Netanyahu ignores requests from Macron and the United Nations and says he will only stop when he eliminates Hamas (the War in the Middle East, day 272)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this Tuesday that he does not want to “succumb to the siren song of defeatism”, insisting that the war in the Gaza Strip will end when all its objectives have been achieved. ados.

Israel promised to “annihilate” Hamas, which has held power in Gaza since 2007, following the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist group on Israeli soil, on October 7, 2023, which caused the death of around 1,200 people, most of them civilians.

Israel also wants to release the hostages taken by Hamas: of the 251 people kidnapped during the attack, 116 remain hostages in Gaza, 42 of whom were killed, according to the Israeli army.

Reacting to anonymous statements that, he said, were reproduced in the North American newspaper The New York Times, indicating that Israel was ready to end the war without having achieved its objectives, Netanyahu said that this “will not happen” .

Also this Tuesday, the head of the Israeli General Staff said that Israeli troops killed at least 900 Palestinian militiamen in Rafah, in the extreme south of the Gaza Strip, where they have been carrying out an offensive for more than a month.

“More than 900 terrorists killed, including commanders, at least one battalion commander, many company commanders and many operatives,” Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi told Israeli troops during a visit to an advanced logistics base in Gaza Strip.

The chief of staff also warned that this operation “will be long” because its objective is to destroy the entire infrastructure of the Islamist group Hamas present in the city that borders Egypt. “It takes time, that’s why this is a long campaign, because we want to leave Rafah without infrastructure,” he said.

From abroad, French President Emmanuel Macron asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to launch a “new military operation” near Khan Younèse Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, reported the presidential office.

Macron “expressed his opposition to any new Israeli operation near Khan Younèse of Rafah, which will only increase the human cost in an already catastrophic humanitarian situation”, said the Elisha Palace.

The French president reiterated to the Israeli prime minister “the extreme urgency of establishing an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip” and called for the plan presented by US President Joe Biden to be implemented “without further delay”.

The UN also warned today that evacuations on “such a massive scale” as the one the Israeli army ordered on Monday in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, only increase “the suffering of civilians and humanitarian needs”.

“People are faced with the impossible choice of having to move, many of them for the second or third time, to areas that have almost no space or services, or of remaining in areas where they know there will be there is heavy fighting”, lamented Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, at a press conference.

The United Nations estimates that up to 250,000 people will be affected by the order given by Israeli forces to civilians to leave Al-Qarara, Bani Souhaila and other cities near Khan Yunis.