Heavy fighting rocks Gaza as thousands flee again
— Israeli forces bombed and battled Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday as tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled for a safe haven after the Jewish state’s army issued an evacuation order for a vast swath of the territory’s south.
Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City’s Shujaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters said.
This came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a US media report saying his generals were urging a Gaza truce even with Hamas undefeated, stressing on Tuesday that “this will not happen.”
Military chief Herzi Halevi, meanwhile, said Israel was engaged in “a long campaign” to destroy Hamas over the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and to bring home the hostages held by the Palestinian militant group.
The United Nations warned that the almost nine-month-old war had “unleashed a maelstrom of human misery” and that the latest evacuation order had plunged yet more Palestinians into “an abyss of suffering.”
Ten days after Netanyahu said the war’s “intense phase” was winding down, the Israeli military again rained down airstrikes and artillery fire on militants in Shujaiya.
The air force struck “over 50 terror infrastructure sites” across Gaza in 24 hours while ground troops “eliminated terrorists,” located tunnels and found weapons, including AK-47 assault rifles, the military said.
The Israeli army — which issued an evacuation order for Shujaiya a week ago — on Sunday did the same for a larger area near Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, raising fears of renewed heavy battles there.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have again taken to the road there, many bundling their scant belongings on top of cars or donkey carts as they sought safety elsewhere in the bombed-out wasteland.
‘Lives upended’
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, said 250,000 people had been impacted by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the order covered 117 square kilometers (45 square miles), or “about a third of the Gaza Strip, making it the largest such order since October.”
Sigrid Kaag, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, told the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday that the war had now displaced 80 percent of Gaza’s population.
She also said not enough aid was reaching the besieged territory and that crossings must be reopened, particularly to southern Gaza, to avert a humanitarian disaster.
“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering, their home lives shattered, their lives upended,” she said. “The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery.”
‘Winds of defeatism’
On Wednesday, the Israeli military said “operational activities continue throughout the Gaza Strip.”
The Gaza civil defense agency said seven people were killed when a strike hit a family house north of Gaza City.
Another strike killed three people in a car at Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Deir al-Balah area, said an AFP reporter.
Airstrikes also hit homes in Rafah, Gaza’s government media office said.
The fresh attacks come after the New York Times quoted Israeli security officials as saying top generals see a truce as the best way to secure the release of the remaining hostages, even if that meant not achieving all of the war goals.
Netanyahu, who heads a government that includes hardline right-wing parties, strongly rejected this on Tuesday and vowed Israel would not give in to the “winds of defeatism.”
“The war will end once Israel achieves all of its objectives, including the destruction of Hamas and the release of all of our hostages,” he said.