Hamas warns Israel that talks in Cairo represent “the last chance” for the release of hostages in Gaza. But the Jewish State is only sending a medium-level delegation to the Egyptian capital, at least at this stage, to reiterate the inadmissibility of the proposal which the terrorist group claims to have “accepted” and which Israel instead claims has been “modified” for its own use and consumption. of Hamas. Negotiations continue in the presence of CIA chief William Burns, while the Israeli army takes another step in the offensive on the Gaza Strip. The IDF enters with tanks into Rafah, the last Hamas stronghold in the Strip, after having bombed heavily during the night killing at least 23 people, engages in battle against the Palestinian militiamen, eliminating around twenty of them, and takes “operational control” of the Palestinian side of the border crossing with Egypt, the only one so far not controlled by the Jewish state. In the evening, according to Al Jazeera, the city hall was also hit with artillery fire. The army specifies that this is a deployment “of very limited scope against very specific objectives”. The operation is limited, to put pressure on Palestinian extremists, but it hurts not only Hamas, which was supplied by the three “important” underground tunnels discovered by the IDF. It hits Palestinian civilians hard because it closes, at least for now, the last and most important passage site for humanitarian aid, on the border with Egypt, triggering the reaction of the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who asks to stop the escalation and also reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing, closed in recent days after a mortar attack launched by Palestinian extremists and repeated yesterday. Hamas’s latest proposal was “aimed at sabotaging the entry of Israeli forces into Rafah”, explains Benjamin Netanyahu, who in a video underlines how the terrorists’ plan failed and “military pressure” is “a precondition for the restitution of the hostages.” The group’s proposal for a ceasefire – underlines the Israeli prime minister – is “very far from Israel’s vital demands” and the Jewish state “will not allow Hamas to restore its evil domination in the Strip”. The extremists continue to demand the complete withdrawal of the army and the end of the war and speak of 33 hostages to be released “dead or alive”.
Israeli Defense Minister Gallant reiterates: “We will not stop until Hamas is eliminated or the first hostage has returned.” But the developments in Rafah are worrying. China asks Israel “to avoid an even more serious humanitarian disaster”, Egypt speaks of a “dangerous escalation”, PNA and Turkey denounce a new “war crime” and ask the United States to intervene to avoid the invasion, against which President Sergio Mattarella also spoke out at the UN. Joe Biden recalls that he was clear with Netanyahu on Rafah, but reaffirms his “iron” commitment to Israel, even when “there are disagreements”. «It was Hamas that brutalized the Israelis, that took the hostages that it continues to hold. I don’t forget”, says the US leader. Which he assures, after the protests in American universities: “There is no place for anti-Semitism.”
There would be a truce, which has not yet arrived.
