Israel’s deadly attacks on Gaza continue as Netanyahu faces growing fury

Tel Aviv — Anger at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after killing of six Israeli hostages whose bodies were found in a tunnel in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, the death toll continued to rise on Wednesday, bloodshed in Palestinian territory continued. Anger at Israel’s longtime leader spilled out into a third straight night of mass protests, with tens of thousands of increasingly desperate Israelis demanding that Netanyahu agree to a ceasefire with Hamas to bring the remaining 101 captives home. About 75 are still believed to be alive.

“This man is a liar, a compulsive liar,” protester Yair Katz raged to CBS News Tuesday night. “He’s a fraud and a liar, and he’s a criminal.”

NOTE: The report includes a photo of a dead baby that may be disturbing to readers.

Like many Israelis, Katz believes Netanyahu is putting his political future — which depends on the survival of his fragile ruling coalition with far-right parties that reject a ceasefire with Hamas — ahead of the fate of the hostages.

Protesters have vowed to continue demonstrating until Netanyahu agrees to a ceasefire and releases the hostages, but the veteran politician has so far refused to budge. he remained stubbornly rebelliousIn a speech to his nation on Monday evening, he insisted he would not “bow down to pressure”.

Netanyahu has refused to accept any agreement that calls for Israeli forces to withdraw from the Philadelphia Corridor, a narrow strip of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. He says Israel must maintain a military presence there to prevent Hamas from rearming through smuggling tunnels across the border — an alleged flow of goods that Egypt and Hamas deny.

Both Egypt and Hamas have insisted on a full Israeli withdrawal from the corridor, and Hamas says it agreed to an earlier ceasefire proposal backed by President Biden that included this provision, but Netanyahu later changed his terms.

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It was unclear Wednesday how much flexibility Netanyahu’s government would be willing to show on the issue during the ongoing negotiations. Some reports suggest it could be part of a second phase of a ceasefire agreement, but others suggest the prime minister is unwilling to budge.

At a news conference Tuesday evening, former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the Philadelphia Corridor does not pose an “existential threat” to the country and should not stand in the way of a hostage-release agreement. Gantz is a vocal critic of Netanyahu, but It wasn’t the first time there seemed to be a misunderstanding between senior Israeli military commanders — current and former — and the prime minister.

On Wednesday, it became clear that unless Netanyahu changes his mind, the war will not end.

As the United Nations races against time to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children against polio epidemic in Gaza – some emergency vaccination campaign for which Israel agreed a series of limited pauses in military operations as Israeli forces continued to attack several areas in the devastated Palestinian territory.

Among the places hit by attacks in recent days has been the relatively safe central Gaza strip, around the cities of Deir al-Balah and Gaza City. It was there, in the once-bustling capital of the enclave, that nine-year-old Tala Abu Ajwan was killed Tuesday by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike.

When she was pronounced dead at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, she was still wearing her pink roller skates.

Her family shared photos from her life before the war, showing a happy little girl whose life was suddenly cut short as she played with friends. Local medics said she was among nine people killed when Israeli rockets struck an apartment building next to a park in Gaza City.

CBS News reached out to the Israeli military for comment on the purpose of the attack.

In a statement largely mirroring others issued by the Israel Defense Forces since the beginning of the war, the IDF said Tuesday that a separate attack hit a Hamas “command and control center” in a building in Gaza City used “to direct and carry out terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel.”

“Numerous steps were taken prior to the attack to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians, including the use of precision munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence,” the IDF said in a statement, repeating frequent accusations that Hamas “systematically violates international law and operates within civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.”

Ajwan’s mother was left inconsolable, joining the families of nearly 41,000 Palestinians killed since the beginning of the war, according to health officials in Hamas-controlled territory, who do not distinguish between civilian and combat casualties.

The Gaza war was sparked by an unprecedented Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, in which militants killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. Many of those prisoners were released in exchange of prisoners during the only short ceasefire so far in November.

In the face of so much suffering, nearly 11 months of brutal violence and a painful, ongoing hostage crisis, the Biden administration said it is now working to develop a new ceasefire and hostage release proposal to end the war.

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