In these nearly ten months of conflict, Israel has barely managed to close any of the key battles it has opened throughout Gaza. The process is usually always the same. The army lays siege, expels citizens, strikes, withdraws and, weeks or months later, returns because it sees that its objective of deactivating the Palestinian armed resistance has not been achieved. A spiral of violence and death, for the moment, without end.
Khan Yunis, in the south of the enclave, has again become the main theatre of war this week. Since Monday, some 150,000 people, according to the NGO Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), have been again displaced from the eastern area, closest to the separation fence with Israel, to the large humanitarian camp of Al Mawasi, on the Mediterranean coast, and other areas of the city. These are forced population movements carried out by the Israeli military, which has intensified its attacks on Hamas in Khan Yunis, whose battalions continue to confront these occupation troops.
Since Monday, the death toll in the Strip’s second largest city has risen to 121, most of them women and children, local emergency services said in a statement. They added that there were dozens of bodies trapped in the Beni Suheila area, in the east of the city. The total number of deaths in Gaza since the start of the war on October 7 has risen to 39,145, according to data from the Hamas government’s health authorities released on Wednesday.
“It has been a terrible month of July in southern Gaza,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said in a statement on Monday. “The relentless bombardment and airstrikes by Israeli forces are claiming the lives of hundreds of people in the Strip. In the last 10 days alone, MSF teams have responded to four incidents with mass casualties,” the statement continued.
The latest of these attacks took place on Monday in Khan Yunis, where only one hospital is still functioning, the Al Nasser hospital, where more than 100 wounded people arrived that day, according to data from the Ministry of Health of the Hamas-ruled Strip cited by the medical organisation.
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As dozens of dead, wounded and maimed people arrive at the hospital, where the wounded have to share beds, according to MSF, or be treated on the floor covered in blood, scenes of thousands of people fleeing with the clothes they are wearing can be seen while shots can be heard in the background, according to images captured by local reporters. Some are crying desperately, others are stopped, exhausted. There are children of eight or ten years old pulling their little brothers, who are poorly accommodated in strollers. Wheelchairs are seen stuck on the path of stones and sand with destroyed buildings in the surroundings. Also elderly women are sobbing in the middle of the dust.
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been driven from their homes during the ongoing conflict, many of them several times. Such scenes have been common in Khan Yunis, which was besieged by Israeli troops for up to four months at a time.
Soldiers from the Israeli army’s 98th Division claim to have located a tunnel in the city and eliminated several “terrorists” while in the Beni Suheila area they intercepted a vehicle with members of the armed resistance, according to military spokesmen on the social network X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday. “In a combined air and ground operation, an aircraft and a tank attacked the vehicle and eliminated the terrorists who were inside,” they added. Operations have also been carried out in recent hours in southern Rafah and other points in Gaza.
Earlier this week, the army announced a new mass displacement of residents, something that international humanitarian law considers illegal. As on previous occasions, they dropped leaflets from the sky and repeated the message on their social networks. Two days later, there are “people trapped without food or water in Khan Yunis, who no one can reach and who no one can evacuate,” says Hind Khoudari, a reporter for the Qatari channel Al Jazeera, “these are people who did not have time to leave.” The only hospital that remains in operation is Al Nasser, she confirms, and “the bombings and air strikes continue” while citizens “try to move to a safer area.”
Humanitarian organisations “have denounced Israel’s systematic obstruction of aid and its continued attacks on aid operations, including facilities, staff and distribution points, which has prevented effective delivery to people in need,” the Norwegian Refugee Council said in a statement, regretting that it has not received “any aid” in its warehouse since 3 May.
In a bombing raid on July 13, Israel killed at least 90 people in the humanitarian zone of Al Mawasi in Khan Yunis. The target, according to Israeli authorities, was Mohamed Deif, 58, Hamas’ military chief in Gaza, whose death has not been confirmed by either side. Last week, the army claimed to have destroyed half of the leadership of the main Palestinian armed group.
Netanyahu’s “Wrath”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been on an official trip to the United States since Monday. “We are giving him all the tools to reach an agreement that will allow the release of dozens of hostages. After that, we will know how to return to war,” said Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a visit to Rafah, the southern tip of Gaza, on Tuesday.
Also in the United States is Ronen Neutra, father of the soldier Omer Neutra, held captive in Gaza, who has criticised Netanyahu’s handling of the kidnappings. “We have seen Americans who listen to us. That is not the same feeling we had from the prime minister,” Neutra told Kan public radio on Wednesday. He also criticised Netanyahu for having shown “a bit of anger at some of the things we had said.” “We are at a point where the Americans say that Hamas is ready and that it is a matter of days before an agreement can be reached, if there is a leadership willing to do so on the part of Israel,” he said.
The fundamentalist movement launched an unprecedented attack, the worst of its kind ever suffered by Israel, which caused some 1,200 deaths on Israeli territory on October 7. That was the trigger for the conflict, which has the parties negotiating a possible ceasefire in which the approximately 120 hostages, dozens of them confirmed dead, of the 250 that the Palestinian Islamists captured would also be released. These days, meetings are continuing in Egypt and Qatar to achieve this truce, which is also hanging over Netanyahu’s meetings in the United States.
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