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Israeli troops reach heart of Khan Younis as Hamas threatens lives of hostages in Gaza Israel rejects claims it is trying to force Palestinians out of Gaza
(about 13 hours later)
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on Hamas fighters to surrender WHO chief says ‘Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing’ amid intensifying ground offensive
Follow live for latest in Israel-Hamas war Israel has rejected suggestions it is trying to force Palestinians out of Gaza as Arab leaders and aid officials warn its intensifying ground offensive could leave civilians with few other options.
Israeli tanks have reached the heart of Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis, as Hamas issued fresh demands for Palestinian prisoners to be released while at the same time threatening the lives of the hostages they continue to hold. Some of the heaviest close-quarters fighting in more than two months of conflict took place over the weekend, as the Israel Defense Forces tried to consolidate control of urban centres in northern Gaza and pursued Hamas leaders in the heart of the biggest city in the south, Khan Younis.
Residents of Khan Younis said tanks had reached the main north-south road through the city on Sunday after intense combat through the night that had slowed the Israeli advance from the east. Warplanes were reported to be pounding the area west of the assault. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed dozens of Hamas fighters had surrendered, calling it the beginning of the end for the militant group that has controlled Gaza since 2007. Hamas called the claim “false and baseless”.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said dozens of Hamas fighters had surrendered, calling it the beginning of the end for the organisation. The Palestinian militant group denied this, calling the claim “false and baseless”. Meanwhile, the group issued fresh demands for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails to be released and threatened the lives of the hostages it holds if they were not.
In a statement on Sunday, Hamas said that none of the hostages that were still being held would leave Gaza alive unless its demands for prisoner releases by Israel were met. In a televised statement, a Hamas spokesperson said the movement was “ready to release all soldiers in exchange for all our prisoners”. Israel believes Hamas is still holding about 137 hostages, while there are thought to be 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, many detained without charge. Family members of the hostages protested at the Knesset on Monday after being refused admission to a meeting the foreign affairs and defence committee held with Netanyahu, where they sought to keep pressure on the prime minister to keep the lives of hostages central to his decisions.
The most recent conflict began after Hamas carried out the most deadly attack ever on Israel on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages back to Gaza. Qatari officials, who helped broker a humanitarian pause last month to allow the exchange of hostages for Palestinians prisoners, said there were few immediate prospects of a repeat of such a deal. The Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said Israel’s relentless bombardment was “narrowing the window” for a potential agreement.
Israel responded with a relentless military offensive that has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed almost 18,000 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. About 49,500 people have been injured. The spread of the ground offensive to the south of Gaza, accompanied by heavy bombing, has created an untenable situation for the population, humanitarian organisations have said. The death toll so far is estimated at about 18,000 and more than 1.8 million people, or about 80% of the population, have been forced from their homes since the conflict broke out on 7 October. It was triggered by an attack by Hamas gunmen who broke through the Gaza border and went on a rampage through Israel villages, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
An Israeli analysis suggested civilians constituted 61% of the dead from airstrikes earlier in the campaign. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said 1.3 million of the displaced people in Gaza were sheltering in 154 of its facilities, which were heavily overcrowded. Aid officials have warned that cholera and pneumonia are an increasing threat among the dense camps of improvised tents along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, as sanitation breaks down and nighttime temperatures dip.
After weeks of fighting that was concentrated in the north, Israel launched its ground offensive in the south last week, storming Khan Younis. According to a report on Israel’s Channel 13, Netanyahu told US president Joe Biden in a phone call over the weekend that the operation in Khan Younis would take between three and four weeks to complete. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said: “Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing.”
Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, told Israel’s Channel 12 TV that the US has set no deadline for Israel to achieve its goals. “The evaluation that this can’t be measured in weeks is correct, and I’m not sure it can be measured in months,” he said. In face of the catastrophic humanitarian situation, Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, accused Israel over the weekend of “a systematic effort to empty Gaza of its people”.
With combat now under way along nearly the entire length of the Gaza Strip, and little aid trickling in, international aid organisations say Palestinians in the territory face severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods. The head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, has said that “the developments we are witnessing point to attempts to move Palestinians into Egypt”. He wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “If this path continues, Gaza will not be a land for Palestinians any more.”
On Sunday, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres also said the UN security council’s “authority and credibility were severely undermined”, after the US blocked a ceasefire resolution on Friday. Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, rejected suggestions Israel intended to empty Gaza of Palestinians as “outrageous and false accusations”, arguing that the aim was only to persuade Palestinians to leave the principal combat areas.
“I can promise, I will not give up,” Guterres said at Qatar’s Doha Forum. The UN and other agencies, however, have said the impact of the offensive has been to make the whole of Gaza uninhabitable and to cripple the humanitarian effort.
