Baerbock in Israel – Israeli soldiers enter Gaza clinic
Published: Thursday, Feb 15th 2024, 22:30
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During her visit to Israel, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called for protective corridors to be set up for the civilian population in the north before attacks on Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip. It is important to her that the international community does everything it can to ensure that the one million people in the city are brought to safety, said the Green politician on Thursday.
Baerbock also called on the countries in the region to exert pressure on the Islamist organization Hamas to surrender and release the hostages. The Gaza war was triggered by the terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas and other extremist Palestinian organizations on 7 October. They killed 1,200 people and took around 250 others hostage in the Gaza Strip.
According to Israel's army, it began an operation in a clinic in Chan Junis in the south of the Gaza Strip on Thursday. Soldiers entered the Nasser Hospital to recover the bodies of hostages, according to the military. Dozens of suspects had been arrested, said Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari on Thursday evening. Some had been involved in the massacre in Israel. From interrogations with the suspects and thanks to statements from the released hostages, the army was able to confirm that people kidnapped from Israel were being held on the clinic premises. There was also information that the bodies of hostages had been found there.
Hamas was using hospitals as terror bases, with members of the Islamist organization hiding there among 400 patients and thousands of people seeking protection, Hagari continued. "We don't enter hospitals without a reason." Special forces are currently searching the clinic. Hagari had previously spoken of a "precise and limited operation". None of the information could initially be verified.
The United Nations Human Rights Office raised accusations against Israel after the operation. "The operation appears to be part of a pattern: Israeli forces attacking vital civilian infrastructure, especially hospitals," said UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani on Thursday evening in Geneva. Even if Israel argued that a hospital had been used by the enemy, the military had to act carefully and proportionately according to international law.
Israeli army spokesman Hagari emphasized that the military had acted in accordance with international law in all operations in hospitals in the Gaza Strip and would continue to do so. "We have no intention of disrupting the operation of the hospital."
Baerbock described Hamas as the "fundamental evil" of the current situation. Hamas members had raped women in Israel on October 7 and "murdered small children in the most brutal way". The terrorists had also brought much suffering to children and families in the Gaza Strip. 17,000 children are currently without parents in the Palestinian territory. The suffering must be ended, said the Foreign Minister. "That is our human task."
Baerbock also spoke out in favor of significantly more aid deliveries to the Palestinian territory - specifically 500 trucks a day. This is the number of trucks carrying humanitarian goods that entered the area every day before the war began. She also called for more border crossings to be opened.
On Thursday, the Green politician also met Israeli President Izchak Herzog, Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz and relatives of the hostages held in the Gaza Strip.
There are currently 134 people still held by Hamas, but Israel estimates that at least 30 of them are no longer alive. Negotiations in Cairo on the release of further hostages in return for a ceasefire in the Gaza war and the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails have not yet resulted in a breakthrough.
Israel is demanding that Hamas give in before further negotiations. His country will not give in to the "delusional demands" of the Islamist organization, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to Israeli media, he is refusing to send a delegation back to Cairo, where the talks between the international mediators were supposed to continue. Relatives were stunned and spoke of a "death sentence" for the hostages.
The situation in northern Israel on the border with Lebanon continues to escalate. After a 20-year-old female soldier was killed in a rocket strike at a military base in Safed in the north of the country on Wednesday, the Israeli army attacked targets in Lebanon on Thursday night. Ten people were killed in an attack on a building in Nabatea. According to the local hospital, seven of them were civilians. The Israeli military claimed to have killed a high-ranking commander of Hezbollah's elite unit, his deputy and another member of the Shia militia.
©Keystone/SDA
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