Israel orders evacuations amid ‘intense’ attacks on southern Gaza
The Israeli army heavily bombed southern Gaza on Saturday and ordered residents of several Palestinian border towns in the area to leave their homes. This appeared to pave the way for a ground invasion in the south as hostilities resumed following the collapse of a week-long ceasefire with Hamas.
The intensity of the renewed bombing – the Israeli army said it had carried out airstrikes on more than 400 targets in the Gaza Strip since fighting resumed on Friday – left many Gazans feeling helpless.
“I don’t know where to go,” said Sameer al-Jarrah, 67, who lives in Al Qarara, a town evacuated by the Israeli army and hit by an Israeli attack, according to Gaza’s Interior Ministry.
Israel’s latest evacuation orders in southern Gaza could force residents of much of the territory along the Israeli border to flee. The Israeli demands recalled similar orders the army issued before its invasion of northern Gaza in late October, when it urged Gazans to seek safety in the southern parts of the territory.
The Israeli army said in a statement that it had hit more than 50 locations in and around Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people took shelter after being told to leave the north.
On Saturday afternoon, Gaza’s health ministry said 193 people had been killed in the “last few hours.” It said that Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7 – when Israeli forces began retaliating for Hamas-led attacks in Israel that Israeli authorities say killed around 1,200 people – had killed a total of more than 15,000 people.
In a measure of the difficulty some Gazans face in moving through the territory, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees estimated on Saturday that there were 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and 180 were giving birth every day.
Hopes for a renewed lull in fighting appeared to fade on Saturday when Israel said on Saturday it was withdrawing its negotiating team from Qatar, where ceasefire talks were taking place. The Israeli prime minister’s office said it left the talks because Hamas “failed to fulfill its part of the agreement, which included the release of all children and women according to a list provided to Hamas and which it approved.”
Israel and Hamas have made different explanations for the breakdown of the week-long ceasefire.
Zaher Jabareen, a Hamas official who oversees detainee issues, said in an interview Friday that Israel has rejected several proposals from Hamas, all of which involved the return of small numbers of Israelis in exchange for at least dozens of Palestinian prisoners.
In recent days, Israel has been under pressure from the Biden administration to carry out a more surgical bombing campaign, limiting civilian deaths and widespread destruction in the early weeks of the northern campaign.
Israel says it is targeting Hamas, which operates in and under residential areas, meaning civilians are at risk even if they are not the intended target. But Gazans and many countries have criticized Israel for what they saw as indiscriminate bombings that have resulted in a disproportionate civilian toll.
On Saturday, the first reports from Gaza spoke of brutal bombings. The head of the International Red Cross, Robert Mardini, described the renewed fighting as “intense.”
“It is a new layer of destruction on top of the massive, unprecedented destruction of critical infrastructure, of civilian homes and neighborhoods,” Mr Mardini told Reuters news agency.
A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the war strategy, indicated that the next phase of the war will not be open-ended. The Israeli Defense Forces, he said, expect to be “in a high-intensity operation in the coming weeks, and then probably transition to a low-intensity operation.”
Separately, a senior US official said on Saturday that the Biden administration has seen Israeli plans for the next phase and that officials are satisfied that the plans reflect US pressure on Israel to be more cautious about civilian deaths.
During the first seven weeks of the battle, the Israeli army concentrated its ground forces on the north. On Saturday, the army hinted that its forces had begun operating in southern Gaza overnight. In a statement, the army said naval forces “conducted a targeted operational activity in Khan Younis Marina and Deir al-Balah,” two coastal areas south of the area Israel has already captured from Hamas.
A military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, said the troops had not set foot on the coast.
Israel believes Hamas’ top leadership is hiding in southern Gaza. Most of the remaining hostages taken from Israel on October 7 are also being held here, according to a senior Israeli defense official.
The Israeli military separately indicated that more operations were imminent in both northern and southern Gaza. In addition to warnings to residents of Al Qarara and other villages next to the border with Israel, it ordered some residents in and around Gaza City, northern Gaza, to move west.
Some Palestinians near Khan Younis said on Friday that Israeli military planes had dropped leaflets telling people to evacuate to shelters near Rafah, a town along Gaza’s border with Egypt. The leaflets, bearing the insignia of the Israeli army, declared Khan Younis “a dangerous combat zone.”
Israeli ground forces have already captured parts of northern Gaza, and Israeli officials have said for weeks that their infantry want to cross the entire north and move south towards Khan Younis.
The southern villages ordered to evacuate on Saturday are between the Israeli border and Khan Younis, indicating that Israeli forces may be preparing to advance through them in an invasion of the south. Among them are Al Qarara, Bani Suheila, Abasan and Khuza’a.
About 1.8 million Gazans have already been displaced by the war, according to the United Nations.
Reporting was contributed by Aaron Boxerman, Iyad Abuheweila, Karen Zraick, Ameera Harouda, Gaya Gupta and Michael Shear.