Overnight strikes on Gaza killed dozens, the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said yesterday, as Israel’s spy chief joined talks in Paris seeking to unblock negotiations on a truce.
The negotiations come after a plan for a post-war Gaza unveiled by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew criticism from key ally the US, and was rejected by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.
They also come alongside deepening fears for Gaza’s civilians.
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The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees said that Gazans were “in extreme peril while the world watches.”
Hamas yesterday morning said that Israeli forces had launched more than 70 strikes on civilian homes in Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis and Rafah, among other locations, over the previous 24 hours.
At least 92 people were killed, the health ministry said.
The Palestinian Islamist movement that has ruled Gaza since 2007 also said fighting was raging in the northern district of Zeitun.
Television footage showed distraught Gazans on Friday lining up for food in Jabalia, also in the besieged Palestinian territory’s devastated north, and protesting over dire living conditions.
“We have no water, no flour and we are very tired because of hunger. Our backs and eyes hurt because of fire and smoke,” said one of them, Oum Wajdi Salha.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 29,606 people, mostly women and children, the latest count by Gaza’s health ministry showed.
Netanyahu this week unveiled a plan for post-war Gaza that envisages civil affairs being run by Palestinian officials without links to Hamas.
The plan says that, even after the conflict, Israel’s army would have “indefinite freedom” to operate throughout Gaza to prevent any resurgence of terror activity, according to the proposals.
It also says Israel would move ahead with a plan, already under way, to establish a security buffer zone inside Gaza along the territory’s border.
A senior Hamas official dismissed the plan as unworkable.
“When it comes to the day after in the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu is presenting ideas which he knows fully well will never succeed,” Osama Hamdan told reporters in Beirut.
US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said that Washington had been “consistently clear with our Israeli counterparts” about what was needed in post-war Gaza.
“The Palestinian people should have a voice and a vote ... through a revitalized Palestinian Authority,” he said, adding that the US also did not “believe in a reduction of the size of Gaza.”
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