Israel attacks Gaza as the offensive leaves both the country and the US increasingly isolated
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant indicated that the current phase of heavy ground fighting and airstrikes could last for weeks and that further military activity could continue for months.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip: Israeli forces carried out attacks across Gaza on Tuesday, crushing Palestinians in their homes, as the army continued an offensive that officials said could last weeks or months even as global calls for an Israel ceasefire and abandons its most important ally. the United States increasingly isolated.
The war unleashed by Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7 has already brought unprecedented death and destruction to the impoverished coastal enclave, wiping out much of northern Gaza, killing more than 18,000 Palestinians and killing more than 80 % of the population of 2.3 million people has been displaced. their houses.
The health care system and humanitarian aid operations have collapsed in many parts of Gaza, and aid workers have warned of famine and the spread of disease among displaced people in crowded shelters and tent camps.
STRIKES AND RAID IN GAZA
Strikes overnight through Tuesday in southern Gaza – in areas where civilians have been told to seek shelter – left dozens dead, according to hospital data.
Islam Harb’s three children were among those killed when Israeli airstrikes flattened four residential buildings in the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border. The family shared their home with nine displaced people, he said.
The strikes killed at least 23 people, including seven children and six women, according to hospital records and an Associated Press reporter who saw the bodies arriving at a hospital.
“My twin girls, Maria and Joud, were tortured, and so was my son, Ammar,” Harb said.
In central Gaza, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah received the bodies of 33 people killed during overnight strikes, including 16 women and four children, according to hospital data. Many were killed in attacks on residential buildings in the built-up Maghazi refugee camp.
In northern Gaza, Israeli forces stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital and ordered all men, including medics, into the courtyard, said Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
The UN humanitarian agency said the hospital has 65 patients, including 12 children, in intensive care and six newborns in incubators. About 3,000 displaced people are sheltering there, they said, all awaiting evacuation due to severe shortages of food, water and electricity.
The army says it is rounding up men in northern Gaza as it searches for Hamas fighters. Photos and videos circulating online show groups of detainees stripped to their underwear, tied up and blindfolded, and some who have been released say they have been beaten and denied food and water.
At another hospital in northern Gaza, the aid group Doctors Without Borders said a surgeon was injured on Monday by a shot fired from outside the facility, which it said has been under “complete siege” by Israeli forces for a week.
There was no immediate comment from the military on either incident in the north.
CALLS for a ceasefire
Israel launched the campaign after Hamas and other militants poured into the south on October 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking about 240 others hostage, about half of whom remain in captivity. At least 105 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive in Gaza, the army says.
Israel’s blockade of the area – and the intense airstrikes and ground fighting that have made aid distribution nearly impossible – have led to severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods.
Palestinian health officials do not provide a breakdown of deaths among civilians and fighters, but say about two-thirds of the dead were women and minors.
Israel blames Hamas for the civilian casualties, saying it is positioning warplanes, tunnels and rocket launchers in densely populated urban areas and using civilians as human shields.
The UN Secretary General and Arab states have united much of the international community in calling for an immediate ceasefire. But the US vetoed these efforts at the UN Security Council last week when it rushed tank munitions to Israel to allow the country to continue the offensive.
A non-binding vote on a similar resolution at the General Assembly, scheduled for Tuesday, would be largely symbolic.
Israel and the US argue that any ceasefire that leaves Hamas in power, even over a small part of the devastated area, would mark a victory for the militant group, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 and has vowed to destroy Israel.
ISRAEL-USA DIVIDED OVER THE FUTURE
Although the US has given wholehearted diplomatic and military support to Israel’s campaign, the two allies are further apart on the timeline of the war and what will happen next in Gaza if Hamas is defeated. The US has also urged Israel to do more to prevent civilian casualties, but the toll in Gaza continues to rise at what appears to be the same staggering pace.
In a briefing with the AP on Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant indicated that the current phase of heavy ground fighting and airstrikes could last weeks and that further military activity could continue for months.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he will speak with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about timetables for ending major fighting in Gaza when he visits Israel later this week.
Sullivan said at a forum hosted by the Wall Street Journal that he would also speak to Netanyahu about his recent comments that the Israeli military would maintain open security control over Gaza after the end of the war.
The Biden administration says it does not want Israel to reoccupy Gaza. It has also called for a return of the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority to Gaza and the resumption of peace talks aimed at establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Netanyahu acknowledged Tuesday that there is “disagreement about ‘the day after Hamas’.” He ruled out a return of Palestinian Authority rule, saying: “I will not allow Israel to repeat the mistake of Oslo,” referring to the 1990s peace process that brought the authority to power in the West Bank and Gaza created and was intended to reach a two-country point. -able solution.
Many experts view Israel’s goal of crushing Hamas as unrealistic, and point to Hamas’s deep support among many Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, who see it as resistance to Israel’s half-century of military rule.
Even just destroying Hamas’s military capacity “will be a tall order without decimating the remnants of Gaza,” the International Crisis Group, a think tank, said last weekend in a report that also called for an immediate ceasefire fire.
Israeli officials have said that about 7,000 Hamas militants — roughly a quarter of the group’s estimated fighting force — have been killed and that 500 militants have been detained in Gaza over the past month. Hamas says it still has thousands of reserve fighters. None of the claims could be verified.
Lebanese Hezbollah, meanwhile, has repeatedly exchanged fire with Israel, and other Iranian-backed groups in the region have attacked US targets, threatening to widen the conflict. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have targeted Israeli ships, attacked a tanker in the Red Sea overnight with no apparent ties to the country.
(Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Jack Jeffery in Cairo and Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem contributed)