LAST UPDATE | 17 Feb
ISRAEL SAID IT has taken into custody 100 people at one of Gaza’s main hospitals after troops raided the facility, with fears mounting for patients and staff trapped inside. Further south in Rafah, 1.4 million people remain trapped and in fear of a ground invasion by Israeli troops.
The deadly bombardment of Gaza continued overnight with another 100 people killed in Israeli strikes, according to the health ministry in the region.
This afternoon, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh reiterated the group’s demand of a complete ceasefire in Gaza.
“The resistance will not agree to anything less than ceasefire, withdrawing of the occupying army from the Strip, lifting the oppressive blockade, and providing safe shelter for the displaced people,” he said.
But today Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that ceasefire talks were “not really promising” but hoped for a deal soon.
“I believe that we can see a deal happening very soon. Yet the pattern in the last few days is not really very promising,” he said at the Munich Security Conference.
“We will always remain optimistic, we will always remain pushing,” he added.
At least 120 patients and five medical teams are stuck without water, food and electricity in the Nasser hospital in Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Yunis, according to the health ministry.
Medical NGOs and the UN have condemned the assault on the hospital.
For weeks now, Israel has concentrated its military operations in Khan Yunis, the hometown of Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, the alleged architect of the 7 October attack that triggered the war.
This week, intense fighting has raged around the besieged Nasser hospital – one of the Palestinian territory’s last remaining major medical facilities that remains even partly operational.
Six patients died due to a lack of oxygen after the Israeli forces cut off the power, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
“New-born children are at a risk of dying in the next few hours,” the ministry warned today.
Israel’s army said its troops entered the hospital on Thursday, acting on what it said was “credible intelligence” that hostages seized in the 7 October attack had been held there and that the bodies of some may still be inside.
Today, the Israeli military said it had detained 100 people from the hospital suspected of “terrorist activity”.
The army also said it had seized weapons and retrieved “medications with the names of Israeli hostages” in the hospital.
A witness, who declined to be named for safety reasons, told AFP the Israeli forces had shot “at anyone who moved inside the hospital”.
Meanwhile, the head of the UN’s Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, Phillippe Lazzarini, said that Israel is trying to destroy the agency. Israeli officials have called for him to resign.
“Right now we are dealing with an expanded, concerted campaign by Israel aimed at destroying UNRWA,” he told the Swiss newspaper group Tamedia.
“It is a long-term political goal because it is believed that if the aid agency is abolished, the status of the Palestinian refugees will be resolved once and for all — and with it, the right of return. There is a much larger political goal behind this.
“Just look at the number of actions Israel is taking against UNRWA,” the main aid body in the Gaza Strip, he said.
He cited measures in the Israeli parliament, moves to remove the agency’s VAT exemption and orders for contractors at Israel’s port of Ashdod to “stop handling certain food deliveries for UNRWA”.
“And all these demands come from the government.”
Furthermore, Lazzarini says more than 150 UNRWA installations have been hit since the Gaza war began.
World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic slammed the operation yesterday, saying “more degradation to the hospital means more lives being lost”.
“Patients, health workers, and civilians who are seeking refuge in hospitals deserve safety and not a burial in those places of healing.”
Doctors Without Borders said its medics had been forced to flee and leave patients behind, with one employee unaccounted for and another detained by Israeli forces.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals for military purposes, which the Palestinian Islamist group has denied.
The UN Human Rights Office said Israel’s raid on the Nasser hospital appeared to be “part of a pattern of attacks by Israeli forces striking essential life-saving civilian infrastructure in Gaza, especially hospitals”.
Roughly 130 hostages are still believed to be in Gaza after Hamas’ 7 October attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians.
Dozens of the estimated 250 hostages seized during the attack were freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners during a week-long truce in November.
Israel says 30 of those still in Gaza are presumed dead.
At least 28,775 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza, according to the health ministry in the territory.
Further south, witnesses said explosions were heard at dawn in Rafah, where around 1.4 million displaced civilians are trapped after taking refuge in a makeshift encampment by the Egyptian border with dwindling supplies.
“They are killing us slowly,” said displaced Palestinian Mohammad Yaghi.
“We are dying slowly due to the scarcity of resources and the lack of medications and treatments.”
US President Joe Biden has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to carry out an offensive on Rafah without a plan to keep civilians safe – but Netanyahu has insisted he will push ahead with a “powerful” operation there to achieve “complete victory” over Hamas.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz said yesterday that Israel would coordinate with Egypt before launching its operation so as to “not hurt the Egyptian interests”.
Biden said Friday he held “extensive” conversations with Netanyahu about the need for a new truce in Gaza to bring the remaining hostages home.
“I feel very strongly about it – that there has to be a temporary ceasefire to get the prisoners out, to get the hostages out,” he said.
EU diplomacy chief Josep Borrell reiterated his position today.
“The EU asks Israel not to take military action in Rafah that would worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian situation,” he said.
The EU asks Israel not to take military action in Rafah that would worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian situation. All civilians must be protected in line w/ IHL and @CIJ_ICJ order respected.
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) February 17, 2024
We call again on Hamas for the immediate & unconditional release of all hostages https://t.co/LcHh6dI7Rf
Hamas’s armed wing has warned that hostages held in Gaza are “struggling to stay alive” as conditions deteriorate due to relentless Israeli bombardments.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Egypt was building a walled camp near the border to accommodate any Palestinians displaced from Gaza, citing Egyptian officials and security analysts.
Satellite images obtained by AFP show machinery building a wall along the highly secure frontier.
Egypt has repeatedly opposed any “forced displacement” from Gaza, warning it could jeopardise its 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
With the conflict now in its fifth month, tensions remain high across the region.
Hamas ally Hezbollah and its arch-foe Israel have been exchanging near-daily fire across the border since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on 7 October.
The leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed that Israel would pay “with blood” for civilians it has killed in Lebanon, warning his group had missiles that can reach anywhere in Israel.
With reporting from AFP
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