Israeli military expands to urban refugee camps
Latest battle zone threatens to inflict more misery in Gaza
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces Tuesday expanded their ground offensive into urban refugee camps in central Gaza after bombarding the crowded Palestinian communities and ordering residents to evacuate.
Gaza’s main telecom provider announced another “complete interruption” of services in the besieged territory.
The military’s announcement of the new battle zone threatens further destruction in a war that Israel says will last for “many months” as it vows to crush the ruling Hamas terrorist group after its Oct. 7 attack. Israeli forces have been engaged in heavy urban fighting in northern Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis, driving Palestinians into eversmaller areas in search of refuge.
The U.S. said Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, was meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Despite U.S. calls for Israel to curb civilian casualties and international pressure for a cease-fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was deepening the fighting.
“We say to the Hamas terrorists: We see you and we will get to you,” Netanyahu said.
Israel’s offensive is one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than 20,900 Palestinians, two-thirds women and children, have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, whose count doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The U.N. human rights office said the continued bombardment of middle Gaza had claimed more than 100 Palestinian lives since Sunday. The office noted that Israel had ordered some residents to move there.
Israel said it would no longer grant automatic visas to U.N. employees and accused the world body of being “complicit partners” in Hamas’ tactics. Government spokesman Eylon Levy said Israel would consider visa requests case by case. That could further limit aid efforts in Gaza.
Residents of central Gaza described shelling and airstrikes shaking the Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij camps. The built-up towns hold Palestinians driven from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war, along with their descendants.
“The bombing was very intense,” Radwan Abu Sheitta said by phone from Bureij.
The Israeli military ordered residents to evacuate a belt of territory the width of central Gaza, urging them to move to nearby Deir al-Balah. The U.N. humanitarian office said the area ordered evacuated was home to nearly 90,000 people before the war and now shelters more than 61,000 displaced people, mostly from the north.
The military later said it was operating in Bureij and asserted that it had located a Hamas training camp.
The telecom outage announced by Paltel follows similar outages through much of the war. NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet outages, confirmed that network connectivity in Gaza was disrupted again and “likely to leave most residents offline.”
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said several countries had sent proposals to resolve the conflict following news of an Egyptian proposal that would include a transitional Palestinian government in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. He did not offer details of the proposals.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel faces a “multi-arena war” on seven fronts — Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran. “We have responded and acted already on six of these,” he told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Iranian-backed militia groups around the region have stepped up attacks in support of Hamas.
More than 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes. U.N. officials say a quarter of the territory’s population is starving under Israel’s siege, which allows in a trickle of food, water, fuel, medicine and other supplies.
In an area Israel had declared a safe zone, a strike hit a home in Mawasi, a rural area in the southern province of Khan Younis. One woman was killed and at least eight were wounded, according to a cameraman working for The Associated Press at the nearby hospital.
In response, Israel’s military said that it wouldn’t refrain from operating in safe zones, “if it identifies terrorist organization activity threatening the security of Israel.”
Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 others hostage. Israel aims to free the more than 100 hostages still in captivity.