Israeli forces bombed Palestinian refugee camps in central Gaza. The airstrikes shook the Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij camps, their residents said.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip –
Israeli forces shelled Palestinian refugee camps in central Gaza on Tuesday, residents said, apparently in preparation for expanding their ground offensive.
The opening of a possible new combat zone shows the long and destructive road that still lies ahead, as Israel vowed to crush Hamas after the October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the current war.
For weeks, Israeli forces have been engaged in fierce urban fighting in the northern Gaza Strip and the southern city of Khan Younis, pushing Palestinians into smaller parts of the territory in search of refuge.
Despite international pressure for a ceasefire and US demands to limit civilian casualties, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Monday that the fighting was “far from over.”
Israel's offensive was one of the most devastating military campaigns in modern history. More than 20,600 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have died, according to Gaza's health ministry, which makes no distinction between civilians and combatants in the deaths.
Residents of the central Gaza Strip reported a night of shelling and airstrikes on Tuesday that rocked the Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij camps. The camps are built-up towns that house Palestinians forced from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war and their descendants. Today they are also filled with people who have fled the north.
A truck carrying people fleeing the central Gaza Strip with their belongings arrives in southern Rafah following an evacuation order, December 26, 2023.
“The shelling was very intense,” Radwan Abu Sheitta, a Palestinian teacher, said by telephone from his home in Bureij. “It looks like they are getting closer,” he said of the Israeli troops.
The Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military wing, said its fighters attacked an Israeli tank east of Burei. His report could not be independently confirmed, but suggested that Israeli forces were moving toward the camp.
Fighter jets and artillery also attacked areas east of the Nuseirat camp. “We couldn't sleep because of the shelling,” said Ezzel-Din Mohammed Abdallah al-Masry, a Palestinian fisherman who was forced into the area from the northern Gaza Strip with his five children and another family. “The children are afraid. “We’re terrified.”
Meanwhile, negotiations appear to have made little progress toward a pause in fighting that would allow the exchange of more hostages held in Gaza for Palestinians detained by Israel.
Egypt has put forward an ambitious peace proposal that aims not only to end the war but also to lay out a plan for the next day. According to officials familiar with the proposal, it calls for a gradual release of the hostages and the formation of a Palestinian expert government to govern the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
But the plan met with a cold public response from Israel and Hamas. It falls short of Israel's stated goal of dismantling the Palestinian armed group and appears at odds with Israel's insistence on maintaining military control of Gaza for an extended period after the war. It is also unclear whether Hamas would agree to give up power after controlling Gaza for the past 16 years.
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