Diplomats were engaged in hectic talks on Sunday to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as an Israeli ground invasion appeared imminent.
At the same time, the United States, fearing a larger war, deployed a second aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean.
António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, summed up these concerns on Sunday when he said: “We are on the brink of the abyss in the Middle East.”
Officials from the United States, Egypt and Middle Eastern countries sought to ease what Israeli officials called a “siege” on the Gaza Strip, which has led to severe shortages of food, water, gasoline and other essential supplies in the blockaded territory .
Video images on Sunday showed lines of trucks idling on the road to Gaza in the Egyptian city of Arish, about 30 miles from the border that they were not allowed to cross.
After days of acute water shortages in Gaza, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that Israel had agreed to restore water supplies to a pipeline that supplies a southern part of the enclave.
As Israeli troops gathered at the border, more than two million Gazans witnessed a panicked countdown to the expected start of a ground invasion of northern Gaza.
Palestinians on Sunday in a supermarket in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. Source: Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
“We will dismantle Hamas,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told government ministers at the first formal meeting of Israel’s new emergency wartime government on Sunday, according to a statement from his office. Israel, a wounded country mobilized for war and torn between fear and anger, has called up 360,000 military reservists for service.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, acknowledged in a speech on Sunday evening that Israel’s leadership had failed to ensure the country’s security.
“We must say with honesty, pain and head bowed: We have failed,” Mr. Smotrich said, referring to the Hamas attacks eight days earlier that resulted in the worst massacres of Israelis since the country’s founding 75 years ago . “We have failed to fulfill the most important, unwritten contract between a state and its citizens.”
The Israeli military also announced a so-called “path to security” along roads in the northern Gaza Strip. The military said it would not carry out attacks along the route for several hours in the late morning and early afternoon on Sunday.
“During this period, please take advantage of the opportunity to advance southward from northern Gaza,” the military said. It was the third day that Israel has encouraged an exodus from the northern Gaza Strip; On Saturday, the streets were blanketed with leaflets urging residents to leave.
The United Nations estimates that nearly a million Gazans have been displaced. But some in northern parts of the enclave say moving will be impossible. At Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip, the wounded streamed in on Sunday. Transporting the patients was logistically impossible and medically dangerous, said the hospital’s director, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salima.
Israeli bombings of Gaza continued around the clock. The Israeli Air Force dropped more than 6,000 bombs across the Gaza Strip in the first week of fighting, with most attacks coming in the north.
The intended targets were operational command centers, military bases, anti-tank missile launch sites and “observation posts,” the military said, although many targets were in densely populated urban areas. Israel says Hamas members live among the civilian population, hiding in homes, schools and hospitals.
An Israeli warplane also fired a missile that the Israeli military said killed Billal Al Kedra, whom Israel described as a Hamas commander responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre at Israeli Kibbutz Nirim.
Israeli army soldiers secured the perimeter of Kibbutz Kfar Azza on Sunday. Photo credit: Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Israel’s retaliatory strikes have killed at least 2,670 people in Gaza over the past week, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Palestinian news media reported on Sunday that at least 17 family members were killed in an Israeli attack on a house in Rafah, near the closed Egyptian border crossing.
Israeli officials said over the weekend that of the 1,300 people killed by Hamas militants in the Oct. 7 raid in Israel, at least 258 were Israeli soldiers. Israeli hospitals reported Sunday that 377 people were still being treated for injuries sustained in the Hamas attacks.
With the death toll rising, geopolitics have been at the heart of the conflict. Israel’s operations in Gaza have been criticized by both neighboring Egypt and China.
Both countries used similar language in their criticism. Shortly before his meeting Sunday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said Israel’s attack on Gaza had exceeded “the right to self-defense” and turned into “a collective punishment.” according to The Associated Press.
The meeting between Mr. Blinken and Mr. el-Sisi turned personal when the president criticized the secretary for saying last week that as a Jew he had been deeply affected by the Hamas attacks. Mr. Blinken responded by saying, “As a human being, I am horrified by the atrocities of Hamas.”
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, that “Israel’s actions have already gone beyond self-defense,” according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Israel “should diligently listen to the demands of the international community and the Secretary-General of the United Nations and stop the collective punishment of the people of Gaza,” the ministry quoted Mr. Wang as saying.
A displaced Palestinian woman carries bread in Khan Yunis on Sunday. Photo credit: Yousef Masoud for The New York Times
The comments stood in stark contrast to some voices in the US Congress, particularly among Republicans, who argued that Israel should be able to attack Hamas without any restraint.
Sen. Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, said on “Fox News Sunday” that “everything that happens in Gaza is Hamas’ responsibility.”
Still, fears of a wider conflict were stoked over the weekend by artillery firefights between the Israeli military and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for an attack on the northern Israeli settlement of Shtula on Sunday that killed at least one Israeli and injured three others.
The Israeli military declared the area next to the Lebanese border an “isolation zone” and said no one would be allowed inside.
And in Syria, officials over the weekend accused Israel of carrying out air strikes on Aleppo airport. On the social platform for Israel.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III was clear on Saturday about the reasons for sending a second US aircraft carrier and squadrons of attack aircraft to the eastern Mediterranean. He said the deployment was intended to “deter hostile actions against Israel or any efforts to expand this war.”
The second aircraft carrier, the Dwight D. Eisenhower, is expected to arrive in the next few days and will join the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford.
The United States has also tried to negotiate a deal with Egypt to reopen the Rafah crossing and allow safe passage for Americans stuck in the Gaza Strip. Egypt has held up aid convoys to Gaza because of disagreements with Israel over how and where the convoys should be checked for weapons, according to a senior diplomat familiar with the discussions. Egypt has refused to allow even foreigners to leave Gaza until the issue is resolved, the diplomat added.
Reporting was contributed by Anna Betts, Emma Bubola, Karoun Demirjian, Patrick Kingsley, Farah Mohamed, Zach Montague, Vivian Nereim, Eric Schmitt, Euan Ward and Edward Wong.