LAST UPDATE | 10 Dec 2023
MEDIATION EFFORTS ARE continuing to secure a new Gaza ceasefire despite ongoing Israeli bombardment that is “narrowing the window” for a successful outcome, Qatar’s prime minister has said.
“Our efforts as the state of Qatar along with our partners are continuing. We are not going to give up,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told the Doha Forum more than two months into the Israel-Hamas war.
Qatar was a key mediator in negotiations that resulted in a seven-day truce, which saw scores of Israeli hostages exchanged for Palestinians prisoners and humanitarian aid, until it ended at the start of the month.
“We are going to continue, we are committed to have hostages released, but we are also committed to stop the war,” the Qatari premier said.
But, he added, “we are not seeing the same willingness from both parties” and “the continuation of the bombardment is just narrowing this window for us”.
Addressing the Doha Forum earlier, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Security Council was “paralysed by geostrategic divisions” that were undermining solutions to the conflict.
The body’s “authority and credibility were severely undermined” by its delayed response to the war, he said two days after a US veto prevented a resolution calling for a Gaza ceasefire.
Munitions
Heavy fighting has raged in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis as Israel pressed ahead with its offensive after the US blocked the latest international efforts to halt the fighting and rushed more munitions to its ally.
Israel has faced rising international outrage and calls for a ceasefire after the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians and the displacement of nearly 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people within the besieged territory, where UN agencies say there is no safe place to flee.
But the United States has lent vital support to the offensive once again in recent days by vetoing United Nations Security Council efforts to end the fighting that enjoyed wide international support, and by pushing through an emergency sale of over 100 million dollars worth of tank ammunition to Israel.
The US has pledged unwavering support for Israel’s goal of crushing Hamas’s military and governing abilities in order to prevent any repeat of the October 7 attack that triggered the war.
Hamas and other Palestinian militants stormed into southern Israel that day, killing 1,200 people and capturing 240, over 100 of whom were released during a week-long ceasefire late last month.
In response to the attack, Israel launched a devastating air and ground war that has killed thousands of Palestinians, mostly civilians, and forced some 1.9 million people to flee their homes, according to UN agencies.
With only a trickle of aid allowed in, and delivery rendered impossible in much of the territory, Palestinians face severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods.
Israeli forces continue to face heavy resistance, even in northern Gaza, where entire neighbourhoods have been flattened by air strikes and where troops have been operating for over six weeks.
Mass expulsion
The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees has accused Israel of laying the groundwork for the mass expulsion of Gazans across the territory’s border into Egypt.
More than two months of deadly war between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the militant group’s October 7 attacks, have displaced most of Gaza’s population, but Palestinians are largely barred from leaving the narrow besieged territory.
In an opinion piece published yesterday in the Los Angeles Times, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini pointed to the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the increasing concentration near the border of displaced civilians who fled the fighting, first in the north and then further south.
“The United Nations and several member states, including the US, have firmly rejected forcibly displacing Gazans out of the Gaza Strip,” Lazzarini said.
“But the developments we are witnessing point to attempts to move Palestinians into Egypt, regardless of whether they stay there or are resettled elsewhere.”
The widespread destruction in the Palestinian territory’s north and the resulting displacements were “the first stage of such a scenario”, he added, while forcing civilians from the southern city of Khan Yunis closer to the border was the next.
“If this path continues, leading to what many are already calling a second Nakba, Gaza will not be a land for Palestinians anymore,” Lazzarini said, using the Arabic term for the exodus or forced displacement of 760,000 Palestinians during the war that coincided with Israel’s creation in 1948.
A spokesperson for the Israeli defence ministry office responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lazzarini’s accusation.
When asked about the possibility of evacuating people into Egypt last week, a government spokesman said Israel was “focusing on getting civilians out of harm’s way inside the Gaza Strip”.
A small number of Gazans have been allowed to cross into Egypt for medical treatment, and some foreign nationals trapped in the territory at the outset of the war were also allowed to evacuate by way of the Rafah crossing — Gaza’s only border not under Israeli control.
‘It doesn’t stop’
In Khan Younis, where ground forces moved in earlier this month, residents said they heard constant gunfire and explosions through the night as warplanes bombarded areas in and around the southern city, Gaza’s second largest.
“It doesn’t stop,” said Radwa Abu Frayeh, who lives close to the European Hospital in Khan Younis. “There’s bombing, and then the ambulances head out to bring back victims.”
Israel ordered the evacuation of the northern third of the territory, including Gaza City, early in the war, but tens of thousands of people are believed to have remained there, fearing that the south would be no safer or that they would never be allowed to return to their homes.
Blindfolded
In recent days, videos and photos have emerged showing the detention of dozens of men who were stripped to their underwear, bound and blindfolded. The Israeli military says it is detaining people as it searches for remaining pockets of Hamas fighters.
Israel’s Channel 13 TV broadcast footage showing dozens of detainees stripped to their underwear with their hands in the air.
Several held assault rifles above their heads, and one man could be seen slowly walking forward and placing a gun on the ground before returning to the group. Israeli media pointed to such scenes as evidence that Hamas was collapsing in the north.
Men from a separate group of detainees who were released yesterday told The Associated Press they had been beaten and denied food and water.
Osama Oula said Israeli troops had ordered him and others out of a building in Gaza City before bounding their hands with zip ties, beating them for several days and giving them little water to drink.
Ahmad Nimr Salman showed his hands, marked and swollen from the zip ties.
He said the troops asked if they were with Hamas. “We say ‘no,’ then they would slap us or kick us,” he said. He added that his 17-year-old son Amjad is still held by the troops.
The group was released after five days and told to walk south. Ten freed detainees arrived at a hospital in Deir al-Balah on Saturday after flagging down an ambulance. The Israeli military had no comment when asked about the alleged abuse.
With the war in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,700, the majority women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Israel’s military says 97 of its soldiers have died in the ground offensive. Palestinians militants have also continued firing rockets into Israel.
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