Fierce fighting continued today between the Israeli army and Hamas in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, amid a proposal to “pause” the war for a few weeks in the absence of consensus on a longer-term solution.

In the early hours of the morning, Palestinian eyewitnesses reported Israeli artillery fire near Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the largest city in the southern Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military says Hamas leaders are hiding.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) of UN expresses concern as “hostilities intensify” in the city, while the Palestinian Red Crescent spoke of an “extremely dangerous” situation in the area where another hospital, Amal (“Hope”), is located.

In the meantime, the Palestinian telecommunications company PalTel announced a new interruption of internet access and mobile phone services due to Israeli military operations in the small Palestinian enclave where the situation for civilians is described as increasingly critical.

The Israeli military has confirmed that it has taken control of Hamas command centers in Khan Younis, while announcing that 200 of its members have been killed since the start of its ground operations in the Gaza Strip on October 27. A section of the Israeli press considers the official account to be understated.

That war was triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7 in southern sectors of Israeli territory, which killed some 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official statements.

About 250 more people were abducted and taken to the Gaza Strip, of whom about a hundred were released in late November in a Palestinian prisoner swap during a week-long truce. According to Israeli authorities, 132 remain in the enclave, but at least 28 are believed to be dead.

In retaliation for the Hamas attack, Israel’s civil-military leadership vowed to “wipe out” the Palestinian Islamist movement and its military operations since then, the most extensive ever conducted in the Gaza Strip, have killed at least 25,295 people, the vast majority women and children, according to the latest report from the Hamas Health Ministry.

A two-month truce?

Israel has proposed to Hamas, through mediators Qatar and Egypt, that there be a two-month pause in fighting and shelling in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of all hostages, US news website Axios reported on Monday.

The proposal would not end the war, it would be a second truce, like the week-long one that allowed the release of more than a hundred hostages in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel’s proposal calls for the return of hostages to life and corpses in phases, the first of which would involve women and men age 60 and older, according to the Axios report.

Next will be women serving in the army, men under the age of 60 who do not belong to the ranks of the armed forces, then male Israeli soldiers and, lastly, the corpses.

Under the plan, Israel and Hamas would agree in advance on the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released for each hostage category and then their names, according to the website.

During his meeting yesterday with family members of hostages, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to an Israeli “initiative”, adding however that he is not in a position to “disclose details” about it, according to the press.

“Seeds of Hate”

Although Benjamin’s government proposed an armistice, refuses to enter into a discussion on a longer-term “two-state solution”, i.e. the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel, which EU foreign ministers criticized on Monday.

To the council of foreign affairs in Brussels, they met—separately—with their Israeli and Palestinian Authority counterparts, respectively Israel Katz and Riad al-Maliki.

Mr. Katz said he went to secure European support for Israel’s war against Hamas and his government’s effort to secure the release of the hostages.

“The (Israeli) minister could make better use of his time if he focused on the security of his country and the high death toll in Gaza,” was the reaction of the head of European diplomacy, Giuseppe Borrell, who did not hide his annoyance at the Israel’s refusal to even discuss the two-state solution.

“What are the other solutions they have in mind?” Mr Borrell asked. “Force all Palestinians to leave? Should they be killed?”, he continued. The Israelis are “going to sow the seeds of hatred in the next generations” of Palestinians, he warned.

Beyond the Palestinian territories, the conflict is escalating tensions between Israel and its main ally, the US, on the one hand, and on the other the “axis of resistance”, which is close to Iran and includes organizations such as Hamas, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis.

In a show of support for the Palestinians, the latter have ramped up missile and drone attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, causing headaches for major shipping companies and increasing shipping costs.

On the night of Monday into Tuesday, the US and Britain again bombed Houthi installations in Yemen in the hope of “weakening” the rebels’ arsenal blocking navigation in the Red Sea.

But for Mohammed al-Buhaiti, a senior official in the Houthi rebel movement, these strikes do nothing but “increase the determination of the Yemeni people to assume their moral and humanitarian responsibilities towards the oppressed of the Gaza Strip.”