Israel is facing new pressure from the international community this Tuesday, December 19, in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza. A vote is planned at the UN after the United States has just promised to continue its arms deliveries to eradicate Hamas. For its part, France “has decided to take national measures against certain extremist Israeli settlers,” said Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna. A new hospital in Gaza City has been stormed by the Israeli army. Several doctors and nurses were arrested
The al-Ahli Arab hospital, one of the last still in operation in the north of the Gaza Strip, stopped functioning on Tuesday after being stormed by the Israeli army, its director said. The Israeli army besieged this hospital in Gaza City, arrested several doctors, nurses and wounded, and destroyed part of the compound, the director of the establishment, doctor Fadel Naïm, told AFP. “The intrusion of the occupation army put the hospital out of service. We cannot accommodate patients or injured people,” he told AFP.
Four people injured Monday by Israeli fire while they were in the hospital died Tuesday, he added. Al-Ahli Arab, also called Baptist Hospital, had already been damaged after an explosion in its parking lot on October 17, causing more than 400 deaths according to Hamas authorities. Hamas blamed the explosion on a strike by Israel, which denied it, claiming to have “proof” that it was a missed shot by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The humanitarian situation, already catastrophic, continues to worsen in the Gaza Strip due to Israeli bombings, according to relief organizations operating there. Al-Chifa, the largest hospital complex in the Gaza Strip, is no longer operating at a minimum and with a very small team, after being targeted in November by a large-scale operation by the Israeli army which accuses Hamas of use it as a command center.
The Palestinian Hamas Ministry of Health announced Tuesday that Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip had left 19,667 dead since October 7. Hamas, which has controlled this small Palestinian territory of 2.4 million inhabitants since 2007, also recorded 52,586 wounded, according to a ministry press release.
The United Nations Security Council is expected to decide on a new text calling for an “urgent and lasting cessation of hostilities” in the Gaza Strip, after the United States vetoed previous attempts. Initially scheduled for Monday, this vote was postponed to allow further negotiations around this new draft resolution.
For two months, Israel has been promising to annihilate Hamas, author of the most violent attack in the country’s history on October 7, which left around 1,140 people dead, mostly civilians, according to the latest official Israeli figures. Some 250 people were taken hostage, 129 of whom are still being held in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
France “has decided to take national measures against certain extremist Israeli settlers,” declared the head of French diplomacy Catherine Colonna to the press on Tuesday.
“I was able to see with my own eyes the violence committed by some of the extremist settlers. This is unacceptable,” declared the Minister of Foreign Affairs, returning from a tour of Israel, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.
On Tuesday, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said they had no intention of stopping their attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea. “Even if America succeeds in mobilizing the entire world, our military operations will not stop (…) whatever the sacrifices this costs us,” assured on X a rebel leader, Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, in despite the United States’ announcement of a new maritime protection alliance.
This Tuesday, Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna announced alongside her British counterpart that France will take measures with its partners to put an end to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.
In recent days, many maritime transport giants have announced that they are suspending all transit in the Red Sea, because of these attacks concentrated on the strategic Bab al-Mandeb strait, which separates the Arabian Peninsula from Africa, and through which 40 transit % of world trade.
This Tuesday, 20 Palestinians were killed in a bombing in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas. Among them were four children and a journalist, Adel Zorob. Since October 7, retaliation by the Jewish state has left more than 19,400 dead in the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas.
These deadly figures reinforce calls for appeasement from many diplomats. British Foreign Minister David Cameron is due to meet his French and Italian counterparts this Tuesday to once again call for “a lasting ceasefire”, his services announced.
Visiting Tel Aviv on Monday, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin indicated that the United States would continue to provide the military “equipment” necessary for the Israeli army and that Washington did not wish to “impose a timetable” on its historic ally. At the same time, the American minister insisted on the need to “reduce the damage caused to civilians” and “provide increased humanitarian aid to the nearly two million people displaced in Gaza”.
The Israeli army announced on Tuesday the death of two new soldiers in the Gaza Strip. In total, Israel has lost 131 soldiers since the start of its ground operations on October 27, in addition to the bombings in the Palestinian territory.
At the same time, negotiations are continuing for the implementation of a new truce. According to the Axios news site, the CIA boss met Israeli and Qatari officials in Warsaw with a view to new negotiations on the release of hostages.
“Hamas is ready for an exchange of prisoners, but after a ceasefire,” said an official of the Islamist movement on Tuesday. A seven-day break allowed the release of 105 hostages in Gaza at the end of November, including 80 in exchange for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
Gaza is the “most dangerous place in the world” for a child, a Unicef spokesperson denounced this Tuesday, expressing his rage after his return from the Palestinian territory. At a regular press briefing at the UN in Geneva, spokesman James Elder, who spent nearly two weeks in Gaza, said he was “furious that those in power shrug their shoulders at the humanitarian nightmares inflicted on a million children.
Very moved, he spoke of the fate of children hospitalized after having been amputated and who were then “killed in these hospitals” in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army continues its strikes. “I am furious that other children are hiding somewhere right now and will undoubtedly be affected and amputated in the days to come,” he added.
