- ARAB NEWS
- 01 May 2025
Since 1975
Israeli tanks and armed drones targeted two of Gaza’s few remaining operational hospitals on Friday as the number of Palestinian deaths from more than three months of war neared 25,000.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said displaced people were injured by intense gunfire from drones attacking civilians at Al-Amal Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Nearby in the same city, Israeli tanks converged on Gaza’s largest remaining functioning hospital, Nasser, where there was shellfire from the west and fierce gun battles to the south.
As the carnage continued, diplomats were dealing with the fallout after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly ruled out the creation of a sovereign independent Palestinian state, which is a long-standing pillar of US policy in the Middle East.
“Israel must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu said. “It clashes with the principle of sovereignty, but what can you do?”
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller responded that that the establishment of a Palestinian state was the only way to provide lasting security to Israel itself, along with reconstruction, governance and security for Gaza.
The White House said later that Netanyahu and President Joe Biden had discussed developments in Israel and Gaza in a phone call. Israel says it will fight on until Hamas is eradicated, an aim Palestinians call unachievable because of the group’s structure and deep roots in an enclave it has run since 2007.
Inside Gaza, the Health Ministry said 142 Palestinians had been killed and 278 injured in the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 24,762. The World Health Organization said most of the enclave’s 36 hospitals hadstopped working; 15 were partially functioning, at up to three times their capacity and without adequate fuel or medical supplies.
