Israel surrounds and isolates Gaza City after a serious attack
The war between Israeli forces and the terrorist group Hamas lasts a month this Tuesday (7). The latest clashes began with Hamas attacks on Israeli territory. Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s prime minister, said it was at war.
A month after that Saturday, the Israeli army managed to impose a division between the northern region of the Gaza Strip and the rest of the territory.
According to the Associated Press news agency, this period saw the most violent confrontation between Palestinians and Israelis. There is no sign of a solution. The Israeli government says it wants to take control of the Gaza Strip away from Hamas and destroy the terrorist group’s military equipment.
According to the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the terrorist group Hamas, the death toll is over 10,000. There is no independent verification of this information. Around 1,400 Israelis died in the terrorist attacks on October 7, as Hamas began this new war with Israel.
The death toll is expected to rise in urban fighting as troops enter Gaza City. According to Israeli media, this will happen in the coming days.
Around 70% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have fled their homes since the war began. Food, medicine, fuel and water are in short supply and United Nationsrun schoolsturnedemergency shelters are full. Many people sleep on the streets.
On Monday (6), the Israelis bombed the region in preparation for a land invasion of Gaza City, the largest in the territory.
Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman, said the siege was now over and Hamas centers in the north were separated from those in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Bombing of the northern Gaza Strip
Israelis want Gaza’s civilian population to move south, but hundreds of thousands of people are still in areas where conflict is expected in the coming days.
Around 800,000 people fled to the south of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army claims that Gaza City residents can still walk south and that there is a oneway corridor for civilians, but many of them are afraid to use the route.
In recent days, airstrikes have hit U.N. facilities where people are seeking refuge and hospitals that are crowded with the wounded and lacking power and supplies.
There was an attack on the roof of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Monday morning. According to witnesses, this was one of the heaviest nights of shelling in the northern Gaza Strip.
Israel said it struck 450 targets overnight and killed several Hamas military commanders. Israel blames Hamas for civilian deaths as Hamas militants operate in residential areas.
The army has released videos purporting to show its ground troops discovering Hamas rocket launchers at a youth center and near a mosque in northern Gaza. They did not specify the exact locations where the videos were taken and the images contained no visible landmarks, so the Associated Press could not independently confirm the videos.
Cellphone and internet service was down overnight, the third nationwide outage since the war began, but was gradually restored on Monday.
US President Joe Biden spoke directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about tactical pauses in a phone call on Monday, but the White House said there was no agreement.
Israel has so far rejected U.S. proposals for a pause aimed at facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid and the release of some of the roughly 240 hostages taken by Hamas as part of its operation. Israel also rejected calls for a more comprehensive ceasefire.
In the north of the Gaza Strip, a Jordanian military cargo plane dropped medical aid on a field hospital, King Abdullah II said on Monday. It appeared to be the first airdrop of its kind during the war, raising the possibility of a different type of aid delivery than the Rafah border crossing in Egypt.
Since October 21, more than 450 trucks carrying aid supplies have been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. But aid workers say aid falls far short of the growing need.
The intersection was closed on Saturday and Sunday because of a dispute between Israel, Egypt and Hamas. But on Monday it reopened and seven Palestinian patients were evacuated to Egypt, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
Other hotspots: Hezbollah, West Bank, Jerusalem
The war has also increased tensions between Israel and the militant Hezbollah group in Lebanon.
In Jerusalem, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli police officer and was later shot.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces shot dead four Palestinian men in a vehicle, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Israel captured East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians want all three areas for a future state. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognized by the majority of the international community and considers the entire city its capital.
1 of 1 Projectile tracks in Gaza, on November 6, 2023 Photo: Mohammed AlMasri/Portal Projectile tracks in Gaza, on November 6, 2023 Photo: Mohammed AlMasri/Portal