Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on Hamas fighters to lay down their arms without delay, claiming to have recorded numerous surrenders in recent days which herald “the beginning of the end” of the Palestinian Islamist movement.
“They lay down their arms and surrender to our heroic soldiers. It will take time. The war continues but it is the beginning of the end of Hamas“Mr. Netanyahu was quoted as saying in a statement.”I tell the Hamas terrorists: this is the end. Don’t die for (Gaza movement leader Yahya) Sinwar. See you now **!”, he added.
During the night from Sunday to Monday, an AFP reporter reported powerful airstrikes on the city of Khan Younes, the new epicenter of the war located in the southern tip of the Gaza Strip. The health ministry of the Hamas administration in Gaza reported “dozens” of deaths in nighttime raids.
Islamic Jihad, the second armed Palestinian Islamist movement, claimed that one of its fighters had exploded a house in an area of Gaza City in which there were Israeli soldiers who were trying to identify the mouth of an underground tunnel.
The Israeli army reported rocket fire from Gaza on Monday and “fierce fighting” on Sunday in neighborhoods in the Gaza City sector and in Khan Younes, where Palestinian fighters “emerged from the tunnels”, “disposed explosives”. ” and fire “rocket launchers”.
“I don’t mean we use our full power, but we use significant force and we get significant results“, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi declared on Sunday.
Position of strength ?
The conflict was triggered after an attack of unprecedented scale carried out on October 7 by Hamas commandos infiltrated into Israel from Gaza, during which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, according to the authorities.
A one-week truce at the end of November made it possible to free around a hundred of the approximately 240 hostages in the hands of Hamas and affiliated groups since the commando attack. After the truce, Israel said it wanted to impose a balance of power to its advantage on the ground to free the now 137 hostages still in Gaza.
Hamas warned on Sunday that none of the hostages in the Gaza Strip would come out “alive” without “an exchange and negotiationand without meeting the requirements of resistance” said Abou Obeida, the spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the movement.
“No safe place”
In the Gaza Strip, the civilian population is forced into an increasingly cramped area and the health system threatens to “collapse” according to the WHO, while the death toll continues to rise.
According to the Hamas Ministry of Healtha movement in power in Gaza since 2007, nearly 18,000 people died in the Palestinian territory since the start of the Israeli offensive, the vast majority of them women and minors.
More than a hundred Israeli soldiers have been killed since the start of the ongoing ground offensive in the Gaza Stripindicated the Israeli army.
On the spot, the bombings reduced entire neighborhoods to ruins, and the population desperately tried to escape the clashes by fleeing towards the south. According to the UN, 1.9 million people have been displaced by the war, or 85% of the territory’s population.
The Israeli army has asked the civilian population of Gaza to go to “safe areas” to escape the fighting.
“A unilateral declaration by an occupying power that lands without infrastructure, food, water, health care (…) are ‘safe zones’ does not mean that they are.” said the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian Territories, Lynn Hastings, whose visa was not renewed by Israel.
Thousands of Gazans are fleeing however they can: by car or truck, sometimes by cart or on foot. “We move from one area to another, and there is no safe place,” laments Abu Mohamed, interviewed by AFP, now on his way to Rafah.
This town on the border with Egypt was transformed into a gigantic camp for displaced people where hundreds of tents were hastily set up with pieces of wood, plastic sheeting and sheets.
According to WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the health system is “on its knees” in Gazaand the organization adopted a resolution calling for immediate humanitarian aid for the besieged territory.
Arrivals of food, medicine and fuel in the Gaza Strip remain very insufficient according to the UN, and are unable to be transported beyond Rafah.