Israel ‘will soon end combat in south Gaza’
Israel will soon wind down heavy fighting in Khan Younis, the country’s defence minister says, after weeks of intense combat in the Gaza Strip’s south.
Yoav Gallant’s remarks come as Israel faces increasing international pressure, including from the United States, to scale back its offensive against Hamas in the enclave and reduce civilian casualties.
“In the north part of the Strip, this (intense) stage has ended. In southern Gaza, we will reach this stage and end it soon, and in both places, the moment will come when we will move on to the next phase,” Gallant said.
Israeli troops have fought their way into the centre of Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Younis, and into towns north and east of the central city of Deir al-Balah.
Gallant’s announcement raises the question of whether the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) will try to advance into the remaining southern areas, where most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crowded.
Meanwhile, in the north, residents said Israeli tanks had invaded parts of the enclave they had left in January as part of a transition to smaller, targeted operations. The move reignited some of the most intense fighting since New Year, with massive explosions seen over northern areas of Gaza from across the border with Israel.
The IDF’s offensive in the area has wreaked devastation, particularly around Gaza City, where Tel Aviv initially said it thought Hamas’ leadership was holed up following the group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war.
Israel’s military then shifted its focus south and moved on to Khan Younis, saying it expected senior Hamas figures to be headquartered there.
But more than three months into the war, Hamas’ top officials in Gaza are still believed to be alive, and the terror group still retains the capacity to attack Israel.
In the enclave, 2.2 million Gazans are said to be at “imminent risk” of famine, according to the United Nations.
Almost 380,000 people in the territory were already facing catastrophic levels of hunger, UN aid agency OCHA said, with almost a million at “emergency” levels.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned that Gaza faced a “long shadow of starvation” and the risk of major disease outbreaks unless Israel stopped the war.
He also said the UN could not “effectively deliver aid” while the IDF was pounding the territory with air strikes.
But any path toward de-escalating the war still seems remote, with Israel saying it will not halt its offensive until Hamas is destroyed.
Meanwhile, tensions along Israel’s border with Lebanon continue to mount, and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels persist with attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, raising fears of a wider regional conflagration.
The internationally recognised Palestinian Authority is ready “to take charge of all the territory of Gaza” along with the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, its representative to Britain says.
Husam Zomlot was addressing the Washington-backed prospect of Palestinian leaders taking control of post-conflict Gaza once Hamas was eradicated, an option Israel has so far ruled out.
Zomlot said the authority would reject any effort by Israel to treat Gaza as a separate entity to the other Palestinian territories, but argued that there was no need to wait until the conflict was over for them to be reunified.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a long-time proponent of the policy of bolstering Hamas to nurture divisions among the Palestinians and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, said last week he was “open to the idea” of a single Palestinian administration in Gaza and the West Bank, the first time he had addressed Gaza’s future governance since the war began.
Saudi Arabia, with which Israel had been hoping to strike a recognition deal before the Hamas attacks took place, said yesterday that such a deal could be revived – but only if it included full statehood for the Palestinians.