Israeli helicopters struck Rafah on Thursday, residents said, with militants reporting street battles in the southern Gaza city as US President Joe Biden called Hamas the “biggest hang-up” to another truce.
Tensions were also soaring on Israel’s northern border, with more attacks by Hamas ally Hezbollah targeting military positions and a civilian reported killed in an Israeli strike on Lebanon.
Israeli ground forces have operated in Rafah since early last month, despite widespread alarm over the fate of Palestinian civilians there and an International Court of Justice ruling later that month.
Photo: AFP
Western areas of Rafah came under heavy fire on Thursday, residents said.
“There was very intense fire from warplanes, Apaches [helicopters] and quadcopters, in addition to Israeli artillery and military battleships, all of which were striking the area west of Rafah,” one resident said.
Hamas said its fighters were battling Israeli troops on the streets of the city near the besieged Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt.
In Italy, at a G7 summit, Biden called Hamas “the biggest hang-up so far” to a deal on a Gaza truce and hostage release.
“I’ve laid out an approach that has been endorsed by the UN Security Council, by the G7, by the Israelis, and the biggest hang-up so far is Hamas refusing to sign on even though they have submitted something similar,” Biden told reporters. “Whether or not that comes to fruition remains to be seen.”
Efforts to reach a truce stalled when Israel began ground operations in Rafah, but Biden late last month launched a new effort to secure a deal.
The UN Security Council on Monday adopted a US-drafted resolution supporting the plan, and on Thursday German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said G7 leaders “call on Hamas in particular to give the necessary consent.”
Some in Gaza have also called on Hamas to do more to secure an agreement.
“What are you waiting for? The war must end at any cost,” a man called Abu Shaker said.
Biden’s road map for the first truce since a week-long pause in November last year includes a six-week ceasefire, a hostage-prisoner exchange and Gaza reconstruction.
A UN investigation concluded on Wednesday said that Israel had committed crimes against humanity during the war, while Israeli and Palestinian armed groups had both committed war crimes.
The WHO said that more than 8,000 children younger than five had been treated for acute malnutrition in Gaza.
As Muslims worldwide prepared to celebrate Eid al-Adha beginning on Sunday, displaced resident of Gaza Umm Thaer Naseer said “we do not have anything to prepare” for the occasion.
“The children ask their father to buy clothes” for the holiday, she said in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, adding that prices of anything from basic commodities to toys have soared.
“Where will their father buy them from? He has been unemployed for eight months and moves from one tent to another,” she said. “Their father can barely feed himself.”
Another displaced Gaza resident, Fadi Naseer, said that “in normal times” homes and streets are decorated for the festival, but “today we don’t even have a house anymore, and there is nothing to decorate.”
“There is no Eid spirit,” he added.
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