a vote by the UN Security Council on a ceasefire planned for this Friday – L’Express

Intense urban fighting rages this Friday, December 8 in and around the largest cities in the Gaza Strip. On the spot, Israeli soldiers, supported by airstrikes, confronted Hamas fighters on Thursday in Khan Younes, the largest city in the south which has become the epicenter of the war, as well as in the north, in the city of Gaza and the neighboring sector of Jabaliya. At the same time, the United States is asking Israel to further protect civilians in Gaza.

⇒ Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer killed in Gaza strike

⇒ US urges Israel to do more to protect civilians

⇒ UN Security Council rules on call for “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza

Under pressure from the Secretary General, the UN Security Council must decide this Friday on a call for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip. A vote with an uncertain outcome in a tense diplomatic context.

In a letter addressed Wednesday to Council members, Antonio Guterres explicitly invoked Article 99 of the United Nations Charter, which allows the Secretary-General to “draw the attention of the Council” to a matter that “could endanger the maintenance of international peace and security. A first in decades.

“With the constant bombing by the Israeli armed forces, and with no shelter or basic survival, I expect a total breakdown of law and order soon due to the desperate conditions, which would make it impossible to provide aid. even limited humanitarian aid” in Gaza, he wrote in this letter. “We hope that the Security Council will take his appeal into account,” commented its spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.

Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, one of the leaders of a young generation of Gaza authors who took the gamble of writing in English to tell their story, was killed in an Israeli strike, his relatives announced in the night of Thursday to Friday.

“The assassination of Refaat is tragic, painful and scandalous. It is an immense loss,” his friend Ahmed Alnaouq commented on X (ex-Twitter). “My heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat Alareer was killed along with his family a few minutes ago […] I can not believe it. We each loved picking strawberries together,” his friend, the Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha, wrote on Facebook.

Professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he notably taught Shakespeare, Refaat Alareer was one of the co-founders of the “We are not numbers” project, pairing authors from Gaza to “mentors” abroad who help them write stories in English about their reality. He had edited the book Gaza writes backchronicles of life in Gaza by young Palestinian authors, and published Gaza unsilencednot translated into French.

Israeli television channels broadcast videos on Thursday showing dozens of Palestinians in their underwear, blindfolded, under the guard of Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip, provoking heated controversy on social networks.

Among the arrested men, witnesses, journalists and relatives recognized reporter Diaa Al-Kahlout, the media’s Gaza correspondent The New Arab. This London-based news site reported on X “that the Israeli occupation has arrested dozens of Gazans, including the correspondent of The New Arab in the Gaza Strip.

In videos and photos broadcast Thursday evening at prime time by Israeli television, and which have gone viral on social networks, we see men lined up, sitting on their knees, heads bowed, all dressed in underwear in the heart of a town.

Asked about these images, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari declared Thursday evening that “in Shujaiya (Editor’s note: district of Gaza City) and Jabaliya (in the north of the Gaza Strip), terrorists go in and out of tunnels and houses. “We are investigating and verifying who is linked to Hamas and who is not,” while Israeli soldiers hunt down “terrorists who are still hiding in (the) tunnels like cowards,” he added during a press briefing.

US President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that it was essential to protect civilians. “The president emphasized the absolute need to protect civilians and separate the civilian population from Hamas, including through corridors allowing people to move safely out of demarcated combat zones,” the White House said in a press release.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also urged Israel to do more to allow the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip and protect civilians, in an appeal to Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer , according to a diplomatic source.

“It remains imperative that Israel make the protection of civilians a priority,” insisted Antony Blinken during a joint press conference with David Cameron, the head of British diplomacy visiting Washington. “There remains a gap between […] the intention to protect civilians and the concrete results we see on the ground,” he added, in one of the most explicit criticisms delivered by the Biden administration.