The – to force Hamas to accept a modification of the terms of the high fire – has left on Saturday the most lethal bombardment since the beginning of the truce, on January 19. The attack, with a drone, has caused nine dead in Beit Lahia, in the north of the Strip, during a mission of the Khair Foundation, a Muslim charitable organization, the Ministry of Health of the Government of Hamás in Gazas has reported. At least two of them are local journalists and photographers who covered the deployment. Hamás has branded the “horrible massacre” of “dangerous escalation” in one of the most delicate moments of the high fire, with the US warning the Islamist movement that has the time against and supporting the population of Gaza for two weeks: cut the entry of humanitarian aid (food, water and medications) and electricity for the water desalination plant.
The images recorded with mobile phones show the moments after the attack: a calcined vehicle and the people around taking the wounded to the hospital nervous. Israel’s army has indicated that he first opened fire against “two terrorists who operated a drone that represented a threat” for his troops, and then again against the vehicle to which they got “several” more after collecting the drone.
At the end of February, the first phase of Alto El Fuego in Gaza concluded. It was six weeks in which Hamas delivered 33 hostages, mostly alive, and Israel released more than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners. Since then there have been no more exchanges, but the fighting to the previous level has not returned and Israeli troops remain retweet in the agreed areas within Gaza.
The agreement between Israel and Hamas, reached by pressure from Donald Trump days before his arrival at the White House, stipulated that the parties had to have taken advantage of the break to negotiate the transition to the second phase, which entails the end of the war. Like other commitments (withdraw from the border between Gaza and Egypt, allow the entry of caravans to accommodate those who have lost their homes …) and now extend the first phase, so that Hamas continues to deliver hostages, without guarantees that the agreed is fulfilled: the end of the war.
Although Israel has not resumed the bombings to the rhythm prior to the high fire, it has increased them in recent weeks, in a correlation how much the accelerator wants to press. Military communiqués also account for bombings in Gaza are directly proportional and repeat the formula that responded to an attempt to “place explosive artifacts” near the troops. There are more than one hundred dead in Gaza for Israeli attacks in the almost two months of truce. This last attack, added to the daily recovery of corpses under the debris of the 15 months of war (12, in the last 48 hours), elevates 48,543 dead and 111,981 injured the balance of the Israeli invasion following Hamas’s attack in October 2023.
The frequency of the bombings has grown, in proportion, this month, in parallel, to the blockade to the entry of humanitarian aid and the cut of the very scarce electricity that Israel still sold to Gaza and discounted to the Palestinian national authority. The UN Agency dedicated to Childhood, UNICEF, has reported this Saturday that acute malnutrition among babies less than two years has doubled in a month, in an “shocking increase” since January 15.6%.
Cabinet meeting
Netanyahu plans to gather its security cabinet at the last minute of this Saturday, to decide the next steps related to the implementation of the high fire agreement. He will do it with a report on the table on the advance of the negotiations in Doha, focused on the extension of the first phase and those that first attended the envoy for Trump’s near East, Steve Witkoff. The US is one of the mediators and guarantors of compliance with the pact, together with Egypt and Qatar.
The eve showed the fragility of the process, the Islamist movement unilaterally announced the existence of an agreement to free the only living hostage with dual American-Israeli nationality, Edan Alexander. Witkoff not only came to deny it, but accused him of having made a “very bad bet” and revealed that he has put a date to deliver it. “Hamas does not have the time in favor, he is very aware of the top day and should know that we will respond accordingly if he surpasses it,” he threatened.
Trump’s envoy also revealed that he presented in Doha – along with the director for the Middle East of the National Security Council of the White House, Eric Trager – a “bridge proposal” between the parties. It consists – as Israel wants – to extend the first phase of the high fire during the Sacred Muslim month of Ramadan and the subsequent Jewish Easter, which ends on April 19, but would imply the delivery of less hostages, the only negotiating weight of Hamás. Witkoff does not reveal the number (“it would be done according to previous formulas,” he simply said), but the leaks suggest that he would be five alive.
