GAZA: Deadly fighting and air strikes rocked besieged Gaza on Monday, a day after an attack that killed three US troops in Jordan heightened fears of a wider regional conflict. Zionist bombing of the Gaza Strip killed 140 people overnight, including 20 members of one family, said the health ministry in the Palestinian territory.
Zionist ground forces backed by tanks have focused combat operations on the coastal strip’s main southern city of Khan Yunis, the hometown of Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar. The Zionist entity’s relentless military offensive has since killed at least 26,637 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
In the latest efforts to broker a new ceasefire, CIA chief William Burns met top Zionist, Egyptian and Qatari officials in Paris on Sunday, but no breakthrough was reported. Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the talks were "constructive” but pointed to "significant gaps which the parties will continue to discuss this week”.
US President Joe Biden sent Burns to try to negotiate the release of remaining captives in exchange for a ceasefire, a security source has confirmed to AFP. The New York Times reported Saturday that the negotiators were discussing a deal under which the Zionist entity would suspend the war for about two months in return for the release of over 100 hostages.
The Gaza war has forced more than one million Palestinians to flee to the far-southern Rafah area near the Egyptian border, according to the UN, deepening the humanitarian crisis. Hunger and disease have spread in crowded tent cities where families shelter in makeshift tents against the cold winter rain and mud while fearing more air strikes.
Alarm over their plight has heightened amid a bitter row over the main UN aid agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, after the Zionist entity charged several of its staff partook in the Oct 7 attack. Japan became the latest major donor to freeze funding for the agency that has provided most food, medical and other aid to the 2.4 million people of long-blockaded Gaza.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has pleaded for continued financial support, saying "the dire needs of the desperate populations they serve must be met”. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, warned that suspending funding "overtly defies” an International Court of Justice order to allow more aid into Gaza.
The Zionist entity has argued the UN agency must play no role in post-war Gaza, and Zionist envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, charged that funding for it "will be used for terrorism”. Hundreds of Zionist protesters have rallied at the Kerem Shalom border crossing in recent days and repeatedly blocked aid trucks from entering Gaza. And thousands demonstrated Sunday to call for the re-establishment of Zionist settlements in the Gaza Strip, in a rally joined by several far-right ministers.
"If we don’t want another October 7, we need to... control the territory,” said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The Zionist entity seized Gaza in 1967 before withdrawing its troops and settlers from the territory in 2005. Netanyahu in official statements has rejected resettlement in Gaza, but the rally showed that the once-fringe position has gained momentum within his hard-right government. – AFP