More than two hundred Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours in the relentless shelling and ground operations of the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, as the UN Security Council, in its resolution calling for an increase in humanitarian aid distributed to the Palestinian enclave, refrained from calling for a ceasefire.

Almost three months after the outbreak of war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement, the latter announced that the bodies of dozens of civilians, some of whom were “executed”, had been found during an Israeli ground operation in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, in Jabalia.

The Israeli army, Chahal, for its part, announced the death of thirteen of its soldiers, four yesterday Friday and eight yesterday Saturday, in battles with Hamas in Gaza, a development that increases to 154 the number of Israeli soldiers killed since ground operations began on the 27th of October. A section of the Israeli press considers the official account to be understated.

The war broke out after members of Hamas’ military wing launched an unprecedented attack on southern sectors of Israeli territory that left an estimated 1,140 dead, the deadliest since the 1948 occupation of the Jewish state, on October 7. About 250 other people were abducted and taken to the Gaza Strip that day, of whom over a hundred were released by the end of November. They remain hostages in Palestinian enclave 129, according to Israeli authorities.

Israeli bombardment and ground operations have killed at least 20,258 people, the vast majority of them women, children and teenagers, according to the latest figures from the Hamas Health Ministry.

Among them are 201 people killed in the past 24 hours in various locations in the small, heavily overpopulated enclave under siege by the Israeli army. An aerial bombardment of the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central part of the enclave ruled by Hamas since 2007, killed 18 people.

“Performances”

In Khan Younis (south), where Chahal said he would scale up operations this week, AFP reporters saw bodies and wounded being taken to Nasser Hospital.

Yesterday, Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kindra accused the Israeli armed forces of carrying out “horrific massacres” in Jabalia and Tal az Za’atar, of “executing dozens of civilians in the streets.”

The Israeli army, asked about the issue by AFP, did not specifically respond to the accusations of civilian executions. He assured, however, that his strikes “against military targets” comply with “the rules of international law”.

For its part, it announced that it had killed “armed terrorists” in Gaza City and destroyed “buildings used as military facilities.”

It also said that a shelling in Rafah the day before Friday, which killed four members of the same family, including a little girl, according to Hamas, was aimed at a Palestinian movement official responsible for the supply of weapons.

Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone yesterday. The US president “underscored the critical need to protect the civilian population”, according to a statement from his services at the White House. For his part, the Israeli prime minister “made it clear that Israel will continue the war until all its goals are achieved,” his office announced via X (the former Twitter).

Demonstrations against the Israeli Prime Minister

After days of painstaking negotiations, the UN Security Council finally adopted a resolution last Friday calling for the “immediate” distribution of humanitarian aid “on a large scale” to the enclave’s population, which is largely at risk of starvation, according to its agencies. international organization.

The decision did not call for a “ceasefire” to be declared, which Israel and its main ally, the US, rejected. He urged that “the conditions be created for a permanent cessation of hostilities.”

Aid, whose entrance to the Gaza Strip is controlled by Israel, arrives by dropper via Egypt and the Israeli outpost of Kerem Shalom. But its quantity is far from sufficient to meet the needs of the 2.2 million inhabitants of the small enclave of 362 square kilometers.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has denounced what he sees as “huge obstacles” to aid distribution due to the way Israel conducts business. In his view, only if there is a ceasefire can humanitarian aid be effectively distributed.

The mediators, Egypt and Qatar, are trying to reach a compromise that would allow more aid to enter, the release of hostages and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.

A week-long truce in late November allowed the release of 105 hostages and, in exchange, 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

But the parties remain intransigent.

Hamas is demanding an end to Israeli military operations before any hostage negotiations.

Israel’s government says it is open to the idea of ​​a new truce, but rules out any ceasefire before it achieves its stated goal of “eliminating” Hamas, which is labeled a “terrorist” organization by Israeli authorities, the EU and USA.

The spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Ubaydah, said overnight that “contact was lost” with fighters who had taken custody of five Israeli hostages, including three elderly men who appeared in a video released on December 18. .

Probably “the hostages were killed in Zionist (s.s. Israeli) bombing”, he added.

Israeli authorities neither confirm nor deny the information.

Braving the rain, thousands of protesters, including parents and relatives of hostages, gathered again yesterday in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Caesarea to protest the way Prime Minister Netanyahu is acting and to demand that the hostages’ release be negotiated.

“Hunger wakes them up”

Two days before Christmas, religious authorities in Bethlehem, the city in the occupied West Bank where according to Christian tradition Jesus was born, made it clear yesterday that there will be no festive event, as a sign of mourning and solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. .

Israeli bombardment from the air, sea and land has destroyed entire neighborhoods and forced 1.9 million Gazans — or 85% of the population — to flee their homes, the UN estimates.

The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warns that “hunger, famine and the spread of disease” threaten the Palestinian enclave.

In Rafah (south), which has been turned into a vast refugee camp, the population waits for food rations that are rationed daily. However, they are not enough to cover the needs.

“My children have lost a lot of weight, they wake up hungry at night. I cried when they asked me for something to eat in the evening,” says Noor Barbah, displaced by Khan Younis, in dismay.

Beyond the Gaza Strip, the risk of regional conflagration persists. Shiite Houthi rebels are threatening to cause serious disruption to international trade by continuing their weeks-long attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea.

The Houthis say they are carrying out the attacks in solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The US, for its part, now publicly accuses Iran of fueling tensions.

Today a Japanese tanker was attacked by a drone sent “from Iran”, off the coast of India, according to the Pentagon.

In recent days, Washington has publicly accused Tehran, an ally of the Yemeni rebels and Hamas, of providing information to the Houthis to plan their attacks. A charge rejected by Iran, stressing yesterday that the rebels are acting on the basis of “their own decisions and capabilities”.