In the last week the Israeli army has endeavored to convey the message that the forces of Hamas in the north of Loop They are on the verge of collapse. To try to prove it, she has aired several photographs with dozens – sometimes hundreds – of half-naked men stacked like cattle in the open who had supposedly been killed. rendered en masse. The problem is that they were not “Hamas terrorists”, but civilians arrested in the UN schools where they took refuge with their families, according to Israeli researchers and human rights organizations, who have identified doctors, nurses and journalists among those detained. ‘Operation victory’ has gone so wrong that it has even provoked ridicule in Israel. “If that’s an elite fighter, I’m a frog,” military reporter Hai Levy wrote in X.
עוד תמונה נוראית של המוני אזרחים, אומללים וחסרי כל, מרוכזים ומושפלי ם. גם עוד אלף “תמונות ניצחון” כאלו לא יעזרו לישראל לנצח. pic.twitter.com/cm1sIaiIQZ
— BM (@ireallyhateyou) December 12, 2023
The speech of the imminent capitulation It did not take long to give way to a very different one, after Israel suffered its second deadliest day in Gaza on Wednesday, with 10 soldiers dead, most of them high-ranking officers. “The war will last more than a few months,” the Defense Minister told him on Thursday. Yoav Gallantto the US national security advisor, Jake Sullivan. The lieutenant of Joe Biden He had arrived in Israel with a very clear message. The White House wants the massive bombing campaign it ends in a few three weeks to move towards a phase of “more selective operations” focused on the Hamas leaders. The same ones who are still alive and missing after 19,000 Palestinians dead and more of 50,000 injured. Mostly children and women.
But even though Washington provides many of the weapons and dictates the diplomatic times of the assault, vetoing any ceasefire attempt in the Security Council, its influence on the battlefield is modest at best. Sullivan left for Ramallah this Friday without giving a single deadline for that transition and accepting that the war will last months. “There is no contradiction between saying that the combat will last months and saying that there will be different phases throughout the months,” he said in the morning in Tel Aviv with a funeral face.
Washington Frustration
The White House is starting to get nervous and visibly frustrated. Not only Biden is already talking about “indiscriminate bombings”, but their plans for the day after have received resounding slaps in the face. Binyamin Netanyahu and his possible successor, the centrist Benny Gantz They have flatly rejected the Palestinian Authority taking charge of Gaza when the bleeding ends, a similar slamming of the door to their intentions to launch a peace process. Internally, Israel is asking its ally to stop talking about the issue, according to ‘The Times of Israel’; in public, let him not even utter the idea of a Palestinian state. “I want to urge you to stop saying ‘two state solution’”, the president has said very graphically Isaac Herzog. “My nation is in mourning and under trauma.”
Families of more than one hundreds of hostages Those who remain in the Strip are becoming more desperate and angry with Netanyahu every day. The Army acknowledged this Friday that its soldiers mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages during the day who managed to escape from their captors in the Shujaiyeh neighborhood. There are few days when a new death is not announced among those held captive by friendly fire.
Where they are also grieving, only at one scale of victims 20 times greater, It’s in Gaza. Converted 70 days ago into a lead cemetery and a “children’s cemetery,” in the words of Antonio Guterres. According to ‘The Washington Post’ citing US intelligence, Israel has launched more than 29,000 bombs on the enclavealmost half ‘dumb bombs’ without guidance or precision. Which partly explains why it is killing and destroying in droves.
Attacks on ‘safe zones’
Every day that passes the situation in the Strip becomes more gloomy. The infectious diseases They are spreading like wildfire, hunger It is a common currency and about half of the population is already concentrated in Rafah, the last stronghold before the expulsion to Egypt. No more left vaccines for children. Finding non-expired antibiotics is almost impossible. Food on the black market is priced in gold. And barter has prevailed. People change Processed cheese and Tuna cans for coats and blankets. Tens of thousands of people live in shanties made of pallets and plastic. Some families even sleep in the open in this incipient winter, according to a journalist from the Strip who prefers not to give his name for security reasons.
And even in Rafah the bombings have not stopped, despite the fact that the Israeli army last week asked the population to move there because Jan Yunis, further north, is now a “dangerous combat zone.” In fact, this Wednesday, 33 people died in a bombing next to a UN school in the town, according to Al Jazeera.
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The Qatari television network also continues to accumulate tragedies. The star journalist of his Arabic channel, Wael al-Dahdouh, was attacked by a Israeli drone next to his camera Samer Abuqada in Khan Yunis. The first was seriously injured and the second bled to death after Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from approaching to rescue him. It all seems clearly deliberate. Last October, a bombing killed Al-Dadouh’s wife, her seven-year-old daughter, her 15-year-old son, her grandson and eight other relatives.
It is another of the constants of this war. Not only have they been 56 Palestinian journalists murdered (and three Lebanese), but many were buried with their families at a rate unprecedented in the history of modern warfare.