The Israeli army said on Sunday that among the dead in the bombing of a humanitarian camp in Gaza that killed at least 90 people on Saturday was a Hamas official in the Khan Yunis area named Rafa Salama. He is one of the lieutenants of the head of the group’s armed wing in the Strip, Mohamed Deif, who was, as the Israeli authorities acknowledged, the real target of one of the worst attacks by the occupation troops against the population during the war. Salama was also accused of participating in the attack on Israeli territory in which Hamas killed some 1,200 people on October 7, according to the Israeli army to justify a bombing with so many deaths.
Despite all this, the Islamic Resistance Movement has stated that it will continue contacts with Israel to try to reach a ceasefire agreement. This was one of the great unknowns after the attack carried out in the area of Al Mawasi, which in southern Gaza is home to hundreds of thousands of people forcibly displaced by the Israeli military from different areas of the Palestinian enclave. Israeli sources confirmed to Kan public television that negotiations will continue in the coming days in Doha (Qatar).
A profile of the slain man published by the Israeli army adds that Salama was a key player in the high-profile 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who, after five years of captivity in the Strip, was eventually released in exchange for more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners who were eventually released from Israeli prisons in 2011. Also, military spokesmen add on the social network X, he played an important role in the expansion of the tunnel system used by the fundamentalists throughout the Strip. “His elimination would inflict significant damage on the military operation of the terrorist organization Hamas,” they add.
Meanwhile, the army has not stopped bombing other areas of the Strip. On Sunday, at least 12 people were killed after an attack in the Nuseirat camp on a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) that was hosting hundreds of displaced people. As on previous occasions, the army defended this attack because, they claim, these facilities were being used by Hamas members. “Before the attack, many efforts were made to minimize the damage to civilians, including the use of precise weapons and more intelligence. Hamas is systematically violating international law, while cruelly taking advantage of civilian institutions and using the population as a human shield,” they said in a statement.
The head of Israel’s internal secret services (Shin Bet), Ronen Bar, has explained that the attempted assassination of Mohammed Deif was the result of a “precise intelligence” operation, the daily reports. HaaretzBar added during a meeting with the military on the war situation that 25 Hamas members who participated in the massacre on October 7 have been killed in Gaza this week.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged on Saturday night that he was not sure that Deif had been killed in the attack that he himself supervised from a distance. He also did not confirm the death of any Hamas member in his appearance before Israeli media in Tel Aviv. He did want to make clear, beyond what may be being negotiated in Doha or Cairo, that his objective remains to eliminate any military capacity of Hamas, despite the doubts that achieving this generates among his own military, and to bring back as many hostages alive as he can.
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“One way or another,” Israel will eliminate all Hamas leaders, the prime minister said. He also said his army would retain control of the so-called Philadelphia corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, although some negotiators have reported that alternatives are being considered.
Illegal attacks
Israel and Hamas accuse each other of using civilians as human shields, which is contrary to international law. Even with Hamas elements located, as Israel argues, international humanitarian law requires action under the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution. This means that attacks are illegal where civilians and militants are not distinguished; where the proportion of civilians is greater than that of combatants; and, furthermore, such operations must be carried out at a time when they are likely to cause the least harm to the population. Bombings such as Saturday’s are no exception and follow a pattern that marks the line in which the Jewish state’s army usually operates in Gaza.
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