“Thousands of people entered several UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) warehouses and distribution centers in the central and southern Gaza Strip “, affirmed the UN agency in a press release. “It is a worrying sign that civil order is beginning to collapse after three weeks of war and a strict siege on Gaza.”
Mid-morning this Sunday, October 29, the Israeli army announced an increase in the number of its troops in Gaza. “We are gradually increasing ground operations and the extent of our forces in the Gaza Strip,” the army spokesperson said.
The Israeli army has intensified its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip despite calls for de-escalation, and ordered Palestinian civilians to leave for the south of the territory where aid will, according to it, be increased this Sunday. However, strikes also continue to affect the south, where several hundred thousand civilians are massed near the closed Egyptian border. Thousands of Palestinians have returned to the north, due to a lack of shelter and aid in the South, according to the UN.
The intensification of bombings on Gaza coincided with a communications and internet outage, further complicating the task of humanitarians. The network was being restored as of Sunday morning, according to network monitoring organization Netblocks and Palestinian telephone company Paltel.
Defeating Hamas, an “existential challenge” for Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, said he expected a “long and difficult” war in Gaza. Since Friday evening, the Israeli army has been operating on the ground with soldiers and armored vehicles, with Benyamin Netanyahu speaking on Saturday evening of “a second stage of the war”. The objective is “clear”: “destroy the military capabilities and leadership of Hamas; bring the hostages home,” he said after meeting the families of Hamas captives. He also recognized that the October 7 attack constituted a “terrible failure” for the Jewish state and promised a “thorough investigation” to determine responsibility.
Defeating the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza war is an “existential challenge” for Israel, but “it concerns all of Western civilization,” the Israeli Prime Minister declared Saturday evening. “I think that 90% of Hamas’ military budget comes from Iran. It (this country, Editor’s note) finances it, it organizes it, it guides it,” the Israeli leader also accused. However, he admitted “not being able to say” that Tehran “had participated in the micro-planning of this specific action at this specific moment”, regarding the terrorist attack of unprecedented scale carried out by the Islamist movement in Israel on October 7.
New bombings during the night from Saturday to Sunday
Since that date, 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians in the October 7 attack which also saw Hamas take 230 people hostage, according to the Israeli authorities. Hamas claims that more than 8,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in incessant Israeli bombings since the start of the conflict, without these figures being able to be verified.
A “large number” of Palestinians died again overnight from Saturday to Sunday during airstrikes on two refugee camps in northern Gaza, according to Hamas. On Saturday, combat planes struck “450 targets” of Hamas, including command centers, the Israeli army said on Sunday, noting the continuation of ground operations in the territory. In the West Bank, three Palestinians were killed this Sunday morning by Israeli army fire during several military incursions into occupied territories, the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry said.
Calls for a ceasefire are increasing
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres deplored on Saturday the “unprecedented escalation of bombings” which “compromise humanitarian objectives”, calling once again for an immediate ceasefire.
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Mirjana Spoljaric said she was “shocked by the intolerable level of human suffering”, denouncing “a catastrophic failure that the world must not tolerate”. “It is unacceptable that civilians have no safe place to go in Gaza amid massive bombardment, and with the military siege in place, no adequate humanitarian response is currently possible,” she added. . The ICRC, which has already facilitated the transfer of hostages released by the Islamist movement, reiterates its offer of intermediation for any new release. He also demands the right to visit the hostages, provide them with care and facilitate contact with the families.
“Faced with incessant and terrifying bombardments, people have nowhere to flee or take shelter,” Dr. Christos Christou, international president of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said on Sunday. Only 84 trucks of humanitarian aid have been able to arrive in Gaza via Egypt since October 21. Medicines are also lacking and some surgical operations are carried out without completely putting patients to sleep, due to the shortage of anesthetic products, MSF alerted on Saturday.
Families of hostages meet with Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised Saturday to the families of hostages held in the Gaza Strip that Israel would “explore all options” to obtain their release. Relatives of the hostages are increasingly unhappy with the “absolute uncertainty” they face, particularly during the heavy bombing, said Haim Rubinstein, their spokesman. “Families are not sleeping, they want answers.” Four women have been released so far. Hamas estimates that “nearly 50” of them were killed in the bombings.
The leader of the Islamist movement in Gaza, Yahya Sinouar, who spoke on Saturday evening for the first time since October 7, declared that he was ready “to immediately conclude an exchange to release all the prisoners in the enemy’s prisons Zionist against all the hostages.
Several demonstrations in New York, London or Paris
The New York megalopolis, where between 1.6 and two million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Muslims live, has been shaken for three weeks by demonstrations, rallies and vigils for the Palestinians or for Israel. Left-wing American Jewish activists are also up in arms against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and hundreds of people were arrested Friday evening during a giant pro-Palestinian sit-in in Manhattan’s Grand Central station.
In the British capital, for the third consecutive weekend, a procession was formed at the call of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) movement: it left the banks of the Thames to follow a route leading to Parliament Square, not far from Big Ben, while more than 1,000 police officers were mobilized.
In Paris, thousands took part, peacefully, in a rally “in support of the Palestinian people”, banned by the authorities. There were at least 15 arrests and 1,077 fines, according to the Paris police headquarters. Place du Châtelet, in the city center, the crowd was prevented from moving by a very large police force. Among the 3,000 and 4,000 demonstrators, according to the police, were elected officials. In Marseille, in the south-east of France, an authorized demonstration brought together 1,800 people according to the police headquarters, 4,000 according to its organizers.