GAZA: Gazans sheltered Monday from intense bombing and shooting in the city of Khan Yunis, as pressure built on the Zionist entity for an eventual two-state solution involving statehood long sought by Palestinians. Witnesses reported deadly strikes and fierce fighting between Zionist soldiers and Hamas fighters overnight in the southern city which has become the latest epicenter of the war.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported on Monday that more than 120 people had been killed in the previous 24 hours. “Artillery shelling has not stopped since 5:00 am,” said Yunis Abdel Razek, 52, sheltering with his family at the city’s Al-Aqsa University. Mahdi Antar, 21, had sought refuge at Al-Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis. “The situation is terrifying. Tonight and today are very difficult, bombing and shooting. I do not know what to do. I think they will storm the hospital,” he said.

Victims of the latest Zionist strikes were brought to the hospital, at least one on a hand-pulled cart. The Palestinian Red Crescent said Zionist forces were “besieging” their ambulance center “and targeting anyone attempting to move in the area”. At one building that had been hit, men walked over broken concrete with only torches casting a dusty light to help them search in the darkness for survivors.

The strikes came as European Union foreign ministers held meetings in Brussels with top diplomats from the warring sides and key Arab states. The 27 EU ministers first met the Zionist entity’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz before sitting down separately with the Palestinian Authority’s top diplomat, Riyad Al-Maliki.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told the Zionist entity “peace and stability cannot be built only by military means”. “Which are the other solutions they have in mind? To make all the Palestinians leave? To kill off them?” Borrell said. Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn condemnation from the United Nations and defied the United States, which provides the Zionist entity with billions of dollars in military aid, by rejecting calls for a Palestinian state.

Maliki demanded the EU call for an immediate ceasefire and urged the bloc to consider sanctions against Netanyahu for “destroying the chances for a two-state solution”. Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said “the whole world” sees a two-state solution as “the only way out of this misery”. Katz ignored questions from journalists over a future two-state solution and said the Zionist entity was focused on returning captives and ensuring its own security.

The EU has struggled for a united stance on the conflict in Gaza as staunch backers of the Zionist entity such as Germany have rejected demands for an immediate ceasefire made by the likes of Spain and Ireland. But there is overall backing in the bloc for a two-state solution. “The two-state solution is the only solution, and even those who don’t want to know about it have not yet come up with any other alternative,” said German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock.

Borrell circulated what he called a “comprehensive approach” towards finding peace involving the international community holding a conference that would come up with a plan to be put to both the Zionists and the Palestinians. The paper said the international community should then eventually “set out the consequences they envisage to attach to engagement or non-engagement with the peace plan” by either side.

The talks came a day after Hamas issued a 16-page report, in Arabic and English, explaining the background to the Oct 7 attacks against the Zionist entity. It called the attacks a “defensive act” and “necessary step” against Zionist occupation, “reclaiming the Palestinian rights and on the way for liberation and independence like all peoples”.

The Zionist entity has carried out a relentless offensive that has killed at least 25,295 people in Gaza, around 70 percent of them women, young children and adolescents, according to the latest toll issued Monday by Gaza’s health ministry. US intelligence agencies have estimated that the Zionist campaign has killed “around 20 percent to 30 percent” of Hamas fighters and is still far from its goal of destroying the Islamist movement, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. – AFP