Qatar’s ceasefire talks also appear to be at an impasse
Street fighting broke out near a hospital in the besieged Gaza Strip on Thursday, as a dire humanitarian crisis and a rising death toll caused tensions between Israel and its top ally, the United States.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be trying to ease his rift with US President Joe Biden and plans to send a government delegation to Washington after earlier canceling the trip.
“The prime minister’s office has indicated they want to reschedule the meeting,” a senior U.S. administration official said on condition of anonymity, adding that they were setting a new date.
Tensions increased on Monday after Washington allowed the United Nations Security Council to pass its first resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza and the release of hostages.
Netanyahu accuses the United States of vetoing similar demands before, a move that embolden Israel’s enemy Hamas, whose attack on Oct. 7 triggered the deadliest Gaza war in history.
Fierce fighting and continued bombing have once again rocked Gaza’s nearly six-month war, as ceasefire talks in Qatar now also appear to be at an impasse.
The army reported that it killed dozens of militants and seized hundreds of weapons in heavy fighting near the Amal hospital in Khan Younis, the main city in southern Gaza.
The Israeli military said it had attacked dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip the previous day, while the health ministry in Hamas-controlled areas reported a further 62 deaths.
“rotten corpse”
Israel says Hamas and Islamic Jihad members are fighting inside Gaza hospitals, using patients, medical staff and displaced people as cover, but the Palestinian group denies the accusations.
Israel said its soldiers near Amal “launched targeted attacks against terrorist infrastructure … and eliminated dozens of terrorists using precision fire with close combat and air support.”
The military added that they had also “arrested dozens of terrorists in the area and they were transferred for interrogation.”
Gaza’s health ministry said Israeli tanks and armored vehicles had also massed around the Nasser Hospital, another medical facility in Khan Younis, but had not yet launched a full-scale attack.
Fighting also broke out around Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City’s largest hospital, where the military said it had killed about 200 militants since early last week.
“Explosions shook buildings” during the fighting, said local resident Karam Ayman Hathat, 57, who witnessed Israeli forces arresting several men.
“Israeli forces forced these men to strip down to their underwear,” he said. “I saw other people being blindfolded and ordered to follow a tank as it exploded around them.”
Another man in the neighborhood, Abed Radwan, 63, said that when “Israeli forces raided all the buildings and homes in the Al-Rimal area, arrested several people and forced the rest Heading south,” he had to flee.
“I go with them,” he said. “I saw a lot of rotting bodies in the streets and several houses flattened. They didn’t leave anything intact, they destroyed everything.”
Famine ‘getting closer’
According to AFP statistics based on official Israeli data, the war began with an attack by Hamas on October 7, which resulted in the death of about 1,160 people in Israel, most of them civilians.
The militants also took about 250 hostages. Israel says about 130 prisoners remain in Gaza, 34 of whom are presumed dead.
According to the health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, Israeli retaliation has killed at least 32,552 people, mostly women and children.
While the war has turned much of the territory into a devastated wasteland with crumbling buildings and tank tracks, Israel has also imposed a siege on its 2.4 million people, which can only be relieved by occasional aid.
The United Nations has warned that famine is “an increasingly closer reality in northern Gaza” and said Gaza’s health system is collapsing “due to continued hostilities and access restrictions”.
With clean water also scarce, Gazans queued to fill plastic containers from a water tank west of the city of Rafah.
“We had to queue to buy everything,” said Maram Abu Amra, a displaced woman. “We walked for a total of an hour. Sometimes, we came back empty-handed and without water.”
Talks on Rafah plan
The United States is increasingly concerned about Israel’s plans to launch a ground offensive into Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, which has a population of about 1.5 million, many of whom have been displaced from other parts of the territory.
The city has been bombarded regularly and on Wednesday, Kuwaiti hospitals could only treat the wounded and dead.
A motorcycle roared past, and there was a man lying motionless on the back seat, his pants soaked with blood.
U.S. officials have said they hope to present Israel with an alternative plan for Rafah that would focus on Hamas targets while limiting the number of civilians.
A U.S. official said Israeli Defense Minister Yov Galante had held “constructive discussions” in Washington over the past two days.
“Rafa was one of the many topics discussed during the talks,” the official added.
Washington also raised the question of how to rule Gaza after the war and suggested the future role of a reformed Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited authority in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas approved Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa’s new government on Thursday.
Mustafa said his cabinet “will work to develop a vision to unify institutions, including assuming responsibility for Gaza”.
He said the “national priority” of the new government due to take office on Sunday would be ending the war in Gaza.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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