Almost at the same time that Israel bombed Gaza again yesterday, they opened the big green doors that give access to the esplanade of the Mosques of Jerusalem, the third holiest place in Islam. The usual controls these days in the Old Town are multiplied by ten every Friday to avoid the slightest incident. "Muslim?", ask the agents, stocked at every corner as if they were military, and ask for documentation or search at the slightest doubt. On the Islamic holy day, like Saturday, access to the esplanade is prohibited for non-Muslims.
After noon, the jumu'ah, a special prayer on Fridays, floods through the loudspeakers the adjacent Wailing Wall, where at that time many Jews pray on the eve of the Sabbath. In front of the wall, it doesn't look like these holy lands are at war, except for the detector arch and the scanner that you have to pass to enter it for too many years now.
When three Muslims with prayer rugs on their shoulders return from praying the Jumu'ah at the Al-Aqsa Mosque through the alleys of the Muslim Quarter, the Arab television stations have not yet begun to broadcast the unbearable images that went yesterday stop the resumption of war, after a seven-day truce, during which Hamas released 105 hostages, and Israel, 240 prisoners who, as it is said in the West Bank, will soon return to prison.
Khan Iunis and Rafah, in the south of the strip, were the cities most severely hit by Israeli drone strikes. Television images showed many injured people being rescued from the rubble or already in hospitals, where several small children, covered in blood and dust, shared a bed amid cries of pain and despair. The Ministry of Health of Gaza spoke of at least 178 deaths. After the truce, the death toll is again in a tragic upward movement. Close to 15,000, a third of whom are minors.
The Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, boarded one of the helicopters that participated in yesterday's attack. “The results are impressive; Hamas only understands force," declared Gallant. The return to fighting included heavy ground clashes with tanks and soldiers fighting street to street, according to army footage. In turn, the Palestinian guerrillas also launched rockets against Israel, which were intercepted by the anti-missile shield. Alarms sounded again in the central area of the country.
In the midst of the offensive, the spokesman for the Gaza government - in the hands of Hamas -, Ismail Al-Thawabta, appeared in the street, accusing Israel of committing "genocide" and asking international organizations to help protect the hospitals of the strip Al-Thawabta assured that the humanitarian aid received during the ceasefire barely covered "one percent of the population's needs". In this sense, the end of the truce also meant that Israel prohibited the entry of trucks with food, material and fuel, which were paralyzed at the Rafah crossing, on the border with Egypt.
In the morning, the army had ordered the evacuation of Khan Iunis and other areas of the central Gaza area, and asked its residents to go further south, towards Rafah, a city that was also bombed. Regarding the forced displacements in the strip, which affect 80% of a population of two million, the Reuters agency published yesterday that Israel has communicated to Egypt, Jordan and the Emirates that, after the war, it has a plan to create a buffer zone in Gaza, which would mean permanently occupying a portion of the enclave and shrinking the Palestinian territory. "Israel wants this buffer zone between Gaza and Israel from north to south to prevent Hamas or other militants from infiltrating or attacking Israel," a senior security official from one of those three countries told Reuters, without to identify. This plan generated unease in the Arab countries.
On the other hand, The Wall Street Journal reported another plan that Israel would have prepared, in this case to assassinate the leadership of Hamas, whose main leaders are in Qatar, but also in Lebanon or Turkey. According to the report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already ordered the Mossad to execute the plan as soon as the war ends.
Netanyahu announced the end of the ceasefire with a statement saying that "the terrorist organization Hamas-ISIS" had violated the truce agreement. Although there had already been several breaches by Hamas on Thursday, the prime minister said that the trigger was that the Islamist group did not provide before seven in the morning yesterday - when the truce expired - the list of the hostages he had to release on Friday.
Even so, the White House assured that there are still negotiations, with Qatar and Egypt as intermediaries, for a new ceasefire.
