Gaza: Arab and Iranian leaders meeting in Riyadh, Macron “urges Israel to stop” the bombings

Triggered by the bloody October 7 attack on Israeli soil, the war between Israel and Hamas entered its 36th day on Saturday. The Israeli army launched a ground operation on October 27 in the Gaza Strip, where 2.4 million Palestinians live. Le Figaro takes stock of the conflict situation.

In an interview with the BBC broadcast Friday evening, President Emmanuel Macron “urged Israel to stop” the bombings killing civilians in Gaza. “We share (Israel’s) pain. And we share their desire to get rid of terrorism.” But “de facto, today, civilians are being bombed. These babies, these women, these elderly people are being bombed and killed.” There is “no justification” and “no legitimacy for this. We therefore urge Israel to stop,” he stressed.

The director of al-Shifa hospital claimed to have received “around fifty bodies after the bombing on Friday morning of a school” in Gaza City, where many displaced people are sheltering. In the morning, the Hamas government announced that 13 Palestinians had been killed in an Israeli strike on the hospital complex, the largest in Gaza.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said shooting by elite Israeli soldiers on Al-Quds hospital left at least one dead and 20 injured, amid intense fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas.

Israeli soldiers will “kill” Hamas fighters “who fire from hospitals” in Gaza, the Israeli army said on Friday.

Calls for restraint are increasing in the face of intensifying fighting around hospitals in Gaza. Twenty of Gaza's 36 hospitals are no longer operational. Gaza's health system is "on its knees", the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned on Friday, counting "more than 250 attacks" on health establishments in Gaza and the West Bank since the start of the war.

Lebanese Hezbollah said seven of its fighters were killed by Israeli strikes, without specifying where or when.

Since October 7, at least 90 people have been killed in violence at the border on the Lebanese side, including 68 fighters from the Shiite movement, according to an AFP count. Six soldiers and two civilians were also killed, according to the Israeli army.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, announced Friday that 101 of his employees have died in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war, calling for an end to the " carnage” and at the end of the siege imposed by Israel on this territory.

In Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi and the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim ben Hamad Al-Thani, whose countries act as mediators, took stock on Friday of "the efforts" deployed with a view to a ceasefire, according to the Egyptian presidency.

Arab leaders and Iran's president are meeting in Saudi Arabia on Saturday for a joint summit that is expected to highlight the urgency of ending Israel's attacks on Gaza before conflict engulfs the region.

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed that Israel's objective was neither to govern nor to occupy Gaza, where the army was progressing, according to him, "exceptionally well" in its offensive against Hamas.

The extension of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has “become inevitable,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told his Qatari counterpart, Mohammed ben Abdelrahmane Al-Thani, on Friday.

In addition to the Palestinians of Hamas and Islamic Jihad engaged in the war in Gaza, Tehran supports the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels of Yemen, who announced having launched several missiles towards Israel.

The Hamas health ministry announced that 11,078 people, including 4,506 children, had been killed in Israeli bombardments on the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.

Israel has revised downwards the death toll from the Hamas attack launched on October 7 on its territory, from 1,400 to 1,200 dead, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday.

The Israeli army has reported 37 soldiers dead since the start of the ground offensive.