In a video broadcast on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Pessar, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised the Israelis to increase “military pressure” on Hamas “in the coming days. “We will deal it new hard blows – and it will happen soon […] this is the only way to free our hostages and achieve our victory,” he declared this Sunday, April 21, without directly mentioning an assault on the overpopulated town of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, which he has repeatedly said he is determined to launch.
The Israeli army continues to bomb this town where nearly 1.5 million Palestinians are crowded together, on the border with Egypt. According to Gaza Civil Defense, Israeli strikes on two houses in Rafah left at least 16 people dead this Sunday. The Hamas Ministry of Health counted 48 deaths in 24 hours in the territory – without these figures cannot be verified from independent sources.
Like every day, survivors searched the rubble this Sunday after the panicked scenes of the night. “We were sleeping and suddenly we were woken up by the nightmare of an explosion. The ceiling fell on the children,” said 35-year-old Umm Hassan Kloub, whose house sheltered displaced families. “Every moment we live in terror. We don’t know if we are going to live or die,” she added. On Friday, the G7 countries expressed their opposition to “a large-scale military operation in Rafah”, while denouncing the “unacceptable number of civilians” killed in Gaza.
At the same time, the Civil Defense of the Gaza Strip claimed that at least 50 bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Khan Younes had been exhumed in a hospital in the city. Some of the bodies found “were stripped of their clothes, which certainly indicates that they were arrested, tortured and subjected to ill-treatment by the Israeli occupying army,” added Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson. word of Civil Defense, reports AFP.
Deadly days in the West Bank
In the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel since 1967, recent days have been punctuated by violence. Two young Palestinians were killed this Sunday by Israeli soldiers, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The army claimed that they had tried to stab and open fire on soldiers near the village of Beit Einoun, in the south of this Palestinian territory. The day before, an Israeli raid in the Nour-Shams camp, near Tulkarem, left 14 dead, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Tension sharply rose in the Middle East on April 13, when Iran carried out an unprecedented attack against Israel, its enemy since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, with hundreds of drones and missiles, the vast majority of which were destroyed. intercepted. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, praised this Sunday the “successes” of the armed forces, which according to him illustrate the “greatness” of Iran on the international scene.
Israel had promised to retaliate while Iran said it had acted in “self-defense” after the deadly attack, attributed to Israel, which destroyed its consulate in Damascus on April 1. On Friday, an attack blamed on Israel hit central Iran, without causing any casualties or damage according to the authorities. The Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, put this operation into perspective on Saturday, which he compared to child’s play.
New American aid
Engaged in a standoff with Iran, its sworn enemy, and in full offensive against the Islamist movement, ally of Tehran, Israel received new support on Saturday from the United States, where the House of Representatives approved military aid of 13 billion dollars. For Hamas, Washington thus gave Israel the “green light” to continue “aggressing” the Palestinians.
While negotiations for a truce are stalling, Israeli public opinion is forcefully demanding from its leaders an agreement that would allow the release of the hostages. Demonstrators once again demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday evening in Tel Aviv. “We need Bibi to go because he is a disaster for Israel, economically and above all for the security of the population,” said one of them, Benni Tirosh.