As the conflict between the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Israel continues to rage, the Hamas health ministry announced the death of at least sixty people, the majority civilians, in Israeli nighttime bombings on the small strip of Palestinian land. threatened with famine. Israeli operations have cost the lives of 32,845 people, most of them civilians, according to the Health Ministry and caused a humanitarian catastrophe and colossal destruction. The Israeli army, for its part, announced that 600 soldiers had been killed since October 7, 2023, including 256 in the ground offensive.
In Israel, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was operated on Sunday evening April 31 "successfully" for a hernia according to his office, while a new demonstration demanding his resignation and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza is planned in the evening in Jerusalem. Still in Israeli territory, the police announced on Monday that they had arrested in the South, where she lives, the sister of Ismaïl Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas movement which took power in Gaza in 2007 and who is considered a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he wanted to “act immediately” to ban the broadcast of Al-Jazeera in Israel, shortly after Parliament passed a law authorizing it to do so. “The terrorist channel Al-Jazeera will no longer broadcast from Israel. I intend to act immediately in accordance with the new law to stop the activities of the channel,” Mr. Netanyahu said on the social network X.
During the day, the Israeli Parliament adopted a text allowing the broadcasting in the country of foreign media that undermines state security. Voted by seventy votes to ten, and targeting the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera, the law gives the prime minister the possibility of banning the broadcast of content from the targeted channel, but also of closing its offices in Israel.
The Israeli military has repeatedly claimed that Al-Jazeera journalists are “terrorist agents” affiliated with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad in Gaza. In February, Al-Jazeera accused Israel of systematically targeting its employees working in Gaza. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based association, at least 95 journalists have been killed since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, 90 of whom are Palestinians.
The Israeli army announced that it had “completed” operations in the area of Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, and withdrew from the area two weeks after entering it. “The troops completed operational activity in the Al-Shifa Hospital area and left the hospital area,” the army said in a statement, adding that they “killed terrorists during clashes.” An Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist and witnesses saw tanks and vehicles leaving the hospital, covered by artillery fire and airstrikes.
“Dozens of bodies of martyrs, some in a state of decomposition, were found in the compound and around Al-Shifa hospital,” Hamas said in a statement, specifying that the material damage was “ very important”. According to a doctor interviewed by AFP, more than twenty bodies were recovered. According to him, some were crushed by military vehicles leaving the area. A spokesman for the Hamas-run Gaza Civil Agency said 300 people died in and around the hospital during the Israeli operation. Separately, the White House ruled that if verified, the information about the bodies found at Al-Shifa Hospital was “very concerning.”
A videoconference meeting is planned between Israeli and American officials on the subject of the ground offensive announced by Israel in Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them displaced, are crowded together. Concerned for civilians, the international community, including the United States, is opposed to this operation. A US official confirmed the discussions were taking place, specifying that other “follow-up in-person meetings” were planned.
This is about “understanding what their plans are for any type of operation in Rafah, understanding how they are going to move or conduct operations with a very dense population, over a million people,” a door said -Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh to reporters.
