GAZA: The Zionist military pounded central Gaza with heavy air strikes on Wednesday as US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators planned to resume talks on a truce and hostage release deal. Tensions were high in annexed east Jerusalem where thousands of police were deployed to guard the Zionist entity’s annual “flag march” that has sparked clashes between Jews and Arabs in previous years.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war raged on unabated with jets bombing targets overnight and Palestinian officials reporting yet more deaths. Urban combat and shelling rocked Gaza’s southern city of Rafah near the Egyptian border, the last area hit by the Zionist ground invasion launched in northern Gaza in late October.

But fighting has also flared again in central areas, where the army said “troops have started targeted operational activity in the areas of Bureij and eastern Deir al-Balah, both above and below ground”. Bombardment of central Gaza killed 11 people near the Al-Maghazi camp and two near Deir al-Balah, said witnesses and Palestinian civil defense and hospital officials.

Families rushed the wounded, including children, to hospitals in the area, where AFP reporters said civilians were once more packing their belongings on pickup trucks and onto wheelchairs to flee. Almost eight months into the war, global outrage has spiraled over the soaring death toll and the destruction in Gaza, where UN data suggests more than half of all buildings are destroyed or damaged.

US President Joe Biden last Friday outlined what he called a three-phase Zionist plan that would halt the fighting for six weeks while hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners and aid is stepped up. G7 powers and Arab states have backed the proposal, although sticking points remain — Hamas insists on a permanent truce and full Zionist withdrawal, demands that the Zionist entity has flatly rejected.

Biden has urged Hamas to accept the deal and deployed CIA chief Bill Burns to Qatar for a renewed push after months of back-and-forth negotiations. A source with knowledge of the talks said Burns would “continue working with mediators on reaching an agreement between Hamas and (the Zionist entity) on a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages”.

Brett McGurk, Biden’s top Middle East adviser, was also headed to Qatar, according to news site Axios which quoted an administration source as talking of a “full-court press... to get a breakthrough”. A senior Hamas official in Beirut on Tuesday accused the

Zionist entity of seeking “endless” negotiations and repeated the group’s position rejecting any deal that excludes a permanent ceasefire.

The Zionist army and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement have traded near daily cross-border fire, causing deaths, forcing mass evacuations and igniting wildfires on both sides. Netanyahu said on a border visit Wednesday that the Zionist entity was “prepared for a very intense operation” there and that “one way or another, we will restore security to the north”. Hezbollah said later it launched several attacks on Zionist positions during the day, including a “guided missile” strike on an “Iron Dome platform in the Ramot Naftali barracks”.

The Zionist entity has faced growing diplomatic isolation, cases against it before two international courts, and several European governments, most recently Slovenia’s, recognizing a Palestinian state. Slovenia’s parliament on Tuesday passed a decree recognizing a Palestinian state, pushing ahead with a vote in defiance of an opposition motion to derail it. Fifty-two members of the 90-member parliament voted in favor of the government-sponsored decree to recognize a Palestinian state. The opposition boycotted the vote except for one lawmaker who attended but abstained.

Slovenia’s center-left government sent the decree on recognizing a Palestine state for parliamentary approval last Thursday as part of efforts to end the fighting in Gaza as soon as possible. The conservative opposition Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) led by former prime minister Janez Jansa on Monday then filed a proposal to hold an advisory referendum on the recognition. At Tuesday’s session, 52 lawmakers rejected the motion. Parliamentary speaker Urska Klakocar Zupancic said the opposition had “abused the referendum mechanism” and announced parliament would proceed with the vote as planned.

Zionist police deployed 3,000 officers in Jerusalem ahead of the annual march by right-wingers commemorating the Zionist entity’s capture of the Old City in the 1967 Arab-Zionist war. Thousands of Jewish nationalists, including far-right activists, marched through predominantly Arab neighborhoods of the Old City, waving Zionist national flags, dancing and shouting inflammatory or racist slogans. “This is my country. I am the owner here. I’m the boss here, there is no Palestine,” screamed a participant as he marched past a group of journalists.

The march has been a lightning rod for Zionist-Palestinian tensions in recent years. On the day the march was held in 2021, Hamas launched a barrage of rockets towards Jerusalem, setting off a 12-day conflict between the Zionist entity and the Islamist group. The Zionist bombardment and ground offensive have killed at least 36,550 people in Gaza, mostly women and children. – Agencies