Israel’s military yesterday pounded Gaza City prior to a planned takeover, with another 123 people killed in the past day, the Gaza health ministry said, while militant group Hamas held further talks with Egyptian mediators.
The 24-hour death toll was the worst in a week and added to the massive fatalities from the nearly two-year war that has shattered the enclave housing more than 2 million Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated an idea — also enthusiastically floated by US President Donald Trump — that Palestinians should simply leave.
Photo: AFP
“They’re not being pushed out, they’ll be allowed to exit,” he told Israeli television channel i24NEWS. “All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their gates and stop lecturing us.”
Arabs and many world leaders are aghast at the idea of displacing the Gaza population, which Palestinians say would be like another “Nakba,” when hundreds of thousands fled or were forced out during a 1948 war.
Israel’s planned reseizure of Gaza City — which it took in the early days of the war before withdrawing — is probably weeks away, officials said.
That means a ceasefire is still possible, although talks have been floundering and conflict still rages.
Israeli planes and tanks bombed eastern areas of Gaza City heavily, residents said, with many homes destroyed in the Zeitoun and Shejaia neighborhoods overnight.
Al-Ahli hospital said that 12 people were killed in an airstrike on a home in Zeitoun.
Tanks also destroyed several houses in the east of Khan Younis in south Gaza, while in the center, Israeli gunfire killed nine aid-seekers in two separate incidents, Palestinian medics said.
Israel’s military did not comment.
Eight more people, including three children, have died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the territory’s health ministry said.
That took the total to 235, including 106 children, since the war began.
Israel disputes the malnutrition and hunger figures reported by the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave.
Hamas chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya’s meetings with Egyptian officials in Cairo yesterday were to focus on stopping the war, delivering aid and “ending the suffering of our people in Gaza,” Hamas official Taher al-Nono said in a statement.
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