The Arab foreign ministers concluded their emergency meeting in Cairo yesterday by affirming the importance of Israel’s fulfillment of the international law obligations as an occupying power for the Palestinians.
Reading from the final statement for the emergency meeting in Cairo, the under-secretary of the Arab League said “we affirm on the importance of resuming the peace process and starting serious negotiations between Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel.”
The League statement came as Israel formed an emergency unity government and its jets pounded Gaza and tanks massed around the Palestinian enclave.
The Israeli army said it killed three Hamas fighters in a fresh confrontation on nearby Israeli territory.
Former defence minister Benny Gantz, a centrist opposition leader, spoke live on Israeli television alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant after forming a war cabinet focused entirely on the conflict.
Israel’s death toll rose to 1,200 with more than 2,700 wounded, its military said. Israeli reprisal strikes on blockaded Gaza have killed 1,100 people and wounded 5,339, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. Some 535 residential buildings had been destroyed leaving around 250,000 homeless, Hamas officials said. Most of the displaced were in UN-designated shelters, others huddling in shattered streets.
US President Joe Biden despatched his top diplomat, Antony Blinken, to the region in a bid to avert a wider Middle East war.
Hamas’ armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, said it was still fighting inside Israel yesterday, and the Israeli military said a tank fired on three militants in a vehicle near Nir Am kibbutz, just outside northeast Gaza, and killed them.
Israel has deployed formations of tanks and armoured vehicles near Gaza in possible preparation for a ground offensive into the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.
Hamas’s armed wing said it had targeted the northern Israeli coastal city of Haifa with an R60 rocket. There were no immediate reports of casualties after sirens sounded in Haifa and nearby towns.
Dozens of Israeli fighter jets struck more than 200 targets in a neighbourhood of Gaza City overnight that the military said had been used by Hamas to launch its attacks.
Israel has put Gaza under ‘total siege’ to stop food and fuel reaching the enclave of 2.3 million people, many poor and dependent on aid. Hamas media said electricity went out after the only power station stopped working.
With Palestinian rescue workers overwhelmed, others in the crowded coastal strip searched for bodies in the rubble.
“I was sleeping here when the house collapsed on top of me,” one man cried as he and others used flashlights on the stairs of a building hit by missiles to find anyone trapped.
Israeli security forces have killed at least 27 Palestinians during clashes in the occupied West Bank since Saturday, as Palestinian factions called on people in the Palestinian territory to rise up following Hamas’ strike from Gaza.
In another sign of the crisis widening, Israeli shelling hit southern Lebanese towns after a rocket attack by the powerful Hizbollah in the fourth consecutive day of violence there.
Washington said it was talking with Israel and Egypt about safe passage for civilians from Gaza, with food in short supply.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that a spillover of the conflict in Israel must be avoided.
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