On Friday, the Palestinian militant group Hamas engaged in fierce clashes with Israeli forces in and around Gaza’s largest cities, escalating an ongoing conflict that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians and widespread destruction in the besieged enclave.
The death toll in Gaza has now surpassed 17,000, with the majority being women and children, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Vast areas have been transformed into rubble-strewn wastelands marked by the remnants of bombed-out and bullet-riddled structures.
The health ministry reported an additional 40 casualties from airstrikes near Gaza City early Friday, with “dozens” more reported in Jabalia and Khan Yunis.
Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian poet and one of the emerging voices of a younger generation of English-writing authors in Gaza, was reportedly killed in an Israeli strike, as confirmed by his friends overnight Thursday.
Israeli forces claimed to have encircled major urban centers in their pursuit of dismantling Hamas, but resistance fighters have persistently fought back, inflicting losses on the invading forces.
In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, US President Joe Biden stressed the critical importance of protecting civilians and separating the civilian population from Hamas, according to a statement from the White House. Biden also called for the creation of corridors allowing people to move safely from defined areas of hostilities.
Supported by air power, tanks, and armored bulldozers, Israeli troops are currently engaged in battles in Khan Yunis, the largest city in southern Gaza, as well as in Gaza City and the Jabalia district in the north.
Netanyahu announced on Thursday that troops had closed in on the Khan Yunis residence of Hamas’s Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, 61, asserting that “it is only a matter of time until we find him.”
Israeli television stations aired footage on Thursday showing blindfolded Palestinian men in only underwear, guarded by Israeli soldiers in Gaza. The images sparked strong reactions on social media, with reports indicating that the men had been rounded up from a nearby school where they sought shelter with their families to escape intense Israeli bombardment.
“We are conducting investigations to identify individuals linked to Hamas and those who are not,” stated Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari during a press conference.
The ongoing conflict has forced many Gazans southward, transforming Rafah near the Egyptian border into a vast camp for the 1.9 million displaced individuals, constituting 80 percent of Gaza’s population.
“Two months on the road, moving from one place to another. These are the hardest two months we have experienced in our lives,” expressed Abdallah Abu Daqqa, displaced from Khan Yunis to Rafah.
Continued air strikes have followed the displaced population, with eight more hitting Rafah overnight. AFP journalists witnessed around 20 corpses in white body bags, including a child, at Nasser hospital, as people gathered nearby for prayers.
The significant civilian casualties and dire shortages caused by the Israeli siege, limiting access to essential resources, have raised global concerns. Israel has approved a “minimal” increase in fuel supplies to prevent a “humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics.”
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths mentioned “promising signs” that Israel may open the southern Kerem Shalom crossing for aid deliveries.
Hamas declared a “state of famine” in northern Gaza, asserting that no aid has arrived since December 1. Israeli rights group B’Tselem criticized the “minuscule amount of aid” allowed into the territory, describing it as “tantamount to deliberately starving the population.”
“We are dying here, without even the need for rockets and bomb strikes. We are dead already, dead from hunger, dead from displacement,” lamented Abdelkader al-Haddad, a Gaza City resident now in Rafah.
The Netanyahu government responded angrily to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoking Article 99 of the world body’s charter, urging the Security Council to push for a ceasefire.
The United Arab Emirates has drafted a resolution scheduled for a Security Council vote on Friday, as announced by the Ecuadorian delegation, which chairs the council this month.
The latest version of the document, reviewed by AFP on Thursday, characterizes the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “catastrophic” and “demands an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”
According to the Israeli military, the ongoing conflict in Gaza has claimed the lives of 91 Israeli soldiers, though actual numbers may be higher. The military reported four additional deaths on Thursday, including the son of war cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot.
In a Thursday briefing, the Israeli military asserted that troops had “killed Hamas terrorists and struck dozens of terror targets” in Khan Yunis, and they conducted a raid on a military compound belonging to Hamas’s Central Jabalia Battalion.
Hamas stated that it is engaging Israeli troops “on all axes of the incursion into the Gaza Strip.”
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli security forces conducted an operation early Friday, according to the Palestinian official news agency Wafa.
Along the UN-patrolled Israel-Lebanon border, there have been near-daily exchanges, primarily involving Lebanon’s Hezbollah. On Thursday, the Israeli army claimed that an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon killed a civilian in Israel.
Prime Minister Netanyahu warned Hezbollah, stating that if it “chooses to start a global war, then it will turn Beirut and South Lebanon… into Gaza and Khan Yunis with its own hands.”
An investigation by Agence France-Presse into an October 13 strike in southern Lebanon that killed a Reuters journalist and injured six others, including two from AFP, concluded that it involved a tank shell only used by the Israeli army in this region.
