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Israel and Hamas have resumed fighting, ending a week-long ceasefire in Gaza that international mediators had sought to extend to an eighth day.
“Hamas violated the pause in operations and also fired into Israeli territory,” the Israel Defense Forces said, adding that it had resumed fighting with Hamas. As of Friday afternoon, the IDF said it had hit 200 “terrorist targets.”
The resumption of hostilities on Friday shattered a fragile ceasefire between the warring parties that included the release of about 100 Israeli women and children and foreigners held hostage by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in exchange for about 240 freed Palestinian women and had made it possible for children to enter Israeli prisons.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Friday accused Hamas of failing to fulfill its promise to release “all kidnapped women.” The Israeli military said it was “currently attacking Hamas terrorist targets” within the strip. After the ceasefire collapsed, airstrikes and artillery attacks were immediately reported in Gaza.
Hamas and other Palestinian militant factions said Friday they fired rockets at cities in southern Israel and as far as Tel Aviv in retaliation for renewed Israeli airstrikes, without claiming responsibility for the launches from Gaza early Friday. The Israeli military also hit back after Hezbollah, the Iran-backed paramilitary group and a Hamas ally, fired rockets across the northern border with Lebanon.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 178 people were killed and 589 injured in the renewed Israeli attack. Four children were among nine people killed in the southern city of Rafah, according to Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital.
Netanyahu’s office said it would resume fighting to release hostages and “eliminate” Hamas.
Qatar, which brokered the cessation of hostilities along with Egypt and the United States, said negotiations between the two sides were continuing to return to the ceasefire. But Doha warned that the bombing of Gaza so soon after the end of the ceasefire “complicates mediation efforts and deepens the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.”
The ceasefire, originally scheduled for four days starting Nov. 24, was extended twice as Hamas offered to release more women and children and increase humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
But the lull in hostilities ended after three Israelis were killed at a bus stop in Jerusalem on Thursday in an attack claimed by Hamas. An official briefed on the negotiations said Hamas was struggling to find 10 women and children to hand over under the original agreement, which was based on the release of about 10 Israeli hostages per day.
“Mediators are trying to find a way to add more people to the remaining women and children, and Hamas is trying to get more people released,” the official said. “The push now is to add a second category of hostages to women and children and to accelerate talks on a longer-term deal that would include the release of soldiers.”
Hamas stressed that it had made offers to repatriate hostages, including elderly prisoners, during negotiations on Thursday.
“We and other groups in Gaza now only have three women and children, but [Israel] refused to extend the ceasefire to receive them,” Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya told Al Jazeera.
The militants are expected to demand major concessions in return for the release of the 140 remaining hostages, including many Israeli soldiers and reservists.
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However, the Israeli government continued to face pressure from its citizens to secure the release of all hostages, and their families called for a new deal on Friday.
“The end of the current deal is a big disappointment for the families,” said Ilan Zaharia, whose niece Eden Zaharia is among the prisoners. “We demand that the Qatari and Egyptian mediators, as well as Hamas, sit down and work out an agreement to increase the number of those released from Hamas captivity.”
“The women and children deal. . . “It’s not over yet,” Zaharia added. “Eden was about to be released. . . We want a big deal that will bring all of our hostages home.”
The fighting marks the end of a brief reprieve for civilians in the Gaza Strip, who endured weeks of intense Israeli bombardment and a ground invasion sparked by Hamas’ attack on communities in southern Israel on October 7, in which the militant group killed 1,200 people killed and took about 240 hostages.
Palestinian officials said more than 14,800 people in Gaza were killed in the Israeli attack and the UN estimated that 1.8 million people had fled their homes, creating a humanitarian crisis with severe shortages of food, water, fuel and medication. The United Nations said on Friday that the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza had been closed again. Rafah is the only operational access point for aid into the besieged strip.
There were attacks on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday. The Hamas-run government media office in the Gaza Strip said several areas in the densely populated strip were targeted by Israeli airstrikes following the end of the ceasefire © Mai Khaled/FTIsrael has sent text messages to Gazans listing the areas they should evacuate. “The IDF will launch a devastating military offensive. . . with the aim of destroying the terrorist organization Hamas,” the news says. “For your safety, move immediately.”
Israel’s offensive is focused on the north of the Gaza Strip, but the military is expected to move south, where about 80 percent of Gaza’s population has fled. Western governments are urging Israel to do more to protect civilians.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Netanyahu during a visit to Jerusalem on Thursday: “We have seen the massive loss of civilian life and displacement on this scale in the northern Gaza Strip.” [must] will not be repeated in the south”.
The IDF asked people in neighborhoods in southern Gaza, east of Khan Younis, and parts of northern Gaza to move to what it called “known shelters” in Rafah and a “humanitarian area” in Al-Muwasi.
Al-Muwasi is a 14-square-kilometer coastal area in southwest Gaza where Israel said it wanted to declare a “safe zone,” although the UN argued the unilaterally declared plan could endanger civilians. A UN official said no humanitarian preparations were being made in Al-Muwasi.
Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv