Bombardment in Gaza as Israel reschedules talks with US
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Battles and bombardment pounded the Gaza Strip on Thursday, after Washington said Israel agreed to reschedule cancelled talks with tensions worsening between the allies.
United States criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has mounted over Gaza’s civilian death toll, dire food shortages, and Israeli plans to push its ground offensive against Hamas militants into the far-southern city of Rafah, which is packed with displaced civilians.
World leaders have warned against a Rafah offensive which they fear would worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian situation for the Palestinian territory’s 2.4 million residents.
The United Nations reported late Wednesday that famine “is ever closer to becoming a reality in northern Gaza,” and said the territory’s health system is collapsing ‘due to ongoing hostilities and access constraints.’
Bombardment and fighting have continued despite a binding United Nations Security Council resolution passed on Monday demanding an ‘immediate ceasefire’ in Gaza and the release of hostages held by militants.
Netanyahu scrapped an Israeli visit to Washington to discuss the Rafah plan, in protest of the UN ceasefire resolution from which the United States abstained, allowing it to pass.
Netanyahu’s government has since backtracked and agreed “to reschedule the meeting dedicated to Rafah”, according to White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.
She added that they were working to find a ‘convenient date’.
US officials say they plan to present Israel with an alternative for Rafah, focused on striking Hamas targets while limiting the civilian toll.
The war began when Hamas launched an unprecedented Oct 7 attack that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The militants also took about 250 hostages. Israel says that, after an earlier truce and hostage release deal, about 130 captives remain in Gaza, including 34 presumed dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 32,490 people, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
The health ministry, in a preliminary toll issued early on Thursday, said 66 people were killed overnight.
Fighting continued around three of the Strip’s hospitals, raising fears for patients, medical staff and displaced people inside them. The Al-Amal hospital in Khan Yunis, near Rafah, ‘has ceased to function completely’, the Palestine Red Crescent said earlier this week, following the evacuation of civilians from the medical centre.
Israel’s military accuses Hamas fighters of hiding in medical facilities and using civilians as shields.
Early on Thursday, the army said militants had been firing on troops “from within and outside the emergency ward at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
Troops began raiding AlShifa early last week, and on Wednesday night carried out an air strike on the emergency ward “while avoiding harm to civilians, patients, and medical teams,” the army said.
The UN has reported “intensive exchanges of fire between the Israeli military and armed Palestinians”. It cited the health ministry as saying the army has confined medical staff and patients to one building, not allowing them to leave.
Israel’s army said troops had evacuated civilians, patients and staff ‘to alternative medical facilities’ it set up.
Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles have also massed around the Nasser Hospital, the health ministry said, adding that shots were fired but no raid had yet been launched.
The Red Crescent warned that thousands were trapped inside.
Gaza has endured almost six months of war and a siege that has cut off most food, water, fuel and other supplies.