In full offensive in the Palestinian territory, Israel celebrates, Monday April 22, the start of the Jewish Passover, the Passover festival, among the most important in the Hebrew calendar, marked this year by the absence of the 129 hostages held in Gaza since the October 7, 2023. At the request of the families, a chair will be left empty around the table during the ritual seder meal on Monday evening, so as not to forget the hostages. On the eve of this holiday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised on Sunday to deal “new hard blows” to Hamas.
On Monday, the Israeli army bombarded the Palestinian camps of Nusseirat and Maghazi, as well as the coastline in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, and the towns of Rafah and Khan Younes, in the south of the enclave, according to a correspondent from Agence France-Presse (AFP). Bombings also targeted the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, and drones struck the playground of a school in the Al-Boureij camp, in the center of the territory. In the same camp, at least three people were injured in the bombing of a mosque, according to medical sources. The army announced that it had launched an operation in the central Gaza Strip and “continued to eliminate terrorists and dismantle terrorist infrastructure.”
The attack on October 7, 2023 resulted in the death of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data. In response, Israel promised to destroy Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, and launched an offensive that has so far left 34,151 dead, including 54 in twenty-four hours, according to the movement's health ministry. Islamist.
The head of Israeli military intelligence resigned accepting his “responsibility” for the bloody attack by Hamas, at the origin of the war in the Gaza Strip, where Israel promised to deal new “hard blows” to the Islamist movement .
The first political or military figure to resign since the attack carried out by infiltrated Hamas commandos from the Gaza Strip, the head of Israeli military intelligence, General Aharon Haliva, assumed "his responsibility" in the failure to prevent this incursion.
“On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out a deadly surprise attack against the State of Israel (…) the intelligence service under my command did not fulfill the mission entrusted to us,” wrote General Haliva , who has a thirty-eight-year military career, in his resignation letter published by the army. “I have carried that dark day with me ever since. Day after day, night after night. I will carry this terrible pain forever,” he added.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip has political 'neutrality issues', but Israel has yet to provide 'proof' that some of its members are allegedly linked to 'terrorist organizations' », concludes a report submitted to the head of the United Nations.
The fact remains that UNRWA is “irreplaceable and indispensable” to the Palestinians, underlines this independent group chaired by the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, and charged by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, with a mission of evaluation on the “neutrality” of this UN agency.
The agency, which has more than 30,000 employees in the region (in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria), is accused by Israel of employing “more than 400 terrorists” in Gaza. And twelve of its employees are accused, by the Israelis, of having been directly involved in the attack of October 7, 2023 carried out by Hamas on Israeli soil. Accusations which led to the suspension of funding by certain donor countries, some of which have since resumed.
The Israeli army announced that it had arrested a suspect in the case of the murder of a young Israeli shepherd in the West Bank, where armed settlers had, in retaliation, carried out deadly raids on several villages. Benjamin Achimeir, 14, disappeared on April 12 while grazing his sheep, which returned without him to the farm where he lived, in the Malachei HaShalom settlement, northeast of Ramallah. His body was discovered the next day, not far away.
In connection with this murder, Israeli soldiers arrested, during a nighttime raid, a resident of the Palestinian village of Duma, located a few kilometers from Malachei HaShalom, the Israeli army said, identifying the arrested suspect as Ahmed Dawabcheh . After the disappearance and then the discovery of the body, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian communities, burning homes and vehicles.
A Palestinian was killed and twenty-three people injured in the village of Al-Mughayyir, located 500 meters from Malachei HaShalom and stormed by settlers armed with assault rifles and Molotov cocktails, causing the fleeing of 86 inhabitants, according to OCHA, the UN humanitarian agency.
The civil defense of the Gaza Strip told AFP that over the past three days it had exhumed around two hundred bodies of people killed and buried by Israeli forces in mass graves inside the Nasser hospital in Khan. Younes.
“Our teams continue to find bodies inside the Nasser medical complex and, since Saturday, the bodies of around two hundred martyrs have been exhumed,” said Mahmoud Bassal, a civil defense spokesperson. Two other Gaza Strip officials told AFP that 283 bodies had been exhumed. Asked by AFP, the Israeli army did not react immediately.
