(The Age, 27/12/2023)
Gaza/Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped onto Gaza soil on vowing to keep up the fight against Hamas militants while Palestinians mourned more than 100 people who Gaza health officials said were killed overnight in Israeli airstrikes.
Netanyahu visited Israeli troops in the northern Gaza Strip just hours after one of the besieged enclave’s deadliest nights in the 11-week-old battle between Israel and Hamas.
Retaliating against Hamas for its deadly October 7 cross-border rampage, Israel has been under pressure from the United States to shift operations in Gaza to a lower-intensity phase and reduce civilian deaths.
But Netanyahu told MPs from his Likud party that the war was far from over and dismissed what he cast as media speculation his government might call a halt to the fighting. He said Israel would not succeed in freeing its remaining hostages without applying military pressure.
“We are expanding the fight in the coming days and this will be a long battle and it isn’t close to finished, he said.
During his Gaza visit he told soldiers: “We are not stopping. The war will continue until the end, until we finish it, no less”.
Israel and Hamas on Tuesday (AEDT) gave cool public receptions to an Egyptian proposal to end their bitter war. But the long-standing enemies stopped short of rejecting the plan altogether, raising the possibility of a new round of diplomacy to halt a devastating Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.
The Egyptian plan calls for a phased hostage release and the formation of a Palestinian government of experts to administer the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank, according to a senior Egyptian official and a European diplomat familiar with the proposal.
The Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the proposal, said the details were worked out with Qatar and presented to Israel, Hamas, the US and European governments. Egypt and Qatar both mediate between Israel and Hamas, while the US is Israel’s closest ally and a key power in the region.
On Tuesday (AEDT), the US military carried out retaliatory air strikes in Iraq after a drone attack by Iran-aligned militants on a US base in Erbil left one US service member in critical condition and wounded two others, officials said.
The airstrikes killed “a number of Kataib Hezbollah militants” and destroyed multiple facilities used by the group, the US military said.
“These strikes are intended to hold accountable those elements directly responsible for attacks on coalition forces in Iraq and Syria and degrade their ability to continue attacks. We will always protect our forces,” said General Michael Erik Kurilla, head of US Central Command, in a statement.
The US military has come under attack at least 100 times in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, usually with a mix of rockets and one-way attack drones.
At a funeral in Gaza, a line of Palestinian mourners touched the white shrouds wrapped around the bodies of at least 70 people who Palestinian health officials said were killed by an airstrike that hit Maghazi in the centre of the strip.
One man, Ibrahim Youssef, said his wife and four children, including a four-month-old baby, were trapped under the rubble of the house where they were staying in Maghazi.
“What did they do wrong?” he asked. “Were there resistance fighters here?”
Palestinian media said Israel had stepped up its air and ground shelling in central Gaza.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said many of those killed at Maghazi were women and children. Eight others were killed as Israeli planes and tanks struck houses and roads in nearby al-Bureij and al-Nusseirat, health officials said.
Medics said an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza killed 23, bringing total Palestinian fatalities overnight to more than 100.
Pope Francis said in a Christmas message that children dying in wars, including in Gaza, were the “little Jesuses of today” and that Israeli strikes were reaping an “appalling harvest” of innocent civilians.
The Israeli army said it was reviewing the report of a Maghazi incident and was committed to minimising harm to civilians. Israel says Hamas operates in densely populated areas and uses civilians as human shields, which Hamas denies.
At the weekend, Israel’s military chief of staff said his forces had largely achieved operational control in the north of Gaza and would expand operations further in the south.
But residents say fighting has only intensified in northern districts.
In Gaza, Hamas and smaller militant ally Islamic Jihad, both sworn to Israel’s destruction, are believed to be holding more than 100 hostages from among 240 they captured during their October 7 rampage through Israeli towns, when they killed 1200 people.
Since then, Israel has laid much of the narrow strip to waste. Nearly 20,700 Gazans have been killed, including 250 in the last 24 hours, according to authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza.
Diplomatic efforts, mediated by Egypt and Qatar, on a new truce to free the remaining hostages held in Gaza have yielded little public progress.
Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad have rejected an Egyptian proposal, made in Cairo talks, that they relinquish power in the Gaza Strip in return for a permanent ceasefire, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters on Monday.
The militant groups have said they would not discuss any release of hostages unless Israel ends its war in Gaza, while the Israelis say they are willing to discuss only a pause in fighting.
Reuters