US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is traveling to Israel today to try to secure a cease-fire deal in the Gaza Strip. while the UN Security Council is expected to vote within the day on a draft resolution that will call for an “immediate ceasefire” in the war-torn enclave.

Britain — a permanent member state of the SA — and Australia today also called for it to exist “immediate end of fighting” in the Palestinian enclave, so that it becomes possible “to distribute aid and release the hostages”.

As diplomats continue efforts, the fighting does not stop in the Gaza Strip, focusing once again in recent days on Al Shifa hospital, the largest in the entire enclave, where the Israeli armed forces say they have killed more than 140 “terrorists”, members of Palestinian armed organizations, and that they have arrested “more than 350 » suspects since the beginning of the week.

“The operation at Sifa hospital continues. This is the operation during which we arrested the largest number of terrorists since the beginning of the war,” said the spokesman of the Israeli armed forces, Major General Daniel Hagari, last night.

After five and a half months of war, “the gap has narrowed” in the negotiations, Mr Blinken said yesterday. Although “it is difficult to reach” an agreement, “it is always possible”, he insisted.

Alongside these talks, the US tabled, for the first time, a draft UN Security Council resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire linked to the release of the hostages” in the Gaza Strip.

The text, consulted by AFP and expected to be put to a vote later in the day, stresses “the need to declare an immediate and lasting ceasefire to protect civilians on all sides (and) allow the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid”.

Rafa, a “mistake”

The US, a historic ally of Israel and its protecting power in international forums, has exercised its veto in the Security Council repeatedly to prevent the adoption of draft resolutions calling for a cease-fire to be declared. However, as the civilian death toll continues to mount and the humanitarian disaster worsens, with UN agencies sounding the alarm of widespread famine, Washington now appears determined to increase pressure on Israel to declare a ceasefire of fire and to avoid a ground attack on Rafa.

“There are better ways to deal with the threat of Hamas,” Mr Blinken said yesterday, calling the potential ground operation in the city where nearly 1.5 million Palestinians have taken refuge, the vast majority displaced by of war from other regions — and, most of them, more than once.

The 27 EU leaders also called on Israel on Thursday not to proceed with the operation in Rafah and called for an “immediate humanitarian pause”.

But despite international pressure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that the ground offensive in Rafah is necessary to “defeat” Hamas militarily and prevent another October 7.

The unprecedented raid by Hamas’ military arm on southern sectors of Israeli territory on October 7, triggering that war, killed more than 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data. According to Israeli sources, some 250 other people were abducted that day, of whom more than 130 are believed to be still being held in the enclave — but 33 are believed to be dead.

In retaliation, Israel’s political leadership vowed to “eliminate” Hamas, a movement it characterizes, like the US and the EU, as a “terrorist” organization. It launched a campaign of relentless air, land and sea bombardment, followed by ground operations, first in the north, then in the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip. As of yesterday, almost 32,000 people — 31,988 to be exact — have died in Israeli military operations, according to the Hamas Health Ministry. Early this morning, eyewitnesses spoke of new deadly bombings.

Mossad and CIA in Qatar

As part of his sixth tour of the Middle East since the war broke out, Mr Blinken met in Cairo yesterday with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to discuss how a ceasefire could be secured, before meeting the diplomatic chiefs of five of Arab states (Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates), who called for a “complete and immediate ceasefire”.

Ceasefire talks continue in Doha between representatives of the US, Qatar and Egypt. The head of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, David Barnea, is expected to meet today with CIA Director William Burns, Qatari Prime Minister Abdelrahman al-Thani and Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamal.

While it had long called for a permanent ceasefire, Hamas last week backed down, agreeing in principle to discuss a six-week ceasefire. But differences remain, especially over the exchange of Israeli hostages still held in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

Israel is demanding that Hamas hand over a full name list of hostages who remain alive before a truce is implemented, while the Palestinian Islamist movement wants to select those key Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails to be released, Israeli media reported on the talks. , also concerning the increase in aid to Gaza.

“Children are dying of hunger”

Immediately after the outbreak of the war, Israel placed the enclave under absolute siege and passes under strict controls the humanitarian aid that reaches it, mainly through Egypt and Rafah. However, the controls, according to the UN, have the effect of reducing the number of trucks passing through.

“Children are dying of hunger. They are deprived of food,” the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child emphasized yesterday. “It’s hard to even find crumbs.”

To relieve the population, several countries are airdropping food parcels and meals and have opened a sea corridor from Cyprus to Gaza. But aid falls short of the enormous needs of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million residents, and little is distributed to the enclave’s north, where more than 300,000 people live, according to the UN.

“Look at our children, do you see their condition? We don’t know how to feed them,” she told AFP yesterday as she left to save herself and her family from the area where Al Shifa hospital is located. “We have been besieged for three days, we have not been able to give them anything to eat or drink.”