GAZA: The Zionist entity launched devastating air strikes on Gaza early Thursday while also saying it is ready to resume stalled talks on a truce and captive release deal with Hamas to pause the war raging since Oct 7. The Gaza Strip’s civil defense agency said two predawn air strikes had killed 26 people, including 15 children, in Gaza City alone. Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said one strike hit a family house, killing 16 people, in the Al-Daraj area, and another killed 10 people inside a mosque compound.
Fierce street battles also raged in Gaza’s Jabalia and Rafah where the armed wings of Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad said they had fired mortar barrages at Zionist troops. International pressure for a ceasefire has mounted on the Zionist entity and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as three European countries said Wednesday they would recognize a Palestinian state.
The week started with the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor seeking arrest warrants on war crimes charges against Netanyahu and his defense minister as well as three Hamas leaders. The Zionist entity has angrily rejected those moves, voicing "disgust” over the ICC request and labeling any recognition of Palestinian statehood a "reward for terrorism”.
But domestic pressure has also risen as supporters of captives in Gaza again rallied outside Netanyahu’s office, passionately demanding a deal to bring them home. A newly released video showed five female Zionist soldiers in the hands of Palestinian fighters during the attack more than seven months ago. Netanyahu vowed to continue fighting Hamas to "ensure what we have seen tonight never happens again”. But his office also said that the war cabinet had asked the Zionist negotiating team "to continue negotiations for the return of the hostages”.
The previous round of truce talks, involving US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators, ended shortly after the Zionist entity launched its attack on Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah early this month. The Zionist entity went ahead with the assault on the last city in Gaza to be entered by its ground troops in defiance of global opposition, including from top ally the United States.
Washington voiced concerns that about 1.4 million Palestinians who had been trapped in the city would be caught in the line of fire.
The Zionist entity has since ordered mass evacuations from the city, and the UN says more than 800,000 people have fled. US President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, said the Rafah operation "has been more targeted and limited” than feared and "has not involved major military operations into the heart of dense urban areas”.
But he stopped short of saying that the Zionist entity had addressed US concerns, adding that Washington was closely watching ongoing Zionist actions. The Zionist entity’s national security advisor Tzachi Hanegbi has meanwhile given a bleak assessment of the war to a meeting of parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee, according to a report by Channel 13.
He reportedly said the Zionist entity has "not achieved any of the strategic aims of the war — not conditions for a hostage deal; we haven’t toppled Hamas; and we haven’t allowed residents of the (Gaza) periphery to safely return home”.
The Zionist entity’s offensive has killed at least 35,800 people in Gaza, mostly women and children. Urban combat has also flared again in northern areas, including Jabalia, which Zionist forces first entered several months ago. The Zionist entity has also imposed a siege that has deprived Gaza’s 2.4 million people of most clean water, food, medicines and fuel.
The sporadic arrival of aid by truck slowed further after Zionist forces took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Jordan and others have airdropped relief goods into Gaza and some aid has been shipped in via a US-built pier, but many trucks have been quickly swarmed by desperate crowds.
The Zionist entity has faced ever greater opposition to the bloody war from around the world, and pro-Palestinian protests have swept university campuses. The Zionist entity reacted with fury after Ireland, Norway and Spain said they would recognize a Palestinian state on May 28, a move praised by Palestinians and across the Arab world. The Zionist entity recalled its envoys to Dublin, Oslo and Madrid and summoned the three ambassadors for a rebuke.
Most Western governments say they are willing to recognize Palestinian statehood one day, but not before thorny issues such as final borders and the status of Jerusalem are settled. The White House said Biden opposed unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, saying it should be realized "through direct negotiations”. Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris stressed that "a two-state solution is the only way out of the generational cycles of violence”. – AFP