Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel is establishing a new security corridor across the Gaza Strip to pressure Hamas, suggesting it would cut off the southern city of Rafah, which Israel has ordered evacuated, from the rest of the Palestinian territory. The announcement came after Netanyahu’s defense minister said Israel would seize large areas of Gaza and add them to its so-called security zones. A wave of Israeli strikes overnight into Wednesday, meanwhile, killed more than 40 Palestinians, including several women and children, according to Palestinian health officials.
One Israeli strike killed at least 17 people in a United Nations building, previously a clinic, that had been converted into a shelter for more than 700 displaced people. Israel said it struck Hamas militants in a “command and control center.”Israel has vowed to escalate the nearly 18-month war with Hamas until the militant group returns dozens of remaining hostages, disarms and leaves the territory. Israel ended a ceasefire in March and has cut off all food, fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza — a tactic that rights groups say is a war crime.
Meanwhile, UN says Gaza is the world’s most dangerous place for humanitarian workersThat’s after more than 408 humanitarian aid workers have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s war against Hamas, according to U.N. deputy humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya.She spoke Wednesday at the U.N. Security Council alongside U.N. security chief Gilles Michaud, with Msuya asking the council for answers, justice and an end to the killings. Michaud lamented that, “Impunity for attacks on humanitarian personnel has become the new normal. A pervasive normal. An accepted normal.
”Both officials cited what they said were two recent Israeli attacks — a strike on a clearly marked U.N. building on March 19 that killed one U.N. staff member and injured six others, and an attack March 23 on ambulances and other marked vehicles that killed a U.N. staff member and eight Palestinian Red Crescent and six civil defense staff. Netanyahu says Israel is establishing a new security corridor across GazaPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it as the Morag corridor, using the name of a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis. That suggests the military-controlled corridor would run between the two cities in southern Gaza.“We are increasing the pressure step by step, so that they will give us our hostages. And the more they do not give, the more the pressure will increase until they do,” Netanyahu said in a statement issued Wednesday.
Last month, the Israeli military retook control of the Netzarim corridor, which bisects northern Gaza from the south. Israeli forces had withdrawn from the corridor as part of the ceasefire. Netanyahu takes witness stand again in his trial for alleged corruptionIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu testified again on Wednesday in his ongoing trial for alleged corruption. Netanyahu is the first sitting Israeli leader to take the stand as a criminal defendant. He denies wrongdoing, saying the charges are a witch hunt orchestrated by a hostile media and a biased legal system out to topple his lengthy rule.
Israeli authorities are also conducting separate investigations into whether the Gulf state of Qatar — which has close ties with Hamas — hired Netanyahu advisers to launch an influence campaign in Israel. The corruption trial testimony is another low point for Israel’s longest-serving leader, who also faces an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Netanyahu is expected to travel to Hungary later Wednesday for a meeting with the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, despite the international arrest warrant. An Israeli strike on a UN building sheltering Palestinian families kills 15, Gaza hospital says Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said the building was previously a medical clinic but had been converted into a shelter with more 700 displaced people from 160 families living there.
