The Israeli military began a ground offensive targeting Gaza City on Tuesday, slowly squeezing in on the Palestinian territory’s largest city that has seen block after block already destroyed in the Israel-Hamas war. Residents still in the city were warned they must leave and head south.
The push marks yet another escalation in a conflict that has roiled the Middle East as any potential ceasefire feels even further out of reach despite months of diplomacy.
While the military wouldn’t offer a timeline for the offensive, Israeli media outlets suggested it could take months.
“Gaza is burning,” said Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz. “We will not relent and we will not go back — until the completion of the mission.”
Meanwhile, in Geneva, independent experts commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council announced that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, joining a rising international chorus of such accusations. Israel fiercely rejected the claim, calling the experts’ report “distorted and false.”
Displaced Palestinians headed south along a coastal road in central Gaza on Monday, carting belongings on overloaded cars, carts or even on foot. Israel has urged Palestinians in Gaza City to move out as it ramps up its bombardment of the area.
Intensity of strikes in Gaza City grows
Much of Gaza City was already laid to waste in the early weeks of the war in 2023, but around 1 million Palestinians had returned there to homes among the ruins. Forcing them out means nearly the entire population of Gaza will now be confined to encampments along the coast further south in what Israel calls a humanitarian area.
The United Nations estimated on Monday that over 220,000 Palestinians have fled northern Gaza over the past month, after the Israeli military warned that all residents should leave Gaza City ahead of the operation. An estimated one million Palestinians were living in the region around Gaza City before the evacuation warnings.
Long lines of traffic stretched down Gaza’s coastal road Tuesday as the offensive began, with vehicles loaded down with mattresses and people’s belongings and others fleeing on foot.
At least 20 Palestinians killed in Gaza City
Palestinian residents reported heavy strikes across Gaza City on Tuesday morning. The city’s Shifa Hospital said it received the bodies of 20 people killed in a strike that hit multiple houses in a western neighbourhood, with another 90 wounded arriving at the facility in recent hours.
“A very tough night in Gaza,” Dr. Mohamed Abu Selmiyah, director of Shifa Hospital, told The Associated Press.
“The bombing did not stop for a single moment. There are still bodies under the rubble.”
Families of hostages beg Netanyahu to halt the operation
Overnight, families of the hostages still being held in Gaza gathered outside of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence, pleading with him to stop the Gaza City operation. Some pitched tents and slept outside his home in protest.
“I have one interest: for this country to wake up and bring back my child along with 47 other hostages, both living and deceased, and to bring our soldiers home,” Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is being held in Gaza, shouted outside Netanyahu’s residence. “If he stops at nothing and sends our precious, brave, heroic soldiers to fight while our hostages are being used as human shields, he is not a worthy prime minister.”
Israel believes around 20 of the 48 hostages still held by the militants in Gaza, including Matan, are alive. Hamas has said it will only free remaining hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Most of the hostages have since been released in ceasefires brokered in part by Qatar or other deals.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,871 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t say how many were civilians or combatants. The ministry, which is staffed by medical professionals, says women and children make up around half the dead.Â
Time is running out for deal: Rubio
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaking to journalists before departing Israel, suggested the offensive on Gaza City had begun.
He said the U.S. preference is the war ends through a negotiated settlement, while acknowledging the dangers an intensified military campaign posed to Gaza.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Jerusalem days after Israel targeted Hamas negotiators on Qatari soil. Despite saying the U.S. is ‘not happy’ about the attack on its ally, Rubio stressed he still backs Israel’s war.
“At some point, this has to end. At some point, Hamas has to be defanged, and we hope it can happen through a negotiation,” Rubio said. “But I think time, unfortunately, is running out.”
Before he left Israel, Rubio visited The City of David archeological park beneath Jerusalem, giving U.S. backing to a Jewish settler-led project that critics say undermines prospects for a future Palestinian state. International and local media were barred from the visit.
The park sits in the shadow of the elevated compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, a flashpoint that has triggered outbreaks of violence over the decades and remains at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Rubio before his trip dismissed the idea the archeological site was political.Â
Rubio travelled on to Qatar, where he planned to meet with its ruling emir as the nation is still incensed over Israel’s strike last week that killed five Hamas members and a local security official.
While Arab and Muslim nations denounced the strike at a summit Monday, they stopped short of any major action targeting Israel, highlighting the challenge of diplomatically pressuring any change in Israel’s conduct in the grinding Israel-Hamas war.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi described Israel as “an enemy” in a fiery speech at the Qatar summit Monday.
It was the first time an Egyptian leader used the term since the two countries established diplomatic ties in 1979, said Diaa Rashwan, head of the Egyptian government’s State Information Service.
Egypt has had a peace deal with Israel for decades and has served as a mediator in the war in Gaza. Â
