Deadly hostilities were still raging yesterday Monday and continued into the early hours of the morning in the Gaza Strip, particularly in Khan Younis, the biggest city in the southern part of the Palestinian enclave, as the UN chief has been trying to convince countries that fund his agency that offers aid to Palestinian refugees to continue, amid an increasingly serious crisis for UNRWA.

During the night, eyewitnesses spoke for successive bombings in sectors of the central and southern Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported Israeli artillery strikes around Khan Younis’ Amal (“Hope”) hospital.

The Health Ministry of Hamas reported that only since last night as of this morning it counted at least 128 dead“dozens” in Khan Younis, as the situation remains critical in the enclave’s largest hospitals.

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari, describing Han Younis as the “capital” of Hamas, assured that “more than 2,000 terrorists” have been killed.

Hostilities rage on despite the “hope” that a ceasefire will be declared between Israel and Hamas, following the talks in the corridors between the mediating states and the Israeli government.

However, the Palestinian Islamist movement emphasized yesterday that it wants a “complete” cease-fire, which it characterizes as a necessary condition for the release of the hostages it has been holding in the enclave since the outbreak of the war, which will close four months soon.

Concerns that the war will spread were heightened after three members of the US armed forces were killed in a drone strike on a US support base on the Jordan/Syria border last Sunday, which Washington blamed on “Iranian-backed” groups, while the tension remains at an all-time high in Yemen, the Red Sea, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon…

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallad said yesterday that units deployed in the Gaza Strip would be moved “to the north” and were “preparing for follow-up”, hinting that wider operations were imminent against Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed movement allied to Hamas, close to Iran, with which exchanges of fire have been practically daily since the day after the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, three Israeli missiles yesterday hit a “base of the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards”, an elite body of the Iranian army, in a suburb of Damascus, the capital of Syria, killing at least eight people.

“We will die of hunger”

In the Gaza Strip, the United Nations agency offering assistance to Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, faces increasing difficulty, following Israeli accusations of the alleged involvement of some dozen of its employees — out of a total of 30,000 — in the attack launched by Hamas in Israel on October 7.

The European Union yesterday demanded that UNRWA accept to be “audited” by “independent experts selected by the European Commission”. While the head of Israel’s diplomacy, Israel Katz, demanded the resignation of the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, Philip Lazzarini.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, whose government is the biggest donor to UNRWA, yesterday said it was “imperative” that the UN agency conduct a thorough investigation into the Israeli accusations, while continuing its “absolutely necessary” work in Gaza Strip.

A dozen countries, including the US, have now announced the suspension of their funding to the agency, amid a devastating humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, despite calls by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for guarantees that it will continue its mission.

Twenty humanitarian organisations, including Oxfam, Save the Children and ActionAid, expressed their “outrage” at the suspension of funding in a joint statement.

In Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt, which has turned into a sprawling refugee camp — the city has hosted more than 1.3 million displaced Palestinians, the UN estimates — some did not hide their concern yesterday.

“We live thanks to the help that UNRWA offers us. If it stops, we will die of hunger, no one will come to save us,” said Saba Masabi, 50 years old.

Negotiations

Alongside the conflict in the Gaza Strip, violence has also escalated in the occupied West Bank. The first morning hours, Israeli forces raided Ibn Sina Hospital, in Jenin, where they killed at least three Palestinians, according to the Voice of Palestine radio station.

Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern sectors of Israeli territory killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official statements.

In retaliation, 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 26,637 people, the vast majority of them women and children. according to the latest report from the Hamas Health Ministry.

In Khan Younis, AFP footage taken during a recent visit organized by the Israeli military showed tanks moving across a devastated landscape, among flattened buildings, and underground tunnels identified by the military. The officer who undertook to lead the mission reminded that the particularity of this war is that the battles are fought “on the surface and underground”.

On the other side, in Israel, air defense sirens sounded again yesterday in Tel Aviv and other cities in the central part of the country. Hamas’ military arm claimed responsibility for the rocket launch.

In the hallways, negotiations continue in view of a new truce. The proposal for a framework agreement that provides for a truce and the release of hostages will be sent to Hamas, Qatar’s Prime Minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, said yesterday.

Explosive atmosphere

He reported “significant progress” after CIA Director William Burns met in Paris last Sunday with representatives of Qatar, Egypt and Israel.

At the same time, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken yesterday praised the “very important and productive work” in Paris, speaking of a “correct and strong proposal”.

The plan provides for a two-month truce and release of all hostagesin exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, according to information from the New York Times.

Israel spoke of “constructive talks”, despite “differences”.

However, Hamas wants a “complete ceasefire” to be agreed before it agrees to release the hostages, a senior official of the Palestinian Islamist movement, which Israel, the US and the EU label a “terrorist” organization, told AFP yesterday.

Qatar, Egypt and the US negotiated the truce that allowed in late November the release of more than 100 of the roughly 250 hostages taken to the Gaza Strip when the October 7 attack took place, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners. The exchange involved mainly women and children.

The atmosphere in the wider region is not going to be explosive, especially after the deaths of three American soldiers and the injuries of 34 others in the drone attack on Sunday in northeastern Jordan, on the border with Syria, about ten kilometers from Iran, for which the Washington blamed Iranian-backed organizations.

The White House declares that it will retaliate. John Kirby, the representative of the National Security Council of the American presidency, repeated it yesterday speaking to CNN, assuring at the same time that the USA does not want “war with Iran”, nor “a wider conflict in the Middle East”.

Tehran yesterday countered the US accusations, stressing that it had nothing to do with the attack.