- LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
- An Israeli official says troops are attacking Hamas in the south
- Official urges Palestinians in south to move to western areas
- Israel hopes there will be tents and a field hospital for evacuees
GAZA/JERUSALEM, Nov 17 (Portal) – Israel has again warned Palestinians in the southern town of Khan Younis to move west out of the line of fire and closer to humanitarian aid amid recent signs of an attack Gaza is planning on Hamas in the south after the subjugation of the north.
“We are calling on people to relocate. I know it’s not easy for many of them, but we don’t want civilians to get caught in the crossfire,” Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC Friday.
Such a move could force hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled south from Israel’s assault on Gaza City to relocate again along with residents of the southern town of Khan Younis, deepening a dire humanitarian crisis.
Khan Younis has a population of more than 400,000.
After a rampage in Israel on October 7 in which its fighters killed 1,200 people and dragged 240 hostages into the enclave, Israel vowed to destroy the militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
Since then, Israel has reduced much of Gaza City to rubble, ordered the depopulation of the entire northern half of the enclave and left around two-thirds of the 2.3 million Palestinians in the strip homeless.
Many of those who have fled fear that their displacement could be permanent.
Health authorities in the Gaza Strip on Friday raised the death toll to over 12,000 people, including 5,000 children. The United Nations considers these figures to be credible, although they are now rarely updated due to the difficulty of collecting information.
Israel dropped leaflets over the eastern areas of Khan Younis overnight Thursday urging people to evacuate to shelters, suggesting military operations there are imminent.
Regev said that Israel Defense Forces needed to advance into the city to clear Hamas fighters from underground tunnels and bunkers, but that such “enormous infrastructure” did not exist in less developed areas in the west.
“I’m pretty sure they won’t have to move again” if they move west, he continued. “We are asking them to move to an area where there will hopefully be tents and a field hospital.”
Since the western areas are closer to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, humanitarian aid can be brought “as quickly as possible,” he said.
FUEL DELIVERIES
As the war entered its seventh week, there were no signs of easing despite international calls for a ceasefire or at least a humanitarian pause.
[1/6]As the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on November 17, 2023, Palestinians line up while waiting to buy bread at a bakery due to shortages of food and fuel. Portal/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa Purchase license rights
“We have prepared for a long and sustained defense from all directions. The longer the occupation forces stay in Gaza, the higher their continued losses will be,” Abu Ubaida, spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, said in a video statement.
Amid warnings that the siege would lead to starvation and disease, Israel appeared to cave to international pressure on Friday, agreeing to allow tankers into the Gaza Strip and promising “no limits” on aid requested by the United Nations.
Israel said it would allow two truckloads of fuel per day to help the United Nations meet basic needs at Washington’s request and spoke of plans to increase aid more broadly.
“We will increase the capacity of humanitarian convoys and trucks as long as there is a need,” Col. Elad Goren of COGAT, the Defense Ministry agency that coordinates administrative affairs with the Palestinians, said at a briefing.
While Israel has promised to provide aid in the past, the comments appeared to signal a change in tone after UN agencies warned that humanitarian conditions in Gaza were rapidly deteriorating, including a stark warning from the World Food Program of the “imminent possibility of famine.” “. “.
At Gaza’s largest hospital, Al Shifa, Israeli forces said they found a vehicle containing a large number of weapons and an underground structure they described as a Hamas tunnel shaft within two days of searches.
The facility has been a main target of Israeli ground attacks and sparked global concern about the worsening humanitarian crisis.
The army released a video that showed a tunnel entrance in an outdoor area of the hospital littered with concrete, wooden rubble and sand. It appeared the area had been excavated. A bulldozer appeared in the background.
Israel has long claimed that the hospital was located above a huge underground bunker that housed a Hamas command headquarters. Hospital staff say this is false and that Israeli findings there have so far proven nothing of the sort.
Hamas denies using hospitals for military purposes. It is said that some hostages were treated at medical centers but were not held there.
Baby, hostage dies
Al Shifa staff said a premature baby died at the hospital on Friday, the first baby to die there in the two days since Israeli forces invaded. Three had died in previous days when the hospital was surrounded.
Hamas also announced the death of an 85-year-old from Israel, who it said died of a panic attack during an airstrike.
In Modiin, Israel, family held a funeral for Noa Marciano, 19, an Israeli army conscript whose body was recovered on Thursday in Gaza City near Shifa Hospital. She was abducted from a military base during the Hamas attack on October 7.
The military said it also recovered the body of Yehudit Weiss, 65, a mother of five, which was seized at Kibbutz Be’eri.
Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, James Mackenzie Henriette Chacar and the Portal bureaus; Writing by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Cynthia Osterman
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