ISRAEL HAS CONTINUED to bomb the Gaza Strip in Palestine today as the conflict enters its 10th month, with fighting raging across the territory and fresh diplomatic efforts underway to negotiate a ceasefire and the release of captives.
Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired another 20 rockets at northern Israel, leaving one person injured there, the latest cross-border attacks launched in solidarity with Gaza’s Palestinian militant group Hamas.
A top Hamas official has told the AFP news agency that the Palestinian militants are ready to discuss a hostage deal and an end to the fighting without a “complete and permanent ceasefire”.
Hamas had required that Israel “agree to a complete and permanent ceasefire” to start talks on a hostage-swap and ending the nine month old war, the official said, adding that “this step was by-passed, as the (Qatari) mediators pledged that as long as the prisoner negotiations continued, the ceasefire would continue.”
Israel’s siege, bombardment and invasion of Gaza has killed at least 38,153 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the territory’s health ministry.
The war has uprooted 90% of Gaza’s population, left almost 500,000 people enduring “catastrophic” hunger and shuttered most hospitals, UN agencies say.
“The situation is very difficult,” said Dr Muhammad Salha, acting director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia.
“There is no fuel in the hospital to work. We only operate the small generator for two hours a day and we have postponed many scheduled operations due to the lack of fuel.”
The fighting and bombardment in besieged Gaza has raged on unabated today, with medics and emergency services in the territory reporting yet more deaths in several strikes.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said the bodies of six people including two children were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah.
And paramedics said six people were killed in one strike on a house in Gaza City and three in another elsewhere in Gaza’s largest urban area.
An AFP correspondent said Israeli drones were firing in Gaza City’s Shujaiya district, which has been largely evacuated and rocked by intense battles for two weeks.
The civil defence agency in Gaza said a strike today on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians killed at least four people, the second such Israeli attack in two days.
The Israeli military, which has long accused Palestinian militants of using schools and other civilian infrastructure, confirmed the strike “in the area of the school” in Gaza City.
It said in a statement the school complex was used as a militant hideout and housed “a Hamas weapons manufacturing facility”.
The civil defence agency said Ihab al-Ghusain, the Hamas government’s deputy labour minister, was among those killed in the strike on the Holy Family school.
The strike came a day after a UN-run school in the central Nuseirat refugee camp was hit, in an attack that the Gaza health ministry said killed 16 people and drew condemnation from the United Nations. Israel said militants were hiding there.
Hamas has repeatedly denied Israeli accusations that militants were hiding in civilian infrastructure.
“Another day. Another month. another school hit,” wrote UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini in a social media post.
“The school, in the Middle Areas, was home to nearly 2,000 internally displaced, dozens of casualties were reported,” he said.
UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma told AFP that 190 – or more than half – of the agency’s facilities in Gaza have been hit, “some more than once”, since the war began with Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.
“When the war started we closed the schools and they became shelters,” she said.
Up to Thursday, 194 UNRWA workers had been killed, Touma added.
The Israeli army said that in Shujaiya, its “troops eliminated several terrorists, dismantled terror infrastructure sites and located numerous weapons, including explosive devices, AK-47 rifles, machine guns and pistols”.
It also said 30 “terrorists” had been killed in far-southern Rafah over the past day and that Israeli forces had carried out an operation in nearby Khan Yunis where Hamas had taken up position in a municipality building.
#Gaza
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) July 7, 2024
Another day.
Another month.
Another school hit.
Once again, @UNRWA school hit by the Israeli Forces.
The school, in the Middle Areas, was home to nearly 2,000 internally displaced, dozens of casualties were reported.
Since the war began, nine months ago today:
-…
Egypt’s Al-Qahera News reported that Cairo was “hosting Israeli and American delegations to discuss the outstanding points” for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, citing an unnamed high-level official source.
Mediators were in contact with Hamas amid “intensive Egyptian meetings this week with all parties to push efforts” for a truce, said the news report late Saturday, without giving further details or dates.
Israel has also said it would send a delegation in the coming days to continue talks with Qatari mediators, even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman said on Friday that “gaps” remained with Hamas.
US President Joe Biden announced a plan in late May that included an initial six-week truce and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
Talks subsequently stalled, but a US official said on Thursday that a new proposal from Hamas “moves the process forward and may provide the basis for closing the deal”.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP that the group’s new ideas had been “conveyed by the mediators to the American side, which welcomed them and passed them on to the Israeli side”, adding that “now the ball is in the Israeli court”.
Amid the conflict in Gaza, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged almost daily cross-border fire and the attacks and rhetoric have escalated over the past month, leading to fears of a full-scale war.
The strikes have forced people to flee from the areas along the border in both Israel and Lebanon.
While the exchanges have been largely restricted to the border areas, Israel has repeatedly struck deep inside eastern Lebanon, including yesterday in a strike that killed a Hezbollah operative.
Early this morning, air raid sirens again sounded across northern Israel and the army then reported that 20 rockets were fired, some of which were intercepted by air defence systems.
One person was wounded by shrapnel in Kfar Zeitim near Tiberias, around 30 kilometres inside Israel, local police said, adding they were in stable condition.
Hezbollah said that “in response to the attack and assassination that the Israeli enemy carried out”, it had targeted “one of the main bases” in northern Israel, west of Tiberias, with “dozens of Katyusha rockets”.
Meanwhile, Israel has seen a “Day Of Disruption” that started at 6:29 am, the moment that Hamas militants launched the first rockets toward Israel in October.
Protesters blocked main roads and demonstrated outside of the homes of members of Israel’s parliament.
Near the border with Gaza, Israeli protestors released 1,500 black and yellow balloons to symbolise those who were killed and abducted.
Hannah Golan said she came to protest the “devastating abandonment of our communities by our government”.
She added: “It’s nine months today, to this black day, and still nobody in our government takes responsibility.”
About 120 hostages remain captive after more than 100 hostages were released as part of a November ceasefire deal.
Israel has already concluded that more than 40 of the remaining hostages are dead, and fears spread the number may grow as the war drags on.
With reporting from AFP and Press Association
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