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15-07-2024
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was still not clear whether Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif and another senior commander were killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza on Saturday but he vowed to pursue Israel’s war aims to the end.
“Either way, we will get to the whole of the leadership of Hamas,” he told a televised news conference, adding that chances of an agreement to return Israeli hostages would be improved by increasing military pressure on Hamas.
The brief news conference was called after the Israeli military said it had conducted a strike based on what it said was precise intelligence, targeting Deif and senior Hamas commander Rafa Salama in the city of Khan Younis.
Palestinian health officials said the strike killed at least 90 Palestinians and wounded as many as 300 in the designated humanitarian zone of Al Mawasi, in the heaviest loss of life in weeks.
The Israeli military said the strike had hit a military compound but said it could not confirm casualty numbers.
Netanyahu, speaking as demonstrators in Tel Aviv demanded more action to bring Israeli and foreign hostages back from Gaza, said that military pressure on Hamas was the best way of reaching an agreement to return the hostages seized by Hamas fighters during the Oct. 7 attack.
He said he would not compromise on Israel’s basic demands for a deal.
“I haven’t moved a millimetre from the framework that President Biden presented,” he said but “I am also not letting Hamas move a millimetre.”
Israel said the attack was aimed at killing the Hamas military chief Mohammad Deif and his aide. It remained unclear whether Deif or his deputy were killed in the strike that left at least 90 Palestinians dead and 300 wounded, according to Gaza health ministry.
“The Palestinian presidency condemns the slaughter and holds the Israeli government fully responsible, also the U.S. administration that provides all kinds of support to the occupation and its crimes,” said Abbas in a statement published by his office.
Abbas, whose authority maintains a limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, assigned some blame to Hamas, whose Oct 7 attack inside Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others were abducted, kicked off the nine-month war in Gaza.
“The presidency sees that by escaping national unity, and providing free pretexts to the occupation state, the Hamas movement is a partner in bearing legal, moral and political responsibility for the continuation of the Israeli war of genocide in Gaza Strip,” the statement said.
Hamas has run Gaza since its 2007 takeover of the coastal territory from Abbas loyalists.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told media Abbas’s statement meant the Palestinian Authority “has chosen to be in the same trench with the occupation”.
“Such an attitude will not succeed in blackmailing the resistance or pressuring it,” said Abu Zuhri.
Efforts by Arab mediators, led by Egypt, have so far failed to reconcile power struggles between the two sides. Another Hamas leader, Basem Naim, who took part in previous reconciliation talks with Abbas’s Fatah faction, said Abbas was to blame for the failure to reach a unity deal.
Naim said Abbas’s comments made him and his authority “partner to the Zionist enemy and its crimes not only in Gaza but also in all of the Palestinian land.” (Int’l News Desk)
