GAZA: Months after Israel said it had dismantled Hamas’s command structure in northern Gaza, fighting has resumed in the Jabalia refugee camp and Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood.
Mahmoud Basel, spokesman for the Civil Defense Service in the Gaza Strip, said in a statement that Israeli forces have intensified strikes on those residential homes where civilians remained inside, adding that casualties were reported from Jabalia and nearby areas.
On Saturday, the Israeli army called on all residents and displaced persons in Jabalia and the surrounding areas to immediately head to shelters west of Gaza City, warning them of a nighttime operation targeting Hamas elements in the area.
The Israeli army started the operation in Jabalia based on intelligence information regarding Hamas’s attempts to reassemble its infrastructure and activists in the area.
Jabalia is the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps and is home to more than 100,000 people. Israeli forces thrust deep into Jabalia camp, deeper than the first time they invaded northern Gaza, with tanks close to the local market, residents told Reuters.
The Israeli army sent tanks back into Zeitoun, as well as Al-Sabra, where the army had claimed to have gained control of most of them months ago.
Palestinians displaced by the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip walk through a makeshift tent camp in Gaza, May 12, 2024. /CFP
In a separate statement on Sunday, the Israeli army said it continued operations in the Zeitoun area in northern Gaza, and during the past day, a number of ‘terrorists’ were killed in close combat and aerial raids while their weapons and infrastructure were dismantled.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that its operations were continuing in specific areas in eastern Rafah and on the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, having dismantled a number of tunnel openings and rocket launchers.
The death toll in Israel’s military operation in Gaza has now surpassed at least 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
The bombardment has laid waste to the coastal enclave and caused a deep humanitarian crisis. Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said Cairo would continue its mediation between Israel and Hamas and urged the two sides to show the flexibility and the will needed to reach a deal.
Palestinians who fled Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip transport their belongings in the back of a truck as they arrive to take shelter in Khan Yunis, Gaza, May 12, 2024. /CFP
More than seven months into the Israel-Hamas conflict, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres urged “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages and an immediate surge in humanitarian aid” into the besieged Gaza Strip.
“But a ceasefire will only be the start,” Guterres told a donor conference in Kuwait on Sunday, where countries pledged over $2 billion to aid the devastated Palestinian territory.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, criticized Israel’s evacuation orders for eastern Rafah on Saturday, saying that the orders were “forcing people in Rafah to flee anywhere and everywhere,” in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday.
“No place is safe in Gaza,” he said.
Also on Sunday, Israel’s military announced the opening of the “Western Erez crossing”, which is located west of the Erez crossing and closer to the seashore, as “part of the effort to increase aid routes to the Gaza Strip, and to the northern Gaza Strip in particular.”
