«The Gaza Strip must be demilitarized and only the Israeli army can guarantee this» . Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this when referring to the fate of the Palestinian enclave at the end of the war. "I will not accept - he explained - any agreement that provides for an international force in the place" .
The Israeli army has firmly entrenched itself with tanks and troops in Khan Yunis , a key Hamas city in the south of the Strip, widening the offensive. At the same time, it took control of two other strongholds of the Islamic faction in Jabalya, in the north, and Shuyaia, east of Gaza City, in the center of the Palestinian enclave.
Since the end of the truce, fighting has intensified in the south, while the UN Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths has raised the alarm about a situation that has now become "apocalyptic" . Civilians, he denounced, are forced to make "one impossible choice after another in a territory where nowhere is safe and no one is safe ."
A hell that also affects the Israeli hostages, who according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "will be difficult to bring home".
There are 138 Israeli hostages in the hands of Hamas, and disturbing circumstances emerge regarding those already freed. « We know that some children abducted by Hamas have been sexually abused . They are not among the little ones we are treating here, they are in another of the medical facilities that took care of the minor hostages after their release", says Omer Niv, deputy director and pediatrician of the Schneider children's medical center, the largest pediatric hospital of Israel and the Middle East, where 19 small hostages released after 50 days of captivity in Gaza are being treated. «They are like ghosts. They suffer from severe depression to an extent never seen before, they are sad, they walk slowly, they don't want to leave the room, they burst into tears if they see a stranger, they are afraid, they chew their food slowly, they fear every noise ."
Women and girls were also reported to have been raped. Joe Biden 's attack was harsh, urging the whole world to " strongly and unequivocally condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists , who have inflicted as much pain and suffering as possible on women and girls." .
(Unioneonline/L)