To better understand the latest events in the conflict between the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Israel, 20 minutes takes stock every evening. Between the strong declarations, the diplomatic advances or the dramatic results of the fighting, here are the main points of the day.
The fact of the day
The Israeli army intensely bombarded the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing nearly 80 Palestinians according to Hamas, and its soldiers continue to wage fierce battles against the Islamist movement in the town of Khan Younes, which has become the epicenter of the battle. In the early hours of Friday, witnesses reported heavy gunfire and airstrikes in this town in the south of the Gaza Strip, where Israel believes many members of the Hamas leadership are hiding.
Under cover from the air force and navy, Israeli ground troops advanced from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, the army said. They entered Palestinian territory on October 27, from southern Israel. The army reports fighting and bombings in northern Gaza, where “several terrorists were killed”.
The number of the day
20,000. This is the number of babies born “in hell” in the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian territory, UNICEF reported on Friday. “That represents one baby born every 10 minutes in this terrible conflict,” said Tess Ingram, spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), at a press conference in Geneva.
Returning from Gaza, the target of incessant Israeli bombardments after the Hamas attack on October 7, she recounted several cases testifying to the nightmarish situation there for pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and their infants. “Becoming a mother should be a celebration. In Gaza, this amounts to giving birth to a child in hell,” summarized Tess Ingram, for whom this “beggars belief.”
Sentence of the day
“We obviously see things differently”
It is the work of the spokesperson for the American National Security Council, John Kirby. It symbolizes the current frictions between the United States and Israel. Joe Biden spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, the White House announced, their first conversation since December 23. The American president and the Israeli Prime Minister, whose personal relationship is notoriously difficult, discussed “the latest events in Gaza and Israel”, according to the American executive, which promises to publish a report of the exchange later.
Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday rejected a recurring request from Joe Biden, namely the coexistence, in the future, of the State of Israel with a Palestinian state. “Israel must have security control over all territory west of the Jordan River. This is a necessary condition, which is in contradiction with the idea of (Palestinian) sovereignty,” said the Prime Minister, specifying that he had said this directly to the Americans. The position is not new, but these remarks, and the way in which they are formulated, have once again highlighted the differences between the United States and its ally.
Today’s trend
The Palestinian operator Paltel announced on Friday “the gradual return of telecommunications in several sectors of the Gaza Strip”, according to a message posted on the social network of the telephone for a week, the longest interruption since the start of the war. This resumption was later confirmed by the Hamas Ministry of Telecommunications.
These cuts “severely limit the visibility of what is happening on the ground,” noted NetBlocks. They prevent Gaza residents from having “access to vital information or from calling for first aid, and hinder other forms of humanitarian response”, deplores in particular the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) .