JERUSALEM – On Monday, Israeli forces intensified their attacks on Palestinian militants in Gaza as the conflict approached its one-month mark and the death toll within the beleaguered enclave approached 10,000, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Despite rising international calls for a truce, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to destroy Hamas, whose 7 October attack killed 1,400 Israelis and took over 240 captives.
Ground forces with tanks have filled the northern half of the Gaza Strip and reinforced an encirclement on Gaza City, effectively dividing the enclave in two, despite Israeli evacuation orders for hundreds of thousands of civilians to leave.
The health ministry in Gaza claimed more than 200 people were killed in nighttime strikes, a day after reporting a cumulative death toll of more than 9,770, the majority of whom were women and children.
“These are genocides!” “They destroyed three houses over the heads of their inhabitants – women and children,” Mahmoud Mechmech, a resident of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, told AFP.
“We have already taken 40 bodies out of the rubble,” he added as groups prayed outside a local hospital around corpses covered in white shrouds.
The United States, Israel’s ally, has dispatched its senior diplomat, Antony Blinken, on a whirlwind Middle East tour that has been marked by harsh denunciation of Israel, including his most recent stop in Turkey.
The chiefs of major UN organizations released a unified statement appealing for a ceasefire within the 2.4 million-person enclave where Israel has shut off most water, food, and fuel supplies.
“For almost a month, the world has been watching the unfolding situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory in shock and horror at the spiraling numbers of lives lost and torn apart,” the statement went on to say.
“We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. It’s been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now.”
The Israeli army said on Monday it had pounded Gaza with “significant” new strikes on 450 targets, having earlier said it had already hit over 12,000.
It also reported seizing a Hamas command post in central Gaza, where tanks were driving between the ruins of buildings.
“We will take the fight to Hamas wherever they are – underground, above ground,” Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus said, repeating calls for civilians to leave the urban war zone.
“We will be able to dismantle Hamas, stronghold after stronghold, battalion after battalion, until we achieve the ultimate goal, which is to rid the Gaza Strip – the entire Gaza Strip – of Hamas.”
‘DO THERE APPEAR TO BE ANY SURVIVORS?’
Israeli army and Hamas rebels have engaged in severe house-to-house warfare in densely populated Gaza, where the war has displaced 1.5 million people.
Netanyahu has remained steadfast in his stance, declaring on Sunday that “there will be no ceasefire until the hostages are returned.”
According to the army, internet and phone lines were shut shortly before the last round of strikes.
Although Israel has circulated leaflets and sent text messages telling Palestinian people in northern Gaza to flee, a US official stated Saturday that at least 350,000 civilians remained in the worst-affected regions.
Conricus accused Hamas of digging tunnels beneath Gaza’s hospitals, schools, and places of worship to hide militants, plot attacks, and store weaponry, claims the terrorist group has denied.
Blinken has advocated for “humanitarian pauses” on his regional tour, which has taken him to Israel, Jordan, the occupied West Bank, Cyprus, and Iraq while rejecting Arab governments’ demands for a ceasefire.
On Monday, he met with his Turkish colleague, Hakan Fidan, in Ankara.
Before Blinken arrived in NATO member Turkey, which is aligned with the Palestinians but also has connections with Israel, police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who marched on a US air base in Turkey’s southeast.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was reportedly traveling across his country’s rural northeast, ignoring Blinken.
Turkey has said it is recalling its ambassador to Israel and breaking off contacts with Netanyahu.
Meeting with Blinken in the West Bank on Sunday, Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas denounced “the genocide and destruction suffered by our Palestinian people in Gaza at the hands of Israel’s war machine”.
JERUSALEM KNIFE ATTACK
Deepening the desperation in the crowded territory, the sole border crossing into Gaza from Egypt has remained closed for days.
Hamas suspended the evacuations of foreign passport holders after saying Israel had refused to allow some wounded Palestinians to be evacuated.
The war has exacerbated tensions in the West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces and settlers since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
In Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, a female Israeli soldier was “seriously” wounded in a knife attack before “border police forces neutralised the terrorist by shooting”, police said.
The Israeli military said Monday it had arrested Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, 22, in a raid in her West Bank town of Nabi Salih on suspicion of “inciting violence and terrorist activities”.
Tamimi became prominent at age 14 when she was filmed biting an Israeli soldier to prevent him from arresting her younger brother, and for later slapping another Israeli soldier.
A large portrait of her was painted on the Israeli separation wall with the West Bank.
When AFP asked about the reasons for her arrest, a security source forwarded an Instagram post, which has circulated widely and is attributed to the young activist.
According to the post, written in Arabic and Hebrew, she called for the massacre of Israelis in explicitly violent terms, referring to Hitler.
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