The Israeli army continues to bombard southern Gaza, and its ground forces and tanks have focused their fire on refugee camps in the center of the enclave, after Tel Aviv warned that the war against Hamas could deteriorate. drag on for a while.
Israeli airstrikes hit the southern towns of Khan Younis and Rafah on Monday morning, offering Palestinians no respite from violence that has killed 18,000 civilians and displaced 1.9 million people since the October 7 assault on Palestinian group Hamas against southern Israel which killed around 1,200 people.
Their plight is unlikely to improve in the near future, as Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said on Sunday that the war may have to be “measured in months.”
In central Gaza, Israeli tank shelling resumed on the Bureij and Maghazi refugee camps after nighttime strikes that caused numerous casualties.
“We are seeing civilians being killed at a historic rate,” Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani Mahmoud said from Rafah.
“Maghazi is a densely populated refugee camp in central Gaza…in a very densely populated neighborhood. Houses were targeted overnight and 23 people were reported killed. Many were injured around the targeted houses,” he said.
The latest strikes come as those fleeing violence crowd into a small pocket of southern Gaza, near the Egyptian border, with little food, water and medicine – and the World Health Organization warns that Gaza’s health system is “on its knees and collapsing.”
“Still far”
Despite growing global calls for a ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive for as long as it takes to eradicate Hamas.
It was bolstered by new military support from the White House, which said Saturday it ignored congressional review to approve a $106 million emergency sale to Israel of 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition.
“People are talking about this war going on for two more months,” said Tel Aviv Tribune’s Alan Fisher, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem.
“Benjamin Netanyahu says that (Israel) will continue to fight until it achieves all of its goals… which include the release of all prisoners, the destruction of Hamas and the deradicalization of Gaza, as he calls it” , did he declare.
“It seems that Israel is still far away, which means the end of the war is also still far away. »
The United States also continued to protect Israel diplomatically at the United Nations, vetoing a Friday resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.
“If America puts any pressure on Israel, it’s behind the scenes because, as we saw at the United Nations… they are very much in agreement with what Israel is doing, and Benjamin Netanyahu knows it,” he said. Fisher said.
Hanegbi told Israel’s Channel 12 that the United States has not set a deadline for Israel to achieve its goals.
“The assessment that it can’t be measured in weeks is correct, and I’m not sure it can be measured in months,” he said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN that regarding the duration and conduct of the fighting, “those are decisions for Israel to make.”
Faced with the arrival of new American firepower, Netanyahu on Sunday called on Hamas fighters to lay down their arms, promising that the armed group was on the verge of defeat.
Hamas, however, remained defiant, with a senior member of its political bureau saying the group had succeeded in its fight against Israeli forces and that “the end of the occupation has begun.”
Nowhere safe
For displaced Palestinians, each day of the protracted offensive brings a new wave of danger and suffering. Food is scarce and the health system is collapsing.
Israel continues to shell all areas of the enclave, including southern Gaza, to which it has ordered Palestinians to head to escape the violence.
“No place is safe in Gaza,” Juliette Touma, communications director for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, told Tel Aviv Tribune. “The only way out of this situation is a humanitarian ceasefire. This is what needs to happen.
