Have you missed the latest events on the conflict between the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Israel? 20 minutes takes stock for you every evening at 8:30 p.m. Who did what ? Who said what? Where are we ? The answer below.
News of the day
The conflict is spreading. Israel bombed several locations in southern Lebanon, on its border, after an explosion on the barrier separating the two countries. A Lebanese security source reported an “infiltration attempt” from Lebanon. Exchanges of fire took place at the border after this attempt, according to al-Manar, the Lebanese Hezbollah channel. Rockets fell on an area where a group of journalists from at least three different media were present, in the border village of Alma el-Chaab. A Reuters journalist was killed. Two journalists from AFP and two others from the Al-Jazeera channel were also injured.
The conflict also affects the West Bank, Palestinian territory where Israel has been setting up colonies for several years. Several demonstrations in support of Hamas degenerated into clashes with Israeli security forces. At least nine Palestinians have died.
The two numbers of the day
13 and 15. Like the 13 hostages, “including foreigners”, who died this Thursday in Israeli bombings on the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas. According to the Israeli army, around 150 people, Israelis, foreigners and dual nationals, were kidnapped by Hamas fighters. Furthermore, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna indicated at the start of the evening on the program “C à vous” that 15 French people had been killed in Israel since the start of the conflict.
Sentence of the day
Our people in Gaza are undergoing genocide and Gaza has become a disaster zone
The Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, who is not linked to Hamas, Mohammed Shtayyeh, on Friday accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza, shelled by the Israeli army in its war against the Islamist movement. At least 1,799 people, including 583 children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip following Israeli bombings, according to Hamas.
Today’s trend
After the ultimatum launched last night by Israel, Hamas refused to evacuate the northern half of the Gaza Strip, which the Israeli army is threatening to raze. To convince Palestinian civilians, Tel Aviv also dropped leaflets in Arabic, with a map demarcating the area to be evacuated and an arrow pointing south. Although several thousand Gazans are now on the road, they actually have nowhere to go. For now, the border with Egypt is closed. At the end of the day, the Israeli army indicated that it had not waited for the end of its ultimatum to carry out targeted ground actions in the Gaza Strip during “the last 24 hours”.
The threat weighing on the Gaza Strip, however, has caused the international community to react widely, especially since the WHO has pointed out the “impossibility” of evacuating fragile patients from hospitals in the Palestinian city. Norway thus condemned the “unacceptable” siege of Gaza, and the Arab League described the “forced transfer” of Palestinians as a “crime”. Vladimir Putin compared the siege of Gaza to that of Leningrad, and American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called on Israel to take “all possible precautions” to avoid the deaths of civilians.