Heavy Israeli strikes on a house in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip killed and wounded dozens of people at dawn on Sunday. The escalating bombardment has killed 44 people in the past 24 hours, according to Palestinian health officials.
Footage circulating on social media shows about a dozen bodies wrapped in blankets and lying on the ground in a hospital, but the details of the photos could not yet go on to be verified. Residents said at least 30 people lived in the building that suffered the damage. The Palestinian official news agency WAFA and Hamas media put the death toll at 32. The Territory’s Ministry of Health has not yet confirmed that figure.
Apart from that, according to medics and relatives, on Sunday, a house in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City was hit by the Israeli airstrike, killing Wael Al-Khour, an official at the Ministry of Social Welfare, and seven other members of his family, including his wife and children, according to medics and relatives. The Israeli military said it was examining reports of the strike on Jabaliya and the Sabra neighbourhood.
Saturday’s strike also targeted Mawasi, a southern coastal neighbourhood where hundreds of thousands of people have taken refuge after the Israeli military ordered them to leave other areas it has bombed in its war with Hamas.
Health authorities say Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip has resulted in the deaths of more than 43,500 people, with another 10,000 believed dead and uncounted under rubble. Israel launched the offensive in response to an attack on 7 October 2023, when Hamas militants stormed the border and broke into Israeli settlements, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli calculations.
Qatar halts Israel-Gaza ceasefire mediation
The ceasefire and hostage release talks mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar have made no significant progress, and a Qatari official said Saturday that Doha would withdraw from the talks unless both sides made fuller commitments. The government has notified the US and Israel of Qatar’s termination of mediation efforts to end the conflict in the Gaza Strip because it no longer believes the parties are negotiating in good faith.
The negotiations have turned into a political game and its efforts to facilitate them have drawn criticism of its own, a diplomatic source with knowledge of the situation stated. The warring parties were focused on “political optics” rather than genuine security concerns, the diplomatic source said, and had tried to undermine the process “by backing out of some of the commitments.”
As long as there is a refusal to negotiate a deal in good faith, they cannot continue to mediate, the source said.
Qatar’s action was another major blow to tentative efforts to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip, which have failed to yield significant results since a temporary ceasefire and hostage release agreement almost a year ago. This is the second time Qatar has publicly warned saying it is not prepared to pursue stalled negotiations indefinitely. Doha reached out to Hamas commanders in April following allegations that Qatar was about to reconsider its mediation role.
They headed to Turkey, but weeks later Israel and the US government asked Qatar to bring them back to intensify the talks. The Qataris are trusted by senior figures on both sides and have a strong track record in mediation.
The Hamas office in Doha opened in 2012 at the request of the Obama administration. It has been a key channel of communication for the group for more than a decade, including during negotiations last year for a ceasefire agreement in Gaza and the release of more than 100 hostages. Following the November 2023 agreement, talks aimed at reaching a second accord have repeatedly broken down and Qatar has come under increasing criticism within Israel and from parts of the US political establishment for hosting Hamas.
A group of Republican US senators earlier this week appealed to Washington to seek the extradition of Hamas officials in Qatar and freeze their assets. The attacks, carried out at the US request, sparked outrage in Doha and contributed to Qatar’s decision to distance itself from Hamas and peace talks.
Western and regional politicians and diplomats in favour of Hamas remaining in Qatar have warned that if it is forced out, it will make it more difficult to engage with Hamas figures who are potentially more inclined to compromise and could allow more hostile states, such as Iran, to increase their influence over the group.
