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
For reporters too, the massacre continues in Gaza. Moustafa Thuraya and Hamza Dahdouh, two freelance Palestinian journalists, were killed in Rafah as they returned from reporting. The Dahdouh family continues to pay a heavy price since the start of the conflict. Waël, Hamza’s father, is the bureau chief of the Qatari channel al-Jazeera in Gaza. In October, during a live broadcast, he learned that his wife, one of his sons and one of his daughters and his one-and-a-half-year-old grandson had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. .
With these deaths, at least 79 journalists and media workers, the vast majority Palestinian, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
The number of the day
132. Like the number of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Islamist organization Islamic Jihad released a video on Monday of a living Israeli hostage. The family of the hostage, kidnapped on October 7 from Kibbutz Nir Oz, asked the media not to broadcast the video.
Sentence of the day
I understand the ardor. »
These are the words of Joe Biden. While giving a speech in a church, the US president was interrupted by demonstrators calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. He then indicated that he understood their grievances and that he was “working discreetly” so that Israel “clearly reduced” its presence in Gaza.
Today’s trend
“Commander Wissam Hassan Tawil”, a Hezbollah executive, was killed by an Israeli strike targeting his vehicle in southern Lebanon. He was an important military official in the pro-Iranian organization, who “played a leading role in directing military operations in the South” from where Lebanese Hezbollah has been carrying out almost daily attacks against Israel for three months. , which responded with bombings, said an official who requested anonymity.
This is the highest-ranking Hezbollah military official killed since this powerful formation opened the front with Israel to support Palestinian Hamas, its ally.
The raid comes after the death of Hamas number two, Saleh al-Arouri, and six other officials and executives of the Palestinian Islamist movement in a strike attributed to Israel on January 2. The strike on the Hamas office, the first beyond southern Lebanon, fueled fears of an extension of the war between Hamas and Israel into the Gaza Strip. And the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, is continuing a regional tour this Monday, one of the objectives of which is to avoid an escalation and in particular that tensions between Israel and Hezbollah become out of control, according to American officials.