Israel fights a seemingly endless war in Gaza’s most devastated region

Israel fights a seemingly endless war in Gaza’s most devastated region
Rubbish and debris are scattered near damaged buildings in the vicinity of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahya in the northern Gaza Strip on October 31, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
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Updated 01 November 2024

Israel fights a seemingly endless war in Gaza’s most devastated region

Israel fights a seemingly endless war in Gaza’s most devastated region
  • Since its Oct. 7 attack into Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, Hamas has taken heavy losses
  • esidents say Israeli forces raid shelters for the displaced, forcing people out at gunpoint

JERUSALEM: More than a year into a war that has ricocheted across the Middle East, Israeli troops are still battling Hamas in the most heavily destroyed and isolated part of the Gaza Strip.
In northern Gaza, Hamas militants carry out hit-and-run attacks from bombed-out buildings. Residents say Israeli forces have raided shelters for the displaced, forcing people out at gunpoint. First responders say they can barely operate because of the Israeli bombardment.
Since its Oct. 7 attack into Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, Hamas has taken heavy losses. The recent killing of its top leader, Yahya Sinwar, was viewed as a possible turning point, yet the two sides do not appear any closer to a ceasefire, and Hamas, which still holds scores of hostages, remains the dominant power in Gaza.
The conflict has drawn in militants from Lebanon to Yemen, and their key sponsor, Iran, has inched closer to all-out war with Israel. But in northern Gaza, the war seems stuck in a loop of devastating Israeli offensives, followed by Hamas fighters regrouping.
Israel is once again ordering mass evacuations, severely restricting aid despite global outrage and raiding hospitals it says are used by militants.
In the northern border town of Beit Lahiya — one of the first targets of last year’s ground invasion — two Israeli strikes this week killed at least 88 Palestinians, including dozens of women and children. The military said its target was a spotter on the roof.
As the war grinds on, Israel is resorting to ever more draconian measures. There is even talk of adopting a surrender-or-starve strategy proposed by former generals.
On Monday, Israel passed legislation that could severely restrict the UN agency that is the largest aid provider in Gaza despite protests by the United States and other close allies. It accuses the agency of allowing itself to be infiltrated by Hamas, allegations denied by the UN
Another offensive, as Hamas keeps filling the void
Israel launched its latest offensive in northern Gaza in early October, focusing on Jabaliya, a crowded, decades-old urban refugee camp where it says Hamas had regrouped.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted another 250 that day. Israel’s offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, who do not say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children.
Israel says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence, and the United States says Hamas is no longer capable of mounting an Oct. 7-style attack.
But Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to areas where they had battled before — only to face renewed attacks. At least 16 Israeli soldiers have been killed in northern Gaza since the latest operation began, including a 41-year-old colonel.
Israel has yet to lay out a plan for postwar Gaza and has rejected a US push for the Western-backed Palestinian Authority to return and govern with Arab support. Plainclothes Hamas security men still patrol most areas.
“It’s endless war,” said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who now leads a Palestinian studies program at Tel Aviv University.
He says Israel has only two options to break the cycle: Either completely reoccupy Gaza, which would require several thousand troops to be stationed there indefinitely. Or secure a ceasefire with Hamas that involves the release of its hostages in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli jails, and a full Israeli withdrawal — the kind of deal that has long eluded US and Arab mediators.
“We are in Jabaliya for the fourth time, and maybe in the next month we will find ourselves there for the fifth and the sixth.” he said.
‘Leave now’ if you care about the lives of your children
Around a million people fled the north, including Gaza City, when Israel ordered its wholesale evacuation at the start of the war. They have not been allowed to return.
Some 400,000 have remained, even as Israel has encircled the area and obliterated entire neighborhoods and critical infrastructure.
The UN says at least 60,000 people have fled to Gaza City in recent weeks from Jabaliya and the northern border towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.
Residents who remain describe being stuck in their homes for days at a time because of the fighting, with bodies rotting in the streets and rescue teams unable to venture out.
Amna Mustafa and her children were asleep before dawn in a crowded school-turned-shelter in Beit Lahiya last week when an Israeli drone hovering overhead ordered everyone to evacuate. “If you care about your life and the lives of your children, leave now,” it said.
She said men were ordered to strip down and taken away in trucks. The military says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians, and that such procedures are used to search and detain militants who it says hide among civilians.
Women and children were ordered to walk to a nearby hospital, where Israeli soldiers searched them before allowing most to walk onward to Gaza City, several miles (kilometers) to the south. Mustafa said she spent two nights in the open before moving into a new tent camp in a soccer field.
“There is no food, no water, no blankets, no diapers and no milk for the children,” she said. “We are here waiting for God’s mercy.”
The Israeli military shared drone footage of a similar exodus, showing thousands of people walking down a plowed up road past tanks. It said Hamas had prevented them from leaving before its forces arrived, without providing evidence.
The UN human rights office warned earlier this month that Israel “may be causing the destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza’s northernmost governate through death and displacement.”
Israel restricts aid despite US warnings
Israel has severely restricted aid to Gaza in October, allowing in only about a third of the humanitarian assistance that entered the previous month.
Alia Zaki, a spokesperson for the World Food Program, said Israel has not allowed UN agencies to deliver aid to the north outside of Gaza City since the latest offensive began.
Col. Elad Goren, a spokesperson for COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs in Gaza, attributed the lack of aid in the first half of the month to Jewish holiday closures and troop movements.
At a briefing last week, he said there was no need for aid deliveries in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya because there was “no population” left in either town. That was before this week’s strikes on Beit Lahiya killed scores of people.
The Biden administration has told Israel to increase the supply of aid entering Gaza, warning it of US laws that could require it to reduce its crucial military support.
Does Israel plan to empty the north?
Palestinians fear Israel is carrying out a strategy proposed by former generals in which aid to the north would be cut off, civilians would be ordered to leave and anyone remaining would be branded a militant. Rights groups say the plan would violate international law.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited the region last week for the 11th time since the start of the war, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told him that Israel had not adopted the plan. The military has denied receiving such orders.
But the Israeli government has not publicly repudiated the plan, even after Blinken’s visit.
Milshtein says the fact that Israel is even considering it is “a post-traumatic phenomenon” born of desperation.
“Many people in the (Israeli military) know it’s a bad idea... But they say: ‘OK, we don’t have any other plan, so let’s try it.”


