Fighting intensifies across Gaza
Over 300,000 people forced to flee Rafah
Israeli tanks and troops pushed across a highway into Rafah on Monday as hundreds of thousands of residents fled some of the most intense fighting in weeks along the northern and southern edges of the Gaza Strip.
UNRWA, the U.N. aid agency in Gaza, estimated 360,000 people had fled the southern city of Rafah since the first evacuation order a week ago. Israel stepped up aerial and ground bombardments in eastern areas of the city while Palestinians packed cars, trucks and carts to flee the violence.
The Israeli operations in Rafah, which borders Egypt, have closed a main crossing point for aid, which humanitarian groups say is worsening an already dire situation.
Gaza’s health authority on Monday appealed for international pressure to reopen access via the southern border to allow in aid and medical supplies.
“The wounded and sick suffer a slow death because there is no treatment and supplies and they cannot travel,” it said.
“The situation is dreadful and the sounds of explosions never stopped,” Bassam, 57, from the Shaboura neighborhood in Rafah, told Reuters via a chat app.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a phone call with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant late Sunday, “reaffirmed the U.S. opposition to a major military ground operation in Rafah,” the State Department said.
Fighting in the southern city of Rafah has been ramping up for weeks, but now Israeli forces that left some northern areas months ago were back as part of a “mop-up” effort to prevent fighters from returning, the Israeli military said.
In northern Gaza’s Jabalia, a sprawling refugee camp built 75 years ago to house Palestinian refugees from what is now Israel, tanks pushed toward the heart of the district.
Residents fled along rubble-strewn streets carrying belongings. Tank shells landed in the center of the camp and airstrikes destroyed clusters of houses, they said. Health officials said they had recovered 20 bodies of Palestinians killed in overnight airstrikes.
“We don’t know where to go. We have been displaced from one place to the next. … We are running in the streets. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw the tank and the bulldozer. It is on that street,” said one woman, who did not give her name.
Israel’s military said in early January that it had “dismantled Hamas’ military framework in Jabalia,” although it expected to return to the area periodically to fight militants. Palestinians say the need to return to earlier battlegrounds is proof Israel’s military objectives are unattainable. Israeli troops are seeking to wipe out Hamas, which has said it is committed to Israel’s destruction.
In other developments:
h Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that “more than 1,000” Hamas militants are being treated in Turkish hospitals. He described Hamas as a “resistance organization.”
h Four Israeli soldiers were injured when two antitank missiles fired from Lebanon slammed into the Yiftah region of Israel, the Israeli military said.
UN staffer killed in Rafah
A United Nations Safety and Security worker was killed and another wounded Monday when their vehicle was attacked while traveling to the European Hospital in Rafah, according to a statement from U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq. No details were immediately released.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who has called for an investigation, “condemns all attacks on UN personnel” and sends his condolences to the family of the fallen staff member, the statement said.
“With the conflict in Gaza continuing to take a heavy toll – not only on civilians, but also on humanitarian workers – the Secretary-General reiterates his urgent appeal for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and for the release of all hostages,” Haq stated.
Israelis attack aid trucks bound for Gaza
Videos authenticated by Al Jazeera show Israelis attacking aid trucks carrying food at a checkpoint in Hebron in the occupied West Bank, preventing the aid from reaching Gaza. Israeli protesters blocked the trucks and tossed food packages on the road in the latest in a series of incidents.
Four protesters, including a minor, were arrested at the protest, according to a statement from lawyers representing the protesters. The protesters object to delivery of humanitarian supplies into an area controlled by Hamas for fear the aid will not reach civilians in need, the lawyers say.
Some Palestinians, Israelis mark Memorial Day together
Attending a Memorial Day ceremony to mark Israel’s fallen soldiers in Jerusalem on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war against Hamas is a struggle to secure Israel’s “existence, liberty, security and prosperity.”
“Our war of independence is not over yet, it continues to these days,” he said.
The prime minister was heckled at the ceremony at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl military cemetery. Some protesters chanted, “You took my children.” Others silently walked out.
Israel was observing Memorial Day and Independence Day over 48 consecutive hours starting Sunday night.
Peace advocacy groups Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle-Family Forum marked the occasion with their 19th annual joint Israeli-Palestinian ceremony. Last year’s event drew almost 15,000 people to a Tel Aviv park and an estimated 200,000 online viewers.
This year’s event was conducted solely online because Israel revoked all entry permits to Palestinians after the Hamas-led mass invasion on Oct. 7. The ceremony was prerecorded last week and streamed online Sunday night.
Palestinian speaker Ahmed Helou said he lost dozens of family members in the Israel-Hamas war. Everyone involved in the conflict has “a story, a family and dreams,” he said, as translated by the Times of Israel.
Among Israeli speakers was Yonatan Zeigen, son of Canadian-Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver, who was killed Oct. 7. “How many generations of bereavement are needed until we grasp that the only way… is peace?” he said.
Contributing: Reuters