Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has once again categorically rejected the possibility of a ceasefire, as the conflict enters its second month.
On Monday, November 6, the UN Secretary General and the Turkish Foreign Minister implored Israel and its American ally to urgently initiate an “immediate” and “complete” ceasefire. “The nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis, it is a crisis of humanity”, affirmed the head of the UN, stressing that a “humanitarian ceasefire” becomes “more urgent every hour that passes.
“There will be no ceasefire, no general ceasefire, in Gaza, without the release of our hostages,” Benyamin Netanyahu responded Monday evening, in an interview with the American channel ABC News, believing that this would “hinder the war effort”. He raised the possibility of “tactical pauses” by the Israeli military, suggested by US President Joe Biden earlier in the day during an exchange. “An hour here, an hour there […] in order to allow goods, humanitarian products to enter, or individual hostages to leave.
Israel ‘will take responsibility for security’ in Gaza after war
He also affirmed during this interview that Israel will take “for an indefinite period, overall responsibility for security” in the Palestinian territory after the war, in order to prevent “the eruption of Hamas terror” once again.
Previously, Osama Hamdane, a senior official of the Palestinian Islamist movement in Lebanon, had affirmed that Hamas would remain in Gaza and would not accept “a Vichy government” in this territory which it has controlled since 2007. The most serious ground clashes Intense events are taking place in the now surrounded Gaza City, which according to Israel is home to the “center” of Hamas. The army also claimed to have cut the territory in two, between north and south. At least 30 Israeli soldiers, according to the army, have been killed since October 27.
Hamas uses “civilians as human shields”
According to the Hamas Ministry of Health published on Monday, Israeli bombings against the Palestinian territory have left 10,022 dead since October 7, mostly civilians including more than 4,000 children, a toll that no independent source has confirmed. able to verify.
On Monday, the UN once again castigated the Palestinian movement which uses “civilians as human shields and continues to fire rockets towards Israel indiscriminately”. In Israel, more than 1,400 people died in Israel according to the authorities, mainly civilians killed on October 7 during the Hamas attack, the deadliest in the country’s history. 240 people are still held hostage.
Rockets fired from Lebanon
Hamas announced that it had fired 16 rockets from southern Lebanon into northern Israel, claiming to have targeted southern Haifa, “in response” to Israeli bombings in Gaza. In a statement, the Ezzedine al-Qassam brigades affirmed that these shots came “in response to the massacres of the occupation and its aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip”. The Israeli army reported “around 30 shots” of projectiles “from Lebanon towards northern Israel”, adding that it responded to the locations of origin of the shots. In the evening, the official Lebanese agency Ani reported Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire on southern Lebanon.
“The nuclear option” unacceptable for the United States
The United States on Monday called a junior Israeli minister’s suggestion to drop an atomic bomb on Gaza “unacceptable” and urged all sides in the conflict to avoid “hateful rhetoric.” The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday suspended far-right minister Amichay Eliyahu from “all government meetings” until further notice. During an interview with Israeli radio Kol Barama, the minister replied “it’s an option” to a journalist who asked him if he recommended dropping “a kind of nuclear bomb” on Gaza to “kill all the world”.
American submarine
While the international community still fears an extension of the conflict, the American Department of Defense announced that a submarine had been deployed in the Middle East as a deterrent. This “Ohio” class submarine can carry up to 154 Tomahawk missiles with a range of 1,500 kilometers and 20 ballistic missiles with a range of 6,000 kilometers. Tension is high, particularly in the West Bank where more than 150 Palestinians have been killed by fire from Israeli soldiers or settlers in one month.
Jewish activists demand ceasefire in New York
A few hundred progressive American Jewish activists peacefully occupied the Statue of Liberty in New York on Monday to demand a cease-fire from Israel and an end to the “genocidal bombing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
Dressed in black t-shirts emblazoned with the slogans “Jews demand a ceasefire now” or “not in our name”, they displayed banners “the whole world is watching” and “Palestinians should be free” at their feet. of the base of the emblematic monument symbol of New York.