AS ISRAELI Knesset members accused PM Netanyahu of blocking a ceasefire deal being reached with Hamas for personal reasons in order to avoid prosecution, the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) escalated their genocide in Gaza, with attacks around the clock, killing dozens of Palestinians, including children.
Knesset Opposition leader Yair Lapid, a former prime minister and leader of the Yesh Atid party, said the government has imposed new conditions.
‘We have nothing left to achieve in Gaza; we need to start preparing for the day after the war and bring back 100 hostages,’ he told the public broadcaster Kan.
‘Once the war ends, we can return to Gaza and do what we need to do,’ he said. ‘Now, we need to stop the war and finalise a deal to bring all the hostages back.’
Lapid said Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza, does not want to end the war, fearing that it would lead to his government’s collapse.
Avigdor Lieberman, a former defence minister and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, also criticised Netanyahu, saying ‘the deal can be done’. There was no immediate response from Netanyahu’s office.
A journalist on the ground in Gaza called it ‘a killing box’ yesterday, as an Israeli drone attacked a vehicle in Jalaa Street, a major street in Gaza City connecting it to the northern part of the enclave, killing four people.
Within 15 minutes of that attack, another drone hit the entrance of the Jabalia area in northern Gaza – between the end of Jalaa Street and the entrance of the Jabalia refugee camp, killing a mother and her four children.
Seventy per cent of Jabalia refugee camp’s buildings have been completely destroyed according to a report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
It said the Jabalia refugee camp has become a ‘ghost town’ during the Israeli army’s continuous attacks on the area.
None of the army’s other operations in Lebanon and other parts of Gaza ‘can compare, in the scale of the destruction, to what has happened over the last two and a half months’ in the camp said the paper.
According to the Israeli army’s data, quoted by Haaretz, some 96,000 Palestinian civilians were forcibly displaced from the densely populated camp during the military’s operation.
The newspaper added, citing the army, that more than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed and roughly 1,500 have been arrested in the camp over the same period.
• ‘The situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate on a daily basis, especially for children,’ Rachel Cummings, humanitarian director for Save the Children International, who is in Gaza now, said yesterday.
‘Winter’s upon us and it’s very bitterly cold,’ she continued. ‘What we hear from children and their families is that they’re so ill-equipped. It’s difficult for families to live with any dignity in this context.
‘What we do as a humanitarian organisation is to provide immediate alleviation of suffering, but we know that what we’re doing is really a drop in the ocean in terms of meeting the needs of all the children in Gaza.
‘We need an immediate ceasefire, we need the world to stop the bombing of children in Gaza, and we need safe passage and access to humanitarian assistance.’
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