Israel carried out new airstrikes on Thursday, April 18, in the Gaza Strip, as the international community fears regional escalation, awaiting a promised response from the Israeli authorities to Iran's unprecedented attack against the Jewish state last weekend.
The Israeli army said it had struck dozens of “targets” across the Palestinian enclave in the past 24 hours, including “terrorists, observation posts and military structures.” During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, witnesses also reported strikes in the Gaza Strip, where the military offensive has left 33,970 dead in more than six months, according to the Hamas health ministry. These strikes took place in particular in the cities of Gaza, Khan Younes and Rafah – located in the South and where there are a million and a half people displaced by the war –, according to the territory's civil defense. Bombings also affected Al-Mawasi (South), which has become a camp with thousands of tents for displaced people.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is also maintaining his plan for a land offensive against Rafah, on the border with Egypt, which he presents as the last major bastion of Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007.
• Israeli operations have created a “humanitarian hell” in Gaza, denounces UN chief
“The Middle East is on the precipice. The last few days have seen a dangerous escalation, through words and actions,” declared UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres before the Security Council on Thursday, denouncing in particular the “humanitarian hell” in the Strip. Gaza, generated by Israeli operations.
“A miscalculation, a miscommunication, a mistake, could lead to the unthinkable, a widespread regional conflict which would be devastating for all those concerned, and for the rest of the world,” he said, once again condemning Iran's unprecedented attack on Israel last weekend. “This moment of maximum danger must be a moment of maximum restraint,” he pleaded, and “it is high time to put an end to the bloody cycle of reprisals,” insisting: “We have a responsibility together to face to these risks and to move the region away from the precipice, starting with Gaza. »
The United Nations Secretary-General reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave, unhindered access for humanitarian aid and the release of all hostages. “In Gaza, six and a half months of Israeli military operations have created a humanitarian hell,” he lamented, describing 2.4 million Palestinians enduring “death, destruction, denial of vital humanitarian aid.” , and hunger.
“The death toll is overwhelming and unprecedented, in pace and scale, since I have been Secretary General [of the UN, since 2017],” underlined Mr. Guterres, before adding: “And all this is happening with significant limits imposed by Israeli authorities on the delivery of aid to the people of Gaza, who face widespread hunger.” The UN launched an appeal on Wednesday for donations of $2.8 billion (around €2.6 billion) to help Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Benyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday rejected “the allegations of international organizations about a famine in Gaza” and affirmed that Israel was doing “everything possible on the humanitarian issue”.
• Israel intensifies raids against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon
The day after an attack by the pro-Iranian party, which injured fourteen Israeli soldiers, Israel intensified its raids in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah on Thursday. The National News Agency (ANI, official) affirmed that the Jewish state carried out violent airstrikes and launched more than a hundred artillery shells and phosphorus bombs against border towns in the south of the country during the night. For its part, the Lebanese Islamist movement announced Thursday the death of two of its fighters killed in Israeli strikes. According to rescuers, they were killed by a drone strike on the village of Kfar Kila.
Violence intensified between the Israeli army and Hezbollah this week, in the wake of the attack by Iran, Hezbollah's ally, against the Jewish state. The Lebanese Islamist movement claimed responsibility for an attack on a command post in northern Israel on Wednesday, which responded with raids deep into Lebanese territory. The Israeli army, for its part, reported fourteen Israeli soldiers injured, six of them seriously. In the evening, it carried out raids in response to the Baalbek region, located more than a hundred kilometers from the border with Israel, in eastern Lebanon. It claimed to have targeted “terrorist infrastructure used by the Hezbollah air defense force.”
More than six months of daily cross-border violence between Israel and the Islamist movement have left 370 dead on the Lebanese side, mainly Hezbollah fighters, but also some 70 civilians, according to a count by Agence France-Presse.
• Plea of the Palestinians for their membership in the UN
Full UN member state status “would alleviate some of the historical injustice” that weighs on the Palestinians, a senior official of the Palestinian Authority – which exercises limited power in the West Bank – argued on Thursday. a few hours before a Security Council vote on this issue.
“Granting Palestine full membership in the United Nations would alleviate some of the historical injustice suffered by generations of Palestinians,” Ziad Abu Amr told the Security Council. The vote on the Palestinians' application for membership is now scheduled for Thursday at 5 p.m. in New York (11 p.m. in Paris), according to the Maltese Presidency of the Council.
The admission of a state to the UN must first receive a positive recommendation from the Council (at least 9 votes out of 15 in favor, without a veto from a permanent member), then be approved by the General Assembly, at a two-thirds majority. But the United States, which does not hesitate to use its right of veto, in particular to protect Israel, does not hide its hostility towards the initiative of the Palestinians, who since 2012 have had the inferior status of "non-state observer member”. They believe in particular that the UN is not the place for the recognition of a Palestinian state, which according to them should be the result of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinian approach thus appears doomed to failure.
