The Israeli strikes on Gaza on Sunday recorded the heaviest toll since fighting resumed last week between Hamas and the Israeli military. Some 42 Palestinians, including at least eight children and two doctors, lost their lives on that day alone as a result of shelling by the Israeli military.
In all, since the start of the clashes, nearly 200 Palestinians have died, including at least 59 children, and more than 1,300 injured. On the Israeli side, ten people succumbed to rocket fire from the Islamist movement, including a child; 294 people were injured.
On Saturday, Israeli strikes caused the collapse of a 13-story tower housing the offices of the Qatari news channel Al-Jazeera and the US Associated Press (AP) news agency in the Gaza Strip.
“This is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided terrible loss of life […] The world will be less informed about what is going on in Gaza because of what happened today, ”said PA boss Gary Pruitt.
Despite the multiple condemnations and calls for restraint and demonstrations in several countries around the world, and particularly in the Arab countries, to denounce the Israeli raids, the Jewish state seems to be assuming its determination to continue the fighting. “Our campaign against terrorist organizations continues at full speed,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for international sanctions against Israel. In a telephone interview with Pope Francis, he said “unless the international community punishes Israel, which commits a crime against humanity, with sanctions, the Palestinians will continue to be slaughtered.” Pope Francis also judged the loss of innocent lives in this conflict “terrible and unacceptable”.
Erdogan thus urged the international community to “give Israel the dissuasive lesson it deserves and to take concrete steps in this direction.”
The UN Security Council, which met on Sunday, for the third time since the clashes resumed, at the initiative of China, Norway and Tunisia, has not yet managed to speak with one voice. According to Chinese diplomacy, it is the United States which would obstruct a joint decision of the Council. Washington would favor soft diplomacy with the countries concerned and not a UN declaration.
In the meantime, aid is being organized to come to the aid of the Palestinians. This is the case in Morocco where, according to a foreign ministry statement, King Mohammed VI has given instructions to send humanitarian aid to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The aid contains 40 tonnes of basic food items, emergency medicine and blankets.
“The Kingdom of Morocco, which places the Palestinian cause at the top of its concerns, remains faithful to its attachment to the achievement of the two-state solution, living side by side in peace and security, through the creation of “a Palestinian state within the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital,” also indicates the press release from Moroccan diplomacy.
The two-state solution, Palestinian and Israeli, is advocated by several organizations and countries. Senegal, a country which has chaired the UN Committee for the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People for several years, and the President of the African Union Commission, Chadian Moussa Faki Mahamat, have renewed their support for the coexistence of two states.
In South Africa, a deputy of the African National Congress (ANC, the ruling political party), Chief Mandla Mandela, grandson of the late President Nelson Mandela, called on his government, during a demonstration in support of the Palestinians in Cape Town, to sever all diplomatic relations with Israel and to close the South African embassy in Tel Aviv.
The International Criminal Court (ICC), which is already looking into alleged crimes committed by members of the Israeli forces, members of Palestinian Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups during the 2014 Gaza war, is closely monitoring the current situation.
By OMA Newsletter N ° 267 of 05/17/2021
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Tags: Israeli-Palestinian conflict
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