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International efforts to intensify the largest military confrontation between Israel and Palestinian militants in seven years intensified ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on Sunday after another night of fighting.
The Security Council, chaired by China, will meet in New York later on Sunday.
The UN, Egypt and Qatar are negotiating a brief ceasefire to get fuel for Gaza’s only power plant in the Mediterranean enclave, blocked by Israelis since 2007, two Western diplomats told the Financial Times. The Gaza Strip, home to 2 million people, will run out of fuel by Monday at the latest, according to an Israeli official.
Israel’s security cabinet is also due to meet on Sunday to discuss Hamas ’offer of a long-term truce, an Israeli government aide told FT. The military wants the Palestinian group to return the bodies of two soldiers. At stake is the fate of two Israeli civilians detained in Gaza, the aide said.
Meanwhile, the bombing continued non-stop for a seventh day. The Israeli army said it had hit the houses of Hamas leader Yahyeh Sinwar and his brother. Sinwar was released from an Israeli prison in 2011 during a prisoner exchange and has since risen to the top of the Hamas leadership leadership. An Israeli official described him as “the biggest threat.”
At around midnight on Saturday, Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv and on Sunday morning at cities near the Gaza Strip.
The death toll in Gaza amounted to 174 people, including 76 women and children, Gaza health officials said.
Israel has reported ten deaths, including two children, local doctors said.
“We are still in the middle of this operation, it is not over yet and this operation will continue for as long as necessary,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday night.
Netanyahu defended the largest military campaign against Hamas since the 2014 Israeli war with the Islamist group as a “just and moral war.” He added: “We are doing everything, but everything, to avoid or limit as much as possible the damage to civilians.”
His comments came after Israel destroyed the residential and office block of Al-Jalaa that housed the U.S. news agency Associated Press and Qatar television channel Al Jazeera. The bombing raised “concerns about the safety and security of journalists” and “reinforced the need to ensure their protection,” U.S. President Joe Biden told Netanyahu on Saturday in a phone call, according to the White House.
“In recent years. . . UN Security Council resolutions have not been seriously implemented and, in particular, the Palestinian right to build an independent state has been continually violated, “said Foreign Minister Wang Yi. China, according to Chinese state media.
In the occupied West Bank, which was relatively quiet until Israeli security forces killed 11 Palestinians on Friday, Arab protesters burned tires and threw Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers during night protests. The territory, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 war, is home to Fatah, Hamas’ rival Palestinian faction, and is home to some 650,000 Jewish settlers, including at least 200,000 in East Jerusalem.
Hamas has launched nearly 2,500 rockets into Israel © Getty Images
Israel is also trying to quell the riots facing Jews and Arabs across the country, arresting about 900 people.
Israeli Arabs make up about a fifth of the Jewish state’s population, carry Israeli passports and vote in the country’s elections. But they say they suffer discrimination and are a target for right-wing Israeli politicians.
The crisis erupted after weeks of tension in and around Jerusalem when police used rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades against Palestinian protesters on the grounds of al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site. . More than 600 Palestinians were injured.
The al-Aqsa Mosque is located in an enclosure – known to Muslims as the Haram ash-Sharif, or noble shrine, and by Jews as a Temple Mount – that is sacred to both religions.
Hamas entered the fighting on Monday, firing rockets at Israel and demanding that Jewish settlers in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem stop harassing Arab residents awaiting eviction orders from Israeli courts.
Additional reports from Katrina Manson in Washington and Primrose Riordan in Hong Kong
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