Israeli tanks advanced deep into the western Gaza Strip’s Rafah district in a deadly night of artillery fire from the air, land and sea, forcing many families to flee their homes and tents in darkness, residents said on Thursday.
Residents said Israeli forces intensified their push towards the Al-Mawasi neighborhood near the Rafah coast, which has been designated a humanitarian aid zone in all Israeli military publications and maps since it began its Rafah offensive in May.
In a statement, the Israeli army denied having carried out any attacks inside the Al-Mawasi humanitarian area.
Israel said the aim of the offensive was to eliminate Hamas’ last fighting forces in the city of Rafah, where more than one million people had fled before the offensive began, with most of them now moving north towards Khan Yunis and Deir al-Bala in central Gaza.
The Israeli army said in a statement that it was continuing its “intelligence-based, targeted operations” in Rafah and that its forces had found weapons the previous day and killed a Palestinian militant in close-range combat.
(Gaza ceasefire in balance, US says Hamas demands ‘unworkable’ changes)
(The US ceasefire plan was welcomed by Hamas but has been stalled by a lack of trust in Israel and Washington.)
The military announced the previous day that it had carried out airstrikes on 45 locations across the Gaza Strip, including military facilities, militant groups, rocket launchers and tunnels.
Israel will not allow peace until Hamas is destroyed, and much of Gaza is in ruins, but Hamas has persisted, with fighters resurfacing and fighting in areas where Israeli forces had previously declared Hamas defeated and withdrawn.
The group welcomed the new U.S. ceasefire proposal but presented amendments and reaffirmed its position that any agreement must ensure an end to the fighting – a demand that Israel continues to reject.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that Hamas had proposed numerous changes to the draft agreement, some of which were unworkable, but that mediators were determined to bridge the gap.
But a Hamas official told Reuters the group was not seeking “significant amendments” to the proposed agreement, saying Hamas had demanded to select a list of 100 Palestinians serving long sentences for release from Israeli prisons, but that Israel wanted to exclude those serving long sentences and release only those serving sentences of less than 15 years.
According to a Hamas official, the group’s demands also include rebuilding the Gaza Strip, lifting the coastal blockade including opening border crossings, allowing people to move and allowing unrestricted transport of goods.
Israel said Hamas’ response to the US peace proposal was a total rejection, but mediators Qatar and Egypt said efforts were continuing to secure an agreement.
Repeated attempts to reach a ceasefire have failed since a brief, week-long ceasefire in November, and Hamas has been demanding a permanent end to the war and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
The war began abruptly when Hamas fighters made a lightning move from the Israeli blockaded Gaza Strip into southern Israel on October 7 last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages back to the Gaza Strip, according to an Israeli tally.
Israel’s invasion and bombing of Gaza has since killed at least 37,000 people, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. Thousands more are believed to have died buried under rubble and most of the city’s 2.3 million residents have been forced to flee. – Reuters
