Netanyahu: Dozens of militants surrender
‘Beginning of the end’ for Hamas, Israeli PM says
Dozens of militants have surrendered in recent days as the Israeli military intensifies its effort to crush Hamas and kill its leadership, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.
Netanyahu said the world is seeing “the beginning of the end” for Hamas and its leader, Yahya Sinwar.
“They lay down their weapons and surrender themselves to our heroic warriors,” Netanyahu said in a video broadcast. “It will take more time, the war is in full swing, (but) I say to the Hamas terrorists it is over. Don’t die for Sinwar. Surrender − now.”
Hamas issued a statement saying Israel was detaining unarmed civilians and surrounding them with weapons in a “desperate and transparent ploy” to give the appearance that the resolve of the militants was fading.
Netanyahu’s prediction came one day after the United States vetoed the United Nations General Assembly’s latest, historic resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire. Israel and its most supportive ally are finding fewer global supporters as the Palestinian death toll continues to rise. The Biden administration has opposed an open-ended cease-fire, arguing it would allow Hamas to continue its fight against Israel.
The Gaza Ministry of Health says at least 17,000 Palestinians have been reported killed in Gaza, about 70% of them women and children. More than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed in Israel, according to Israeli authorities, the vast majority of them the day Hamas attacked.
Israeli forces face heavy resistance, including in northern Gaza, where neighborhoods have been flattened by airstrikes and where ground troops have operated for over six weeks.
The Israeli military said Sunday its fighter jet attack “eliminated” Hamas battalion commander Emad Karika, who had taken command of Hamas forces in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City after his predecessor was killed earlier in the war.
Detainees stripped for security concerns
Tzachi Hanegbi, the head of Israel’s National Security Council, said Sunday that Palestinian detainees are stripped to their underwear when arrested for security concerns.
Later Sunday, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari explained that the arrests took place in two Hamas strongholds, Jabaliya and Shijaiyah, and that people are undressed to make sure they are not hiding explosives. Those believed to be Hamas members are taken away for investigation, while others are told to head south.
Viral images of Israeli soldiers guarding dozens of men stripped down to their underwear, kneeling or sitting with their hands tied behind their backs in Gazan streets drew protest from Human Rights Watch and other advocacy groups.
Several men and a teenage boy told the Associated Press Saturday they were beaten by Israeli troops, given only minimal water, and often prevented from using the bathroom while being detained and interrogated for five days.
Price of food soars
Aid groups and residents of Gaza have described severe food and medical shortages as 2.3 million Palestinians have effectively become sealed inside the territory that is just 25 miles long and about 7 miles wide.
The price of food has soared amid the shortages. Abdulsalam al-Majdalawi said he had come every day for nearly two weeks to a U.N. distribution center, hoping to get food for his family of seven. “Every day, we spend five or six hours here and return home (empty handed),” he said. “Thank God, today they drew our name.”
Hamas urged workers worldwide to join a general strike called for Monday in Gaza, urging the “free people of the world” to “protest against the Israeli occupation’s genocidal war and atrocities against civilians” in Gaza.
Gaza tragedy by the numbers
The U.N. refugees agency says almost 90% of the more than 2 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have fled their homes amid the pounding Israeli bombardment and land assault since Oct. 7. The agency said last week that almost 1.2 million internally displaced Palestinians were sheltering in 151 U.N. installations. Four of those locations, in and around the central Gaza city of Kahn Yunis, were evacuated last week at the instruction of the Israeli army.
“Expect public order to completely break down soon, and an even worse situation could unfold including epidemic diseases and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a forum in Qatar, a key intermediary.
Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, called allegations of mass displacement from Gaza “outrageous and false.”
The World Health Organization adopted a resolution Sunday calling for “immediate, sustained and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief, including the access of medical personnel” into Gaza. It calls on all parties to fulfill international humanitarian law obligations aimed at protecting civilians and medical personnel during war.
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the resolution was a starting point and urged all U.N. member states to work toward ending the conflict as soon as possible.
“It is a platform on which to build,” Tedros said. “Without a cease-fire, there is no peace. And without peace, there is no health.”
The war has raised tensions across the Middle East, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah trading fire with Israel along the border and other Iran-backed militant groups targeting the U.S. in Syria and Iraq. Israeli artillery, drone, and airstrikes over Lebanese border towns intensified.
France said one of its warships in the Red Sea shot down two drones that approached it from Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi rebels threatened to target any ship headed to Israeli ports through the Red and Arabian seas. The blockade will be in place, an official said, until food and medicine can freely enter Gaza.