-Hamas war ends, which includes a timetable for the establishment of a Palestinian state .
Division in the G20
The division of the international community dominated the Ministerial meeting yesterday of G20 Foreign Affairs in Brazil.
The head of Brazilian diplomacy, Mauro Vieira, denounced the “unacceptable paralysis of the Security Council” on the Gaza Strip, where the US, Israel's main ally, vetoed yesterday to prevent the adoption of a draft resolution that called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to be declared.
For its part, the US criticized the statements of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who on Sunday compared the war in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis, igniting a diplomatic firestorm.
The humanitarian situation is causing alarm especially in the northern Gaza Strip, an area given over to “chaos and violence”, according to the World Food Program (WFP), which suspended the distribution of aid to the region yesterday Tuesday.< /p>
Aid for civilians in the Gaza Strip, the passage of which is subject to Israeli approval, mostly arrives through Rafah. But deliveries to the northern part of the enclave are almost impossible due to the destruction and fighting.
Israeli authorities announced yesterday that 98 trucks with humanitarian aid had entered the Gaza Strip, while a collective of international NGOs, AIDA, strongly criticized the slowness of the cargo inspection process and the fact that dozens of trucks have been blocked for days at the border.
