The White House requests a vote in the UN Security Council and sends Blinken to the region
The government of USA is intensifying today pressure to declare a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, where shelling continues, calling for voting to the UN Security Council on the US draft resolution calling on Israel and Hamas to implement the ceasefire proposal “without delay” and sending Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to the region.
According to diplomatic sources, Washington has asked for the vote to be held today, but this has not been confirmed by South Korea, which holds the SA presidency this month.
The proposal for a three-phase ceasefire was presented on May 31 by US President Joe Biden, with Netanyahu flatly rejecting it.
THE third version of the text, which was distributed yesterday Sunday to the member states and came to the attention of Agence France-Presse, “welcomes” the proposal and mentions – contrary to the two previous versions – that Israel has “accepted” it.
It says the first phase calls for an “immediate and complete” ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from “densely populated areas” of the Gaza Strip for six weeks, the release of some hostages, especially women and the sick, in exchange for the release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and the entry of more humanitarian aid.
If this phase takes more than six weeks, the ceasefire will continue “as long as the negotiations continue”.
Blinken in the area
At the same time, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is expected in the region today to continue diplomatic efforts, without any guarantee of success, given the disagreements within the Netanyahu government and the silence of Hamas.
He will first be received in Cairo by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, then he will go to Israel and meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
The meetings will come a day after Benny Gantz resigned from the wartime government, the latest sign of widening divisions in Israel over how the war with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, now in its ninth month, is being waged.
Benny Gantz particularly demanded the adoption of an “action plan” in the wake of the war.
Massacre in al Nuseirat
Two days ago, during an Israeli operation in the civilian camp of Nuseirat, in central Gaza, the IDF freed 4 hostages but left behind a terrible destruction, recorded by the cameras of the AFP television service: charred vehicles, gutted and demolished buildings, fires , still smoking ruins.
Some were trying to make their way through the wreckage to try to put out the flames, or rescue the injured, others were gathered around corpses wrapped in blankets.
The Health Ministry of Hamas spoke of 274 dead and 698 wounded, denouncing the “massacre” in a densely populated area of ​​the Palestinian enclave.
Yesterday the operations of the Israeli army continued in the Gaza Strip. A strike at a house in Gaza City killed five people, including an eight-month pregnant woman, on the night of Sunday to Monday, a spokesman for the Palestinian civil protection services told AFP.
At the same time, the US military announced yesterday that they had resumed dropping humanitarian aid, citing 10 tons of rations dropped in the northern part of the enclave. The day before, he reported that deliveries of the humanitarian aid desperately needed by the 2.4 million inhabitants who are at risk of starvation had resumed, via a temporary jetty.
At least 37,084 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in large-scale Israeli military operations since Oct. 7, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Source :Skai
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