Key Points
- Emmanuel Macron says the fight against terror must not mean 'to flatten Gaza' or indiscriminately attack civilians.
- Israel is insisting all remaining women and infirm men among hostages be released.
- Nearly 20,000 people have been killed in Gaza according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that fighting terrorism did not mean "to flatten Gaza", referring to Israel's response to Hamas' 7 October attack.
"We cannot let the idea take root that an efficient fight against terrorism implies to flatten Gaza or attack civilian populations indiscriminately," Macron told the France 5 broadcaster.
He called on Israel "to stop this response because it is not appropriate, because all lives are worth the same and we defend them".
While acknowledging "Israel's right to defend itself and fight terror", Macron said France called for the protection of civilians and "a truce leading to a humanitarian ceasefire".
Palestinians search for bodies and survivors in the rubble of a residential building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip. Source: AAP / Fatima Shbair
Hamas leader makes rare Egypt visit amid ceasefire talks
The leader of Hamas paid his first visit to Egypt for more than a month on Wednesday, a rare personal intervention in diplomacy amid what a source described as intensive talks on a new ceasefire to let aid reach Gaza and free more hostages.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who normally resides in Qatar, typically wades publicly into diplomacy only when progress seems likely.
He last travelled to Egypt in early November before the announcement of the only deal on a ceasefire in the Gaza war so far, a week-long pause that saw the release of about 110 of 240 hostages taken by Hamas in its 7 October attack on Israel.
Islamic Jihad, a smaller Palestinian militant group that is also holding hostages in Gaza, said its leader would also visit Egypt in coming days to discuss a possible end to the conflict.
A source briefed on negotiations said envoys were intensively discussing which of the hostages still held by Palestinian Islamist militants in Gaza could be freed in a new truce and what prisoners Israel might release in return.
Israel was insisting all remaining women and infirm men among hostages be released, the source said, declining to be identified. Palestinians convicted of serious offences could be on the list of prisoners to be freed by Israel.
Later on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden said he did not expect a second Israel-Hamas hostage release deal to be struck soon, though he added in remarks to reporters: "We're pushing."
A on a bid to boost aid to the Gaza Strip has again been delayed at the request of the US, diplomats said.
Nearly 20,000 deaths have been confirmed by the Gazan health ministry, with several thousand more bodies believed to be trapped under rubble. Israel says Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people on 7 October.
The war between Hamas and Israel is the latest escalation in a long-standing conflict.
Hamas is a Palestinian political and military group, which has governed the Gaza Strip since the most recent elections in 2006.
Hamas’s stated aim is to establish a Palestinian state and stop the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, illegal under international law.
Hamas in its entirety is listed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union and seven other countries, including Australia. But the UN Assembly rejected classifying Hamas as a terrorist group in a 2018 vote.
In 2021 the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian territories dating back to 2014, including the recent attacks of both Israel and Hamas.
Netanyahu defiant on ceasefire calls
There remains a huge gulf between the two sides' publicly stated positions on any halt to fighting.
Hamas rejects any further temporary pause and says it will discuss only a permanent ceasefire. Israel has ruled that out and says it will agree only limited humanitarian pauses until Hamas is defeated.
"Hamas' stance remains: they don't have a desire for humanitarian pauses. Hamas wants a complete end to the Israeli war on Gaza," a Palestinian official said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated that the war would end only with Hamas eradicated, all hostages freed and Gaza posing no more threat to Israel.
"Whoever thinks we will stop is detached from reality...all Hamas terrorists, from the first to the last, are dead men walking," he said in a statement on Wednesday.
Israel has faced increasing pressure from its Western allies to curb a military onslaught in Gaza that has laid waste to much of the densely populated coastal enclave.
Washington, Israel's closest ally, has publicly called over the past week for it to scale down its all-out war into a more targeted campaign against Hamas leaders and end what Biden has called "indiscriminate bombing".
Palestinians evacuate from a site hit by an Israeli bombardment on Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, 20 December. Source: AAP / Fatima Shbair
On Wednesday, the Houthis' leader warned they would if their forces were targeted by Washington.
Inside Gaza, Reuters saw wounded victims of Israeli bombing, including at least two small children covered in blood and dust, carried into the Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis. At the hospital morgue, women wearing black abaya robes wailed by bodies laid out in black bags and white shrouds.
Since the last truce collapsed on 1 December, the war has entered a more intensive phase, with ground combat previously confined to the northern half of the Gaza Strip now spread across the length of the territory.
International aid groups say Gaza's 2.3 million people have been driven to the brink of catastrophe by wholesale destruction that has driven 90 per cent of them from their homes and left many malnourished and gravely short of clean water and medical care.
In the north, which Israeli forces claimed to have largely subdued last month, fighting has been fiercer than ever. Flames and smoke towered into the sky as seen from across the boundary fence in Israel, as Israeli warplanes pounded the area at dawn.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli forces had besieged its ambulance depot in Jabalia, a northern settlement that has been embattled for weeks. There are 127 people in the facility including workers, displaced people and wounded.
In the south, where most civilians are now sheltering after fleeing other areas, there has been intense fighting around the centre of Khan Younis, which Israeli forces have partly stormed.
"All night, the bombing didn't stop. Their focus now is Khan Younis. People here have to deal with two wars all the time, bombing and hunger," said Samir Ali, 45, a father of five from Gaza City in the north now sheltering in Khan Younis.
Hamas' armed wing said a number of Israeli soldiers were killed and wounded when militants detonated a booby-trapped shaft of a tunnel east of the city.
Israel says it does what it can to shield civilians, including warning them in advance of strikes, and that Hamas is to blame for harm that befalls them by operating in their midst. Hamas denies the accusation.
