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‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 293: Palestinians slam Netanyahu speech to Congress as U.S. officials say a ceasefire deal is close

Qassam MuaddiJuly 24, 2024

Mourners recite a prayer over the bodies of members of the Qadih family, before their burial in Khuzaa in the southern Gaza Strip, following an overnight Israeli strike that hit their house in Bani Suheila, reportedly killing two children, their father, uncle, paternal grandparents and severely injuring their mother, on July 21, 2024. (Photo: Abdullah Abu Al-Khair / APA Images)

Casualties 

• 39,157 + killed* and at least 90,403 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 28,903 Palestinians have been fully identified, and around 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.*
• 589+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank including eastern Jerusalem. These include 138 children.**
• Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
• 687 Israeli soldiers have been recognized as killed, and 4096 as wounded by the Israeli army since October 7.***

* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on July 25, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.

** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health on July 24, this is the latest figure.

*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000 including at least 8,000 permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7, as of June 18.

Key Developments 

• Israel killed 308 Palestinians and wounded 676 across Gaza since Monday, July 22, raising the death toll since October 7 to 39,157 and the number of wounded to 90,403, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
• Israel continues its offensive on Khan Younis for the fourth day, detonating residential buildings.
• The Gaza branch of the Palestinian health ministry published a list of names of more than 20,900 children made orphans by Israeli assault since October 7.
• The U.S. State Department stated that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA “is not a terrorist organization” in response to the Israeli Knesset passing of three laws to ban the agency, last week.
• The U.S. State Department also affirms that it continues to withhold funding to UNRWA over Israel’s claims that a number of the agency’s employees were members of Hamas.
• Human Rights Watch says that there is no alternative to UNRWA to relieve Palestinian refugees, and calls U.S. and UK’s freezing of UNRWA funds “shameful.”
• Israeli families of captives in Gaza say that U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan told them that a prisoner exchange deal is “very close.”
• Israel kills 11 Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem since Monday.
• Three Israelis were wounded in a shooting attack near Qalqilya, north of the West Bank.

Palestinians slam Congress cheering on Netanyahu speech

Palestinian leaders reacted to Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the US Congress, criticizing the applause it received from congress members.

The member of Hamas’ politburo, Osama Hamdan, said in an interview with Al-Jazeera that Netanyahu’s speech was an “expression of crisis and an understanding that America is changing”. Hamdan also said that the speech included many lies, especially regarding the release of hostages and the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and that Netanyahu asked the U.S. lawmakers “to support the last colonial case in the world.”

In response to Netanyahu’s remarks during his speech that he aims to create a moderate Palestinian administration for the Gaza Strip after the war, Hamdan said the “Palestinians know how to run themselves and don’t need Netanyahu to teach them.” Hamdan also expressed his astonishment to see that “many congress members stood up for Netanyahu as he was insulting their own electors.”

For its part, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad – PIJ said in a statement that “Netanyahu proved in his speech that his fragile entity extracts its existence from the shedding of blood and lives from waging wars and inciting nations against each other,” in reference to Netanyahu’s focus in his speech on fighting Iran.

The PIJ added that “by saying that his army didn’t kill a single civilian in Rafah and that it is not practicing starvation and genocide in the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu mocked the entire world and showed that he lies professionally without shame.”

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – PFLP in a statement said that “the speech of war criminal Netanyahu was a marketing of lies in an attempt to justify his coward army’s crimes.”

The PFLP added that “Netanyahu’s invitation by congress members proves that it [the congress] is a house for assassins and organized terror,” noting that “the warm applause for Netanyahu’s speech by congress members incarnates the decadence of U.S. politics.” The statement described the boycott of Netanyahu’s speech by some 136 congress members as “an understanding by them [congress members] that he [Netanyahu] is a repudiated liar who wanted to use the speech to his personal benefit.”

For his part, the Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouthi, called Netanyahu’s speech “a disgusting speech in a session of shame to the U.S. Congress.” In response to Netanyahu’s description during his speech of the current war as being “between civilization and barbarism,”, Barghouthi said that “the civilization he [Netanyahu] speaks about is nothing but the decadence which has led to the killing of 48,000 Palestinians, including those under the rubble, and the murder of 17,000 Palestinian children.”

Barghouthi noted that “the honorable congress members who are not submitted to the money of the Israeli lobby boycotted the speech.” Barghouthi commented on Netanyahu’s speech vision of the post-war, saying that “his vision is to create a handful of collaborators with the occupation which he calls a civil administration, and to fight all Palestinians, and to re-engineer the Palestinian mind and personality, which is nothing but a fast and clear turn to fascism, because only fascists think in this way.”

Reported progress in ceasefire talks, Israel kills dozens in attacks across Gaza

A high-ranking U.S. official said that “negotiations for a prisoner exchange deal are in their final stages,” and that “the remaining obstacles are bridgeable and there will be more meetings aimed at reaching a deal between Israel and Hamas over the next week,” according to Reuters. Meanwhile, Axios reported, ahead of the Biden-Netanyahu meeting that the U.S. president will urge the Israeli PM to conclude a ceasefire deal.

Simultaneously, the families of Israeli captives in Gaza said that “Israel has to return the remaining 115 captives home, and that can only be done through a deal.” The families added in a statement that “Netanyahu has to send the negotiating team to Qatar without delay to conclude the deal.” The Israeli army radio, for its part, quoted the mother of one of the Israeli captives saying that the U.S. national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, told them that the deal was “very close.”

Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces continued to conduct air strikes and artillery shells on Palestinians, killing around 40 civilians in the past 24 hours. On Wednesday, an Israeli air strike targeted a family home made of zinc plates, killing three women and a young girl and wounding ten people. In Beit Lahia, north of the strip, artillery shells killed six local residents, while, at least 30 Palestinians were reported dead in the Israeli continuous bombing of the eastern parts of Khan Younis.