Israel says it is intensifying its campaign against Hamas

Israeli leaders vowed Sunday to continue their war against Hamas even as Israel’s own casualties mounted, with 15 soldiers reportedly killed in the Gaza Strip since Friday.

“The war demands very high costs from us,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis. “However, we have no choice but to continue fighting.” All but one of the 15 soldier deaths occurred on Friday and Saturday.

Mr Netanyahu said Israel is intensifying its campaign in Gaza. According to the military, approximately 200 targets were hit in a 24-hour period.

Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman, said on Saturday that soldiers were fighting in a “dense area” above ground in southern Gaza’s largest city, Khan Younis, and that more troops would join a division underground there worked to destroy tunnels. managed by Hamas. Fighting in the north, where Israel says it has gained control of what it describes as Hamas strongholds, has also intensified, Admiral Hagari said.

Also on Sunday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said dozens of people were killed in airstrikes in Al Maghazi, a neighborhood in central Gaza.

Ministry officials blamed Israeli airstrikes for the deaths. The Israeli military said it was reviewing.

In interviews with The New York Times, witnesses in the area described the sky glowing red as the strikes continued. “The rockets shook the room, the glass is shattered, the windows are broken,” said Safaa Al-Hasanat, who stays in Al Maghazi.

“Our children are in a state of unimaginable fear,” she added. “It’s a terrifying situation in every sense of the word.”

As the humanitarian crisis for Gaza’s 2.2 million residents worsens by the day, international pressure has increased on Israel to halt the intense air and ground campaign that began after Hamas forces entered Israel on October 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people had been slaughtered.

Even the United States, Israel’s closest ally, has urged the Israeli military to adopt more targeted tactics in the hope of killing fewer civilians. The Palestinian death toll in Gaza is around 20,000, according to health authorities.

But while Israel has signaled in recent days that it would move to a less intense phase of the campaign, Netanyahu struck a defiant tone on Sunday, a day after speaking face-to-face with President Biden in what was described as a “long conversation.”

“I told President Biden yesterday that we will fight until absolute victory – however long that takes,” Netanyahu said in remarks at the start of a weekly Cabinet meeting. “The US understands this.”

The United States has supported humanitarian “pauses” in the fighting in Gaza to allow aid to a population lacking even the most basic necessities of life. But on Saturday, after a call with the Israeli leader, Mr Biden said: “I did not ask for a ceasefire.”

Mr. Netanyahu, whose popularity has slumped at home since Hamas forces defeated Israeli security measures on Oct. 7, killing both civilians and soldiers with little resistance, appeared to take pains to make clear that the United States was not in charge .

“Israel is a sovereign state,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding that the country’s wartime decisions “were not dictated by external pressure.”

He specifically rejected suggestions that the United States had tried to rein in Israel’s military activities in the region, an apparent reference to reports that Mr. Biden had advised the Israeli leader against launching a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah, the powerful militia in Lebanon. , which could widen the war.

With most of Gaza’s civilian population driven from their homes by the Israeli attack, reports from the area on Sunday were gloomy.

“We have nothing to keep us warm and dry,” said Heba Ahmad, 36. “We live in conditions I never thought possible in my entire life.”

As temperatures dropped and rain fell, Ms. Ahmad said she and her husband, Ehab Ahmad, cradled their two youngest children tightly between them at night, relying on body heat and a thin blanket to keep them warm like water and gusts of wind . the wind came through the holes in their makeshift tent.

When the family of seven fled to Gaza’s southern Al-Mawasi district three weeks ago to try to escape the bombardment of Israel, winter was already creeping in. Now Mr. Ahmad and his eldest sons spend their days scavenging for firewood and even plain cardboard to fuel a small fire and stay warm.

“I am talking to you while the smoke from the fire blinds me,” Mr. Ahmad said in a telephone interview on Sunday. Someone could be heard coughing uncontrollably in the background.

The rainy weather had one silver lining: It provided a brief respite from the family’s daily struggle to find water. They said they placed a bucket outside their tent to collect rainwater, and used it for cooking and washing themselves and their clothes.

For Israel, news that 15 soldiers had been killed in 72 hours would likely come as a blow. Another soldier died on the northern border with Jordan, where Israel clashed with Hezbollah forces.

In a country where most Jewish 18-year-olds are drafted into mandatory military service, and where people often volunteer on the reservations into middle age, many families have a close relationship with the military.

More than 300 soldiers were killed in the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, and more than 150 have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its ground offensive in response to the attack.

The death and destruction in Gaza have resonated throughout the region.

In Bethlehem this weekend, as Christmas approached, was a festive time of mourning.

Gone were the usual musical festivities. Gone was the tree lighting ceremony. And gone were the extravagant decorations that normally adorn the city that many revere as the birthplace of Jesus.

The Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem did set up a nursery, but the baby Jesus – wrapped in a kaffiyeh, the black-and-white checked scarf that is a sign of Palestinian identity – was not in a makeshift crib made of hay and wood. but between broken bricks, stones and tiles.

“We were glued to our screens and watched day after day as children were pulled from the rubble,” said the church’s pastor, Reverend Munther Isaac. “We are heartbroken by these images. God lies under the rubble in Gaza, this is where we find God now.”

Reporting was contributed by Yara Bayoumy, Samar Hazboun, Nadav Gavrielov, Katie Rogers, Rachel Abrams, Ameera Harouda And Andrés R. Martínez.