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Rafah, Gaza Strip: Fierce fighting continues to claim lives
Photo: Mohammed Abed / AFP
Unusual move: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has made a rare direct appeal to the Islamist Hamas to "quickly" agree to an agreement with Israel on the release of hostages and a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip after four months of war. The Palestinian Authority is calling on Hamas to conclude a corresponding agreement "quickly to protect our Palestinian people from another catastrophe, no less dangerous than the Nakba in 1948," Abbas said on Wednesday.
The Palestinians use Nakba to describe the flight and expulsion of an estimated 760,000 people in the wake of the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent first Arab-Israeli war.
So far, the radical Islamic Hamas rules the Gaza Strip and Palestinian President Abbas's Fatah Autonomy Authority, based in Ramallah, administers the West Bank. The USA, as one of the autonomous authority's most important donors, supports the creation of an independent Palestinian state that coexists peacefully alongside Israel. Washington is demanding that the autonomous authority led by Abbas gradually take control of the Gaza Strip, but as a prerequisite for this to initiate reforms.
Last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised Abbas for his "determination" in reforming his agency "so that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank can be reunited under Palestinian leadership."
Apparently many dead and injured in fighting
Meanwhile, 103 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks and fighting in the Gaza Strip within 24 hours, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority in Gaza. The authorities said on Wednesday that another 145 people were injured. Since the war began on October 7th, a total of 28,576 residents of the coastal strip have been killed and 68,291 injured. The figures cannot be independently verified, but are considered credible by international organizations.
Particularly fierce fighting has been raging in the south of the Gaza Strip for weeks. Israel suspects the leadership of the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas in an underground tunnel network. It is also assumed that hostages are being held there. On Monday night, Israeli soldiers freed two men kidnapped from Israel in the town of Rafah, near the Egyptian border. Dozens of Palestinians were killed during the rescue operation, according to the Hamas health authority.
The war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel's history, carried out by terrorists from Hamas and other extremist Palestinian organizations on October 7th in Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip. They murdered more than 1,200 people and abducted 250 others to the coastal strip. Israel then launched a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.
eru/dpa/AFP