Fighting has intensified in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, as Israeli airstrikes rain down across the enclave, forcing Palestinians to flee to increasingly crowded pockets of the territory’s southern edge where security is not promised, as the war enters its third month.
“We are talking about a massive bombardment of entire neighborhoods and residential blocks,” Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani Mahmoud said Thursday, reporting from Rafah in southern Gaza, following intense nighttime bombardment.
The Israeli army “ordered in a threatening tone to move towards Rafah because it is safe”, he said, but the residential houses “were destroyed”.
“(These strikes) are not concentrated in one area of Rafah… multiple locations have been targeted, simply sending waves of fear and worry that confirm what people have been talking about and expressing before – there is literally no no safe place in the Gaza Strip, including the areas that Israel has designated as safe.
After more than two months of war, since October 7, Mahmoud said that “the mood of these 60 days has been death, destruction and displacement.”
“We are talking about more than 60 days of constant movement and fleeing for their lives from one place to another, from the far north of Gaza City, Beit Hanoon, to the far south near Rafah , where many people are gathered and rushed. »
“Alarming levels of hunger”
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said households in northern Gaza are “experiencing alarming levels of hunger”.
At least 97 percent of households in northern Gaza have “inadequate food consumption,” with nine out of ten people going an entire day and night without food.
In the southern governorates, a third of households reported high levels of severe or very severe hunger, and 53 percent experienced moderate hunger.
“Palestinians lack everything they need to survive,” Mahmoud said.
While continuing its offensive in the south, the Israeli armed forces attacked several refugee camps, including the Jabalia camp in the north and the al-Maghazi camp in the center. The Jabalia attack killed 22 relatives of Tel Aviv Tribune journalist Momin Alshrafi, including his father, mother, three siblings and children.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, 60 percent of the injured require urgent medical treatment abroad, reflecting the collapse of Gaza’s health sector.
“The occupying forces are deliberately arresting and mistreating the sick and wounded, including our ambulance crews, and we are on the cusp of a health and environmental catastrophe in the Gaza Strip,” a statement said.
When will this end?
As the death toll mounts amid the humanitarian catastrophe, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israeli war cabinet officials last week that U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration believes war should end in weeks – not months, aAccording to the Wall Street Journal,
Israeli officials, in turn, expressed interest in a return to normal, particularly in the interest of economic stability, but gave no guarantees, according to the report.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel could occupy part of the Gaza Strip indefinitely to create a “buffer zone”, a move that would put it on a collision course with its regional allies and the United States. .
Conflicting reports have also emerged over whether Israeli troops surrounded the home of Gaza Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Khan Younis.
On Wednesday evening, Netanyahu said it was “only a matter of time before we got him” and that Israeli soldiers had surrounded his house.
Yet military spokesman Daniel Hagari later said Sinwar’s house was the entire “Khan Younis region”, giving no indication that any specific location had been surrounded.
Three names top Israel’s most wanted men, namely Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades; his second in command, Marwan Issa; and Sinwar.