UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is expected this Saturday March 23 in Egypt on the border with the Gaza Strip, against a backdrop of growing concerns about the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory and an upcoming Israeli ground offensive in the overpopulated city from Rafah.
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After five and a half months of war between Israel and the Hamas terrorist movement in the Gaza Strip, on the verge of famine, Antonio Guterres
“should repeat his calls for a humanitarian ceasefire”
in Gaza, according to his spokesperson Deputy Farhan Haq.
Guterres visits the “Egyptian side” of Rafah
The UN boss is due to meet humanitarian workers on the
“Egyptian side”
of Rafah, a town in Gaza backed by the border where 1.5 million Palestinians are crowded, hence the fears for the population in the event of a land operation on site.
The question was at the heart of exchanges on Friday in Tel Aviv between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken, who disagree on how to weaken Hamas militarily.
“I said that we did not have the possibility of defeating Hamas without entering Rafah and without eliminating the battalions that remain there. I told him that I hoped to do it with the support of the United States, but if necessary, we will do it alone
,” said Benjamin Netanyahu after the meeting with the American Secretary of State.
The latter affirmed that such an operation
“risks killing more civilians (...), further isolating Israel globally and endangering its long-term security”
.
“We have the same objectives as Israel: the defeat of Hamas. But a major ground operation in Rafah is not the way to achieve this
,” he added on X, specifying that he would meet Israeli officials in Washington next week to discuss it.
Operations continue at al-Shifa hospital
Clashes show no respite in this besieged territory, notably in and around the al-Shifa hospital in the northern city of Gaza, where the Israeli army claimed on Saturday to have killed more than 170 Palestinian fighters and arrested hundreds of suspects since the start of the week.
Combat planes also struck around thirty
“terrorist targets”
across the Gaza Strip on Friday.
Early Saturday, the Hamas health ministry reported 67 deaths overnight and evening across the territory.
In Rafah (south), a nighttime bombing of a house killed a grandmother, Nadia Kawareh, 65, and four of her grandchildren aged between 3 and 12, according to relatives and the Hamas health ministry. which also reported 14 injured.
Vote on “immediate ceasefire” resolution scheduled for Monday
Meanwhile at the UN, a draft Security Council resolution, presented by the United States, on an "immediate ceasefire", was not adopted on Friday due to Russian and Chinese vetoes.
Since the start of the war, the United States had opposed the use of the term “ceasefire” in UN resolutions, blocking three texts to this effect.
They finally decided to put to the vote this new text which mentioned
“the need for an immediate and lasting ceasefire”
.
But Russia and China criticized ambiguous wording that did not directly call for silencing the guns.
Russian Ambassador Vassili Nebenzia notably denounced the
“hypocritical spectacle”
of the United States while
“Gaza has almost been erased from the map”
.
A new vote on a new draft resolution demanding an “immediate”
ceasefire
, prepared by eight of the ten non-permanent members of the Council, is scheduled for Monday.
More than 32,000 dead in the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas
The war broke out on October 7 when Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza carried out an unprecedented attack in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of at least 1,160 people, mainly civilians, according to a count by the AFP established from official Israeli data.
According to Israel, around 250 people have been kidnapped and 130 of them are still hostages in Gaza, of whom 33 are believed to have died.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to destroy What is Hamas, the Islamist movement behind “Israeli September 11”?
since 2007, which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union.
His army launched an offensive which left 32,070 dead in Gaza, according to the latest report from the Islamist movement's Ministry of Health.
Israel has imposed a complete siege on Palestinian territory since the start of the war and strictly controls aid that arrives mainly from Egypt via Rafah.
However, these controls have the effect, according to the UN, of reducing the number of trucks entering the territory.