PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, Jan 23 — Combat raged in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip as we speak, towards a backdrop of negotiations geared toward bringing a few pause in preventing between Israel and Hamas in the absence of a long-term peace plan.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society mentioned early as we speak that Israeli forces had focused its headquarters in Khan Yunis “with artillery shelling on the fourth flooring, coinciding with intense gunfire from Israeli drones, ensuing in accidents amongst internally displaced people who sought security on our premises”.
The UN humanitarian company OCHA reported that “floor operations, preventing and assaults intensified” over the previous day round the principle southern metropolis, with the Israeli military saying its forces had carried out a number of raids and brought management of Hamas command centres there.
The fierce preventing got here as a White House official was due in the area for talks geared toward securing extra hostage releases, and as US media reported a new Israeli proposal for a deal that will contain a two-month pause in preventing.
UN businesses and support teams have sounded the alarm in regards to the rising risk of illness and famine in Gaza, the place 1.7 million individuals are estimated to have been displaced from their properties.
Abu Iyad, his belongings piled on a donkey-drawn cart, instructed eNM yesterday that he was transferring for the seventh time, fleeing Khan Yunis for Rafah on the Egyptian border, the place a whole bunch of 1000’s of displaced Palestinians have settled, many in makeshift tents.
“I’m heading to the unknown,” he mentioned. “They instructed us to go to Rafah — the place to go in Rafah? Is there any area left?”
Hostage talks
The conflict in the Palestinian territory broke out with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 assaults, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 folks in Israel, largely civilians, in accordance with an eNM tally based mostly on official Israeli figures.
In response, Israel has carried out a relentless offensive that has killed at the least 25,295 folks in Gaza, round 70 per cent of them girls, kids and adolescents, in accordance with Gaza’s well being ministry.
The Hamas assault additionally noticed about 250 hostages seized, and Israel says round 132 stay in Gaza. That quantity contains the our bodies of at the least 28 useless hostages, in accordance with an eNM tally based mostly on Israeli information.
Relatives of the captives stormed a parliamentary committee assembly yesterday demanding pressing motion.
“You sit right here whereas our kids are dying over there,” yelled Gilad Korngold, father of hostage Tal Shoham, an eNM correspondent reported.
US information outlet Axios reported final evening that Israel had proposed to Hamas, by way of Qatari and Egyptian mediators, a new deal to free all of the hostages.
The report, citing unnamed Israeli officers, mentioned the proposed deal can be carried out in a number of levels, and would additionally contain the discharge of an undetermined variety of Palestinian prisoners.
The plan was anticipated to take about two months to finish.
The proposal doesn’t embrace guarantees to finish the conflict, however it could contain Israeli troops lowering their presence in main cities in Gaza and progressively permitting residents to return to the territory’s devastated north, the Axios report mentioned.
News of the proposal comes as US media mentioned the White House’s coordinator for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, was anticipated in Egypt and Qatar for conferences geared toward securing a new hostage change deal.
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel, nevertheless, mentioned that Washington nonetheless believed “a two-state answer, a creation of a Palestinian state, is the one path that will get us out of this countless cycle of violence”.
An image taken from Rafah reveals smoke billowing over Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip throughout Israeli bombardment on January 22, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. — eNM pic
Two-state answer
Netanyahu has steadfastly rejected requires the creation of a Palestinian state, saying Israel should preserve “safety management over all of the territory west of the Jordan” River, an space that features all the Palestinian territories.
EU international ministers yesterday pressed Israel to vary its thoughts at conferences in Brussels with the highest diplomats from the 2 fighters and key Arab states.
“The two-state answer is the one answer, and even those that don’t need to learn about it haven’t but give you every other different,” mentioned German international minister Annalena Baerbock.
EU international coverage chief Josep Borrell mentioned that extra demise and destruction in Gaza “won’t assist to defeat Hamas or the ideology”, nor would it not make Israel safer.
At the gathering, Israeli international minister Israel Katz ignored questions from journalists over a future two-state answer and mentioned his nation was centered on returning the hostages and making certain its safety.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, who was additionally in attendance, mentioned Israel’s rejection of “the two-state answer is dooming the way forward for the area to extra conflicts”.
Yemen strikes
The conflict in Gaza has spurred fears of a wider escalation, with a surge in violence involving Iran-backed Hamas allies throughout the area.
Yemen’s Huthi rebels introduced as we speak that they’d fired missiles at a US navy ship in the Gulf of Aden close to the Red Sea, however a US defence official mentioned no assault had taken place.
The United States and Britain later introduced a recent spherical of strikes on Huthi targets in response to the rebels’ continued assaults on Red Sea delivery.
The US Central Command mentioned in a press release that the targets of the strikes “included missile techniques and launchers, air defence techniques, radars, and deeply buried weapons storage services”. — eNM
