GAZA STRIP: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Friday at least 22,600 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian territory since war with Israel erupted on October 7. The ministry said in a statement it had recorded 162 deaths over the past 24 hours, while a total of 57,910 people have been wounded in nearly three months of fighting.
As Israeli officials discuss plans for post-war Gaza, Al Jazeera senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says Hamas remains convinced Israel will not be able to achieve its goals there. “Hamas thinks it will win the war. Hamas is not taking seriously what the Israelis are saying about their day after,” Bishara said.
“Hamas still thinks that Israel will not achieve their objectives in Gaza, that in fact they will end up having to withdraw most, if not all, of their forces because Hamas thinks it still has a chance to win in Gaza.” Tensions remain high within the Israeli government with schisms emerging over issues such as the future of Gaza after the war and who is to blame for the state’s massive security failure on October 7.
“It’s interesting because you have a government that doesn’t want to be blamed for those failings, and then you also have a military and intelligence service that doesn’t want to necessarily be the only fallback. They also put some of the blame on the prime minister himself and the government,” Al Jazeera correspondent Sara Khairat reported from Tel Aviv, saying a recent cabinet discussion exploded with all sides blaming each other for failings. “There’s clearly huge cracks here at the time when the government should be unified,” she added. “Safe zones are death traps,” Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud says, reporting from Rafah.
“Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been evacuating from the northern Gaza City, running from the horror of the war, only to get bombed in what is called a safe zone,” he added. He spoke to Rafah resident Ahmed Abu Sinja, who said “My wife and the kids decided to sleep in their aunt’s room on the lower floor thinking it would be safe. When the bomb hit my brother’s flat, the roof collapsed on them, killing my wife, my daughter, my sister, my brother and two children.”
In the last hour, the Lebanese group has announced that it carried out two attacks via statements on its telegram channel. It said that at 3:45pm local time (13:45 GMT) it fired artillery shells at the Birkat Risha military site in Israel. Hezbollah also said that at 4:15pm local time (14:15 GMT), it hit an Israeli army position across the border of the Lebanese village al-Dhahira with Burkan rockets, and achieved a direct hit. Heavy rains have brought additional misery to Palestinians in northern Gaza, where flooding and sewage have filled refugee camps already devastated by Israeli bombing.
“A new problem for civilians here as war and siege intensify on the Gaza Strip,” Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif reported from Jabalia refugee camp. “And with the rainfall, municipalities are no longer able to operate as a result of their vehicles being destroyed by Israeli forces.” “We left the war, and here we are facing a new war. Sewage water leaked into classrooms and flooded them. Our children are suffering from disease and gastrointestinal symptoms. We are suffering from sickness. This is the situation we are living in,” said a resident in Jabalia.
Al Jazeera’s correspondent reports that a large number of soldiers has begun a raid on the town of Yaabad, southwest of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. Earlier, Al Jazeera and Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that confrontations broke out during an Israeli raid on the village of Madama, south of Nablus, in which tear gas and live fire were deployed. The World Health Organization says that since October 7, hospitals and other vital medical infrastructure have been attacked nearly 600 times in the Gaza Strip. — Aljazeera
