Heavy fighting rages near Gaza’s main hospital as Netanyahu rejects ceasefire call
Israel has vowed to end Hamas’ 16-year rule in Gaza and destroy its military capabilities, while blaming the militants for the war’s heavy toll on the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the besieged area.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Israeli strikes bombarded Gaza City overnight through Sunday as ground forces battled Hamas militants near the territory’s largest hospital, where health officials say thousands of medics, patients and displaced people are trapped without electricity and with declining supplies. In a televised address on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected growing international calls for a ceasefire unless it includes the release of all the nearly 240 hostages captured by Hamas in the October 7 rampage that sparked the war. He said Israel would take its weapons. “with full force” in battle.
Israel has vowed to end Hamas’ 16-year rule in Gaza and destroy its military capabilities, while blaming the militants for the war’s heavy toll on the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the besieged area.
Israel has come under increasing international pressure, even from its closest ally the United States, as the war enters a sixth week. An estimated 300,000 pro-Palestinian protesters marched peacefully through London on Saturday – the largest demonstration in the city since the war began.
HEAVY FIGHTING NEAR SHIFA HOSPITAL
In Gaza City, residents reported heavy airstrikes and shelling overnight, including in the area around Shifa Hospital. Israel has accused Hamas, without providing evidence, of hiding a command post inside and beneath the hospital complex, allegations denied by Hamas and hospital staff.
“We spent the night in panic, waiting for their arrival,” said Ahmed al-Boursh, a resident who sought shelter at the hospital. “They’re outside, not far from the gate.”
The hospital’s last generator ran out of fuel on Saturday, killing a premature baby, another child in an incubator and four other patients, the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said. It says another 37 babies are at risk of dying because there is no electricity.
Health Ministry Undersecretary Munir al-Boursh said Israeli snipers have positioned themselves around Shifa and shot at any movement inside the compound. He said airstrikes had destroyed several houses next to the hospital, killing three people, including a doctor.
“There are injured people in the house and we cannot reach them,” he told Al Jazeera in an interview from the hospital. “We can’t stick our heads out the window.” It was not clear whether he was related to the other man with the same last name.
The Israeli army said there is a safe corridor for civilians to evacuate from Shifa to southern Gaza, but people sheltering in hospital say they are afraid to go out. The military said troops would help move babies on Sunday and that it was in contact with hospital staff. It was not possible to independently determine the situation in and around the hospital.
The Health Ministry says there are still 1,500 patients in Shifa, along with 1,500 medical staff and between 15,000 and 20,000 people seeking shelter. Thousands have fled Shifa and other hospitals, but doctors say it is impossible for everyone to get out.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Rescue Service said another hospital in Gaza City, Al-Quds, is “no longer operational” because it has run out of fuel. Gaza’s only power plant was forced to close a month ago, and Israel has banned the import of fuels accused of using them for military purposes.
With Shifa and other hospitals inaccessible, people sheltering in Gaza City say they no longer have emergency care. Heba Mashlah, who was sheltering thousands of families at a UN complex, said four people were killed and 15 injured in a strike on Saturday evening.
“The injured are bleeding and no one can come and help them,” she said, adding that the dead were buried on the site. The UN Development Program confirmed that one of its connections had been affected. UN agencies have been unable to provide services in the north for weeks.
NETANYAHU REJECTS US’S POST-WAR VISION
Netanyahu has said that responsibility for any harm to civilians lies with Hamas. Israel has long accused the group, which operates in densely populated residential areas, of using civilians as human shields.
The Israeli army said its forces helped clear a corridor during a battle in Gaza City so civilians could leave a building before they came under fire. The troops returned fire and killed the militants, the report said.
On Saturday, Netanyahu began outlining Israel’s post-war plans for Gaza, which stand in stark contrast to the United States’ vision.
Netanyahu said Gaza would be demilitarized and Israel would maintain security control, with the ability to freely enter Gaza to hunt down militants. He also rejected the idea that the Palestinian Authority, which currently controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would at some point control Gaza. Hamas drove PA forces out of Gaza during a week of street fighting in 2007.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the US opposes an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and sees a unified Palestinian government in both Gaza and the West Bank as a step toward a Palestinian state. Even before the war, Netanyahu’s government was strongly opposed to Palestinian statehood.
EVACUATION WINDOWS, BUT NO BREAKS
The US has also pushed for temporary pauses that would allow wider distribution of much-needed aid to civilians in the besieged area, where conditions are becoming increasingly dire.
But Israel has only agreed to short daily periods during which civilians can flee the area of ground fighting in northern Gaza and move south on foot along two major north-south roads. Israel, meanwhile, also attacks militant targets in southern Gaza, often killing women and children.
The war has displaced more than two-thirds of Gaza’s population, most of whom have fled south. Egypt has allowed hundreds of foreign passport holders and medical patients to leave the country through the Rafah border crossing. It has also allowed in hundreds of trucks full of food and medicine – but without fuel – but aid workers say this is not nearly enough to meet rising needs.
According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, more than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom are women and minors, have been killed since the war began. About 2,700 people have been reported missing and are believed to be trapped or dead under the rubble.
At least 1,200 people have been killed on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed in the first Hamas attack. Forty-six Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began.
About 250,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate from communities near Gaza, where Palestinian militants continue to fire rocket attacks, and along the northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have repeatedly exchanged fire.
(Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.)