Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: SAID KHATIB / AFP 11:35 a.m., February 3, 2024
On the 118th day of the conflict, the city of Rafah was hit by intense Israeli strikes, and at least 100 people died during the night from Friday to Saturday, according to Hamas. At the same time, Qatar, Egypt and the United States are trying to negotiate a second truce.
The town of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians threatened by the war in Gaza have taken refuge, is the scene of intense Israeli strikes on Saturday at a time when diplomacy is trying to impose a new truce against a backdrop of regional conflagration. Shortly after midnight, an AFP journalist heard powerful strikes in this town bordering Egypt, at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip. The Hamas health ministry announced the deaths of at least 100 civilians in the evening and night, including 14 early Saturday in strikes on two residences in Rafah.
In recent weeks, Israeli operations have been concentrated in the neighboring town of Khan Younes, the second largest in the territory where, according to the Israeli army, the local command of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas is hiding. In the rain, thousands of residents continued to flee Israeli fighting and bombardments by car, on foot, by bicycle or on donkey carts. The displaced are trying to protect themselves in Rafah, where there are now more than 1.3 million of the approximately 2.4 million inhabitants of the micro-territory threatened in the middle of winter by famine and epidemics, according to the UN.
While the war knows no respite, diplomacy is trying to negotiate a second truce, longer than that of a week, negotiated under the aegis of Qatar, Egypt and the United States and which allowed at the end of November the release of around a hundred Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Information to remember:
The city of Rafah has been the scene of intense Israeli strikes since Friday
At least 100 people dead, Hamas says
Hamas announced a new death toll of 27,238
Diplomacy attempts to negotiate a second truce, under the aegis of Qatar, Egypt and the United States
Hamas announces new death toll of 27,238
The Hamas Ministry of Health announced on Saturday a death toll of 27,238 people, the majority women, children and adolescents, in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Towards a second truce?
The leader of Hamas, Ismaïl Haniyeh, based in Qatar, is still expected in Egypt to discuss a proposal developed during a meeting at the end of January in Paris between the head of the CIA, William Burns, and Egyptian officials , Israelis and Qataris. According to a Hamas source, the proposal involves three phases, the first of which provides for a six-week truce during which Israel will have to release 200 to 300 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 35 to 40 hostages held in Gaza, and 200 to 300 trucks of aid will be able to enter the territory every day.
In recent days, Qatar reported "first" signs of support for the truce from Hamas, but the Palestinian Islamist movement then claimed to have not yet made a decision on this proposal, wishing for a cease-fire. fire and not another break. The proposed pause in fighting was “approved by the Israeli side,” Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said this week.
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But Israel continues to affirm that it will only definitively end its offensive in Gaza once the Islamist movement is "eliminated", the hostages released and after having received guarantees on the future security of its territory. The war was sparked by an unprecedented attack by Hamas commandos from the neighboring Gaza Strip on Israeli soil, which killed more than 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count from official Israeli data.
In response to the attack, Israel vowed to "annihilate" Hamas, which took power in Gaza in 2007, and launched a military offensive which left 27,131 people dead, the vast majority civilians, according to a latest report. of the Hamas Ministry of Health.
Blinken and Séjourné tours
The truce project must also be at the heart of a new tour of the Middle East by American Secretary of State Antony Blinken, starting on Sunday, and which will take him to Qatar, Egypt, Israel and the occupied West Bank. and in Saudi Arabia. During the night, Antony Blinken said he wanted to work during this tour “for lasting peace in the region, including lasting security for Israelis and Palestinians alike”.
The new French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjourné, begins his first tour in the region on Saturday which will take him to Egypt, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon. This tour aims to "work for a ceasefire and the release of hostages" and "convince to reopen a political perspective" based on the two-state solution, a viable State of Palestine alongside Israel, said the spokesperson for the ministry, Christophe Lemoine.
Antony Blinken and Stéphane Séjourné will land in a Middle East in dire straits with the extension of the war in Gaza into a broader conflict between Israel and its allies on the one hand and the "axis of resistance" led by by Iran and affiliated movements such as, in addition to Palestinian Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi militias and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The United States carried out overnight strikes against elite Iranian forces and pro-Iranian groups in Iraq and Syria, in retaliation for an attack on Sunday in Jordan that killed three American soldiers and attributed by Washington to groups supported by Iran.
A total of 85 targets on seven different sites (three in Iraq and four in Syria) were targeted according to Washington. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), at least 18 pro-Iranian fighters were killed in eastern Syria alone. From Yemen, Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for firing ballistic missiles towards southern Israel. The Israeli army, for its part, assured that it had intercepted a missile which was approaching its territory in the Red Sea.