Five Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza: military

Five Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza: military
Updated 9 sec ago

Five Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza: military

Five Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza: military
  • Statement: Two of the soldiers ‘fell during combat in the northern Gaza Strip’
  • Latest round of negotiations on war in Gaza began on Sunday in Doha
JERUSALEM: Five Israeli soldiers were killed in combat in the northern Gaza Strip, Israel’s military said on Tuesday, as Israel and Hamas held indirect talks in Qatar on an elusive ceasefire.
Two of the soldiers “fell during combat in the northern Gaza Strip,” the Israeli military said in a statement, adding that three others were killed and two severely wounded in the same incident.
The wounded soldiers were “evacuated to a hospital to receive medical treatment and their families have been notified,” the military said.
The latest round of negotiations on the nearly two-year war in Gaza began on Sunday in Doha, with representatives of Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas seated in different rooms in the same building.
Monday’s talks ended with “no breakthrough,” a Palestinian official familiar with the negotiations said.
The Hamas and Israeli delegations were due to resume talks, with US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff also set to join them this week in an effort to secure a ceasefire.
The US proposal included a 60-day truce, during which Hamas would release 10 living hostages, taken during its October 2023 attack on Israel, and several bodies in exchange for Palestinians detained by Israel, two Palestinian sources close to the discussions earlier said.
Hamas was also demanding certain conditions for Israel’s withdrawal, guarantees against a resumption of fighting during negotiations, and the return of the UN-led aid distribution system, they said.

Trump hosts Netanyahu in push for Gaza deal

Trump hosts Netanyahu in push for Gaza deal
Updated 08 July 2025

Trump hosts Netanyahu in push for Gaza deal

Trump hosts Netanyahu in push for Gaza deal
  • Netanyahu was more cagey on peace with the Palestinians and ruled out a full Palestinian state, saying that Israel will ‘always’ keep security control over the Gaza Strip
  • The US proposal included a 60-day truce, during which Hamas would release 10 living hostages and several bodies in exchange for Palestinians detained by Israel, two Palestinian sources close to the discussions had earlier told AFP

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump hosted Benjamin Netanyahu for dinner at the White House on Monday as he pressed the Israeli prime minister to end the devastating Gaza war.
Netanyahu’s third visit since Trump’s return to power comes at a crucial time, with the US president hoping to capitalize on the momentum from a recent truce between Israel and Iran.
“I don’t think there is a hold up. I think things are going along very well,” Trump told reporters at the start of the dinner when asked what was preventing a peace deal.
Sitting on the opposite side of a long table from the Israeli leader, Trump also voiced confidence that Hamas was willing to end the conflict in Gaza, which is entering its 22nd month.
“They want to meet and they want to have that ceasefire,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked if clashes involving Israeli soldiers would derail talks.
The meeting in Washington came as Israel and Hamas held a second day of indirect talks in Qatar on an elusive ceasefire.
Netanyahu meanwhile said he had nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize — the US president’s long-held goal — presenting him with a letter he sent to the prize committee.
“He’s forging peace as we speak, in one country, in one region after the other,” Netanyahu said.

