DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinians living in the heart of Gaza’s largest city said Wednesday they could see and hear Israeli ground forces approaching from multiple directions, accelerating the exodus of thousands of civilians as food and Water became scarce. Urban fighting between Israel and Hamas is intensifying.
The Israeli army has given no details on troop movements as it presses forward with its ground assault and vows to destroy Hamas after its deadly Oct. 7 attack in Israel. However, residents said Israeli forces had advanced into Gaza City’s inner neighborhoods while the entire surrounding north was under heavy bombardment.
Clashes broke out within a kilometer (0.6 mile) of the territory’s largest hospital, Shifa, which has become a flashpoint in the war.
According to the Israeli military, Hamas’ main command center is located in and beneath the hospital complex and senior leaders of the group are hiding there, using the facility as a shield.
Hamas and hospital staff dispute the claim and say the military is trying to provide a pretext for an attack.
For the Palestinians in Gaza, the hospital is a symbol of civilian suffering during the war. Like others, it was overwhelmed by a constant stream of wounded and distressed people as electricity and medical supplies ran out. Tens of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge in and around the complex.
The Group of Seven wealthy industrialized nations released a statement Wednesday condemning Hamas and supporting Israel’s right to self-defense. But the group also called for the “unhindered” delivery of food, water, medicine and fuel as well as “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting.
Palestinians flee to the southern Gaza Strip on Salah al-Din Street in Bureij, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, November 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has left open the possibility of smaller pauses in aid deliveries but has ruled out a broader ceasefire unless about 240 hostages held by Hamas are released.
“There are no restrictions” on how long the war will last, Benny Gantz, a decision-making member of Israel’s War Cabinet, said on Wednesday.
Gantz acknowledged that Israel does not yet have a vision for the Gaza Strip if it succeeds in destroying Hamas rule, but said there will be an Israeli security presence in the area after the war – a point that echoes comments from Netanyahu reflected earlier this week. who said Israel would likely maintain security control over Gaza “indefinitely.”
The prime minister’s comments appear to have increased US concerns. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for a unified, Palestinian-led government for Gaza and the West Bank after the war ends as a step toward Palestinian statehood.
Palestinians look at buildings destroyed in the Israeli bombing at the mortuary in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
The US and Israel agree that the militant group Hamas cannot return to its rule over the Gaza Strip. But none of the ideas that Israeli officials expressed for governing Gaza after the war envisaged a credible possibility of independent Palestinian rule.
Support for the war remains strong in Israel, where the fate of the hostages is the focus.
Escape the North
More than 70% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have already left their homes since the war began, but the number of refugees from the north has increased dramatically.
Crowds filled Salah al-Din Street, Gaza’s main road leading south. Their numbers appeared to be larger than on Tuesday, when the United Nations said about 15,000 people were streaming south – again triple the number from the previous day.
Families walked together, with men and women carrying small children or pushing elderly people on makeshift carts. Most only had a few belongings in backpacks. Some families rode donkey carts and held white flags as they approached Israeli tanks.
Israel extended the daily window for using the road to five hours.
Israeli forces advancing along the Mediterranean coast from the northwest clashed with militants in Shati refugee camp, a densely populated neighborhood next to central Gaza City, two residents told The Associated Press. Recent nights have seen heavy bombardment of Shati, which houses Palestinian families who fled or were expelled from what is now Israel during the war over the creation of Israel in 1948.
Other troops entered the Zeitoun district of Gaza City. A resident who lived near Shifa Hospital said he saw Israeli troops fighting militants on a road about 600 meters from the hospital.
“I hear all sorts of horrible noises. It’s scary. There are heavy airstrikes,” he said. Both residents spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.
Israeli army chief spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Wednesday that ground forces would step up the offensive in Gaza City. The army said it killed one of Hamas’ top developers of rockets and other weapons, without saying where he was killed.
Israel is focusing its operations on the city, which was home to about 650,000 people before the war and where Hamas has its main command and a maze of tunnels, according to the military.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have obeyed Israeli orders in recent weeks and fled south to avoid the ground attack.
Desperation grew among the tens of thousands thought to remain.
“We had no food or drinking water. … They attacked the bakeries. “There is no life in Gaza,” said Abeer Akila, a woman fleeing south with her family.
The few aid supplies that enter the Gaza Strip from the south are largely blocked from reaching the north, where there has been no running water for weeks. The U.N. aid office said the last functioning bakeries closed Tuesday due to lack of fuel, water and flour. Hospitals running out of supplies are performing surgeries without anesthesia.
Al-Quds Hospital is completely cut off from traffic after all surrounding roads were bombed and has had to suspend most operations to reduce fuel consumption. A convoy carrying medical supplies came under fire from Israeli forces and was unable to reach it, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. More than 14,000 displaced people are in hospital and bread supplies are running low, it said.
Majed Haroun, a teacher who remains in Gaza City, said women and children who have lost their families are going door to door begging for food.
“No words can describe what we are experiencing,” he said.
CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH
The new arrivals from the north are crowding into houses with extended families or into UN schools that have been converted into emergency shelters, where hundreds of thousands are seeking refuge. According to the UN office, 600 people have to share a single toilet.
Israeli attacks in the southern zone continued. A blast struck a family home in Nuseirat refugee camp on Wednesday, killing at least 18 people and injuring dozens more, according to Iyad Abu Zaher, director of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital where the dead and wounded were taken. He said the death toll could rise as paramedics and first responders searched through the rubble.
Hundreds of trucks carrying relief supplies have been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt since October 21st.
But “right now there is an ocean of needs in Gaza, and what comes in is just a drop in the ocean. “We need fuel, we need water, we need food and we need medical care,” said Dominic Allen of the United Nations West Bank Population Fund.
According to the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled territory, Gaza has been bombed continuously for a month since the Hamas attack, killing more than 10,500 Palestinians – two-thirds of them women and minors. More than 2,300 others are believed to have been buried by strikes that in some cases have destroyed entire city blocks.
Israeli officials say thousands of Palestinian militants have been killed and blame Hamas for the civilian deaths because it operates in residential areas. Gaza’s Ministry of Health does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its casualty reports.
More than 1,400 people have died in Israel since the war began, most of them civilians killed by Hamas militants during their invasion. Israel said 32 of its soldiers had been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began and Palestinian militants continued to fire rockets into Israel daily.
The war has led to greater tensions. Israel and the militant Hezbollah group in Lebanon have exchanged fire along the border, and more than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the war began, mostly in violent protests and shootouts with Israeli forces in arrest raids. About 250,000 Israelis were forced to evacuate from communities along the borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
The United States launched an airstrike on Wednesday on a weapons depot in eastern Syria used by Iran-backed militias in retaliation for a growing number of attacks on bases hosting U.S. troops in the region, the Pentagon said. This is the second time in less than two weeks that the US has bombed facilities used by militant groups.
U.S. officials say the groups, many of which operate under the umbrella of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, have carried out at least 40 attacks, killing hundreds, since October 17, the day a massive explosion rocked a hospital in Gaza Protests sparked among a number of Muslim nations. Israel denied responsibility for the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital and the US said its intelligence assessment concluded Israel was not to blame.
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Jeffery and Keath reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Najib Jobain in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip; Samy Magdy in Cairo; and Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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Complete AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war