But Netanyahu was more cagey on peace with the Palestinians and ruled out a full Palestinian state, saying that Israel will ‘always’ keep security control over the Gaza Strip.
“Now, people will say it’s not a complete state, it’s not a state. We don’t care,” Netanyahu said.
Several dozen protesters gathered near the White House as Trump and Netanyahu met, chanting slogans accusing the Israeli prime minister of “genocide.”
Trump has strongly backed key US ally and fellow conservative Netanyahu, lending US support in Israel’s recent war by bombing Iran’s key nuclear facilities.
But at the same time he has increasingly pushed for an end to what he called the “hell” in Gaza. Trump said on Sunday he believes there is a “good chance” of an agreement this coming week.
“The utmost priority for the president right now in the Middle East is to end the war in Gaza and to return all of the hostages,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Leavitt said Trump wanted Hamas to agree to a US-brokered proposal “right now” after Israel backed the plan for a ceasefire and the release of hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
The latest round of negotiations on the war in Gaza began on Sunday in Doha, with representatives seated in different rooms in the same building.
Monday’s talks ended with “no breakthrough,” a Palestinian official familiar with the negotiations told AFP. The Hamas and Israeli delegations were due to resume talks later.

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff was due to join the talks in Doha later this week in an effort to get a ceasefire over the line.
The US proposal included a 60-day truce, during which Hamas would release 10 living hostages and several bodies in exchange for Palestinians detained by Israel, two Palestinian sources close to the discussions had earlier told AFP.
The group was also demanding certain conditions for Israel’s withdrawal, guarantees against a resumption of fighting during negotiations, and the return of the UN-led aid distribution system, they said.
In Gaza, the civil defense agency said Israeli forces killed at least 12 people on Monday, including six in a clinic housing people displaced by the war.
Of the 251 hostages taken by Palestinian militants during the October 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the war, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
The war has created dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 57,523 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers the figures reliable.

 


Trump says Hamas ‘want to have that ceasefire’ in Gaza

Trump says Hamas ‘want to have that ceasefire’ in Gaza
Updated 08 July 2025

Trump says Hamas ‘want to have that ceasefire’ in Gaza

Trump says Hamas ‘want to have that ceasefire’ in Gaza

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump voiced his confidence Monday that Hamas was willing to agree a truce with Israel, as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to push for an end to the Gaza war.
“They want to meet and they want to have that ceasefire,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked if clashes involving Israeli soldiers would derail talks.


Libya authorities intercept over 100 migrants off coast

Libya authorities intercept over 100 migrants off coast
Updated 08 July 2025

Libya authorities intercept over 100 migrants off coast

Libya authorities intercept over 100 migrants off coast
  • Libya has been gripped by unrest since the 2011 overthrow and killing of longtime ruler Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising

TRIPOLI: Libyan authorities on Monday said they had intercepted 113 migrants off the country’s coast and recovered three bodies in separate operations over three days.
The bodies of three “illegal migrants of African nationalities” were discovered on a beach in Misrata, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of Tripoli, the Ministry of Interior said.
Also on Monday, security forces on a speedboat intercepted 54 migrants off Garabulli, 50 kilometers east of the capital Tripoli, the ministry added.
They were brought back to the capital’s port and handed over to the competent authorities, it said.
The day before, “as part of a plan to intensify maritime patrols during the summer,” 20 migrants “of various nationalities” were rescued off Zawiya, 45 kilometers west of Tripoli, the ministry said Sunday.
On Saturday, 39 migrants were intercepted off the eastern coast of Tripoli, the ministry reported, without providing further details about where they were found or their point of departure.
Libya has been gripped by unrest since the 2011 overthrow and killing of longtime ruler Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising.
It has become a hub for tens of thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe, risking their lives at sea.
Migrants intercepted by Libyan authorities — even in international waters before reaching the Italian coast, some 300 kilometers away — are forcibly returned to Libya and held in detention under harsh conditions frequently condemned by the United Nations.
 

 


Ending war in Gaza is ‘Trump’s utmost priority’

Ending war in Gaza is ‘Trump’s utmost priority’
Updated 07 July 2025

Ending war in Gaza is ‘Trump’s utmost priority’

Ending war in Gaza is ‘Trump’s utmost priority’
  • Israel’s refusal to allow free and safe entry of aid is key sticking point in Doha truce talks

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump’s “utmost priority” is to end the war in Gaza and free hostages held by Hamas, the White House said on Monday before a crucial meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will this week travel to Qatar, where Israel and Hamas are holding indirect talks. Israel’s refusal to allow the free and safe entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza remains the main obstacle to progress in the ceasefire talks in Doha, Palestinian sources said. Mediators hosted two more rounds of discussions on Monday. 

The US-backed proposal for a 60-day ceasefire envisages a phased release of hostages, Israeli troop withdrawals from parts of Gaza and discussions on ending the war entirely.
Hamas has long demanded a final end to the war before it would free remaining hostages, but Israel will not halt fighting until all hostages are free and Hamas dismantled. Trump said last week that he would be “very firm” with Netanyahu on the need for a speedy Gaza deal.
However, Israel has intensified its military campaign in Gaza and sharply restricted food distribution. “God willing, a truce will take place,” Mohammed Al-Sawalheh, 30, from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, said on Monday after another Israeli air strike. “We cannot see a truce while people are dying. We want a truce that will stop this bloodshed.”