The 193-member UN general assembly was likely to vote on Tuesday on a draft resolution demanding a ceasefire, diplomats said on Sunday. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, told the AP it was similar to the resolution the US vetoed on Friday. The Biden administration faced severe criticism from Arab allies and human rights organisations over the weekend for its sole vote at the UN security council against a ceasefire resolution, blocking it with the US veto.
There are no vetoes in the general assembly but unlike the security council its resolutions are not legally binding. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said the security council’s “authority and credibility were severely undermined” by the failure of the resolution.
On Sunday, the World Health Organization also warned that the territory’s aid system was collapsing as the 34 countries on its executive board adopted by consensus a resolution calling for immediate, unimpeded aid deliveries to Gaza. The matter will pass to the UN general assembly, in a debate on Tuesday on a similar resolution, most likely to be followed by a vote. A resolution passed by the assembly has no binding authority in international law, but it is expected to underline the increasing isolation of Israel and the US in their efforts to fend off a ceasefire.
“Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Sunday restated the US’s argument against a ceasefire. “With Hamas still alive, still intact and … with the stated intent of repeating 7 October again and again and again, that would simply perpetuate the problem,” he told ABC News.
The emergency resolution seeks passage into Gaza for medical personnel and supplies, while requiring the WHO to document violence against healthcare workers and patients and to secure funding to rebuild hospitals. Blinken said Israeli forces should ensure “military operations are designed around civilian protection”, but admitted they had fallen short. “I think the intent is there. But the results are not always manifesting themselves,” he said.
Tedros told the board in Geneva that medical needs in Gaza had surged and the risk of disease had grown, yet the health system had been reduced to a third of its pre-conflict capacity.
Qatar, where Hamas’s top leadership is based, said it was still working on a new truce like the week-long ceasefire it helped mediate last month that saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners and humanitarian aid.
But Israel’s relentless bombardment was “narrowing the window” for success, Qatari prime minister sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said.
The prime minister said that mediation efforts to stop the war and have all hostages released will continue, but “unfortunately, we are not seeing the same willingness that we had seen in the weeks before.”
On Sunday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken again rejected a ceasefire.
“With Hamas still alive, still intact and … with the stated intent of repeating October 7 again and again and again, that would simply perpetuate the problem,” he told ABC News.
But Blinken also said that Israeli forces should ensure “military operations are designed around civilian protection”.
“I think the intent is there. But the results are not always manifesting themselves,” he said.
The Biden administration has faced intensified scrutiny after it revealed it had bypassed Congress to supply tank shells, and was reported not to be carrying out continual assessments of whether Israel was committing possible war crimes.The Biden administration has faced intensified scrutiny after it revealed it had bypassed Congress to supply tank shells, and was reported not to be carrying out continual assessments of whether Israel was committing possible war crimes.
On Saturday, the US Defense Security cooperation Agency published a declaration saying that Blinken, had invoked emergency powers to supply nearly 14,000 tank rounds to Israel, waiving the requirement to consult Congress under the Arms Export Control Act. The Washington Post cited unnamed officials as admitting the US was not following guidelines Biden established in February for all arms transfers to foreign governments to be subjected to continual examination of the recipient’s record on the Geneva conventions and other global norms for conducting warfare.
The Washington Post cited unnamed officials as admitting that in Israel’s case, the US was not following guidelines that Biden himself had established in February requiring all arms transfers to foreign governments be subjected to rigorous and continual examination of the recipient’s record on the Geneva conventions and other global norms for conducting warfare. It was widely reported in the Israeli press on Monday that the US has been trying to persuade Israel to wrap up its Gaza offensive by the end of this month, while the IDF had asked for more time, until the end of January, to achieve the stated war aims, to destroy Hamas as a military and political force and to secure the release of the hostages.
In Israel’s north, violence escalated at the border with Lebanon on Sunday, as Hezbollah launched explosive drones and powerful missiles at Israeli positions and Israeli airstrikes rocked several towns and villages in south Lebanon. Blinken said the issue of the duration of the war had been raised in US-Israeli discussions, but told CNN: “These are decisions for Israel to make.”
Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah have been trading fire since the war in Gaza erupted two months ago. Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said there was no deadline for Israel to achieve the twin goals of dismantling Hamas and rescuing the remaining hostages. “The evaluation that this can’t be measured in weeks is correct, and I’m not sure it can be measured in months,” he told Channel 12.
A senior Hezbollah leader told Reuters that Israeli airstrikes were a “new escalation” to which the group was responding with new types of attacks, be it “in the nature of the weapons [used] or the targeted sites”. Netanyahu criticised countries including France and Germany that have called for a ceasefire: “You cannot on the one hand support the elimination of Hamas, and on the other pressure us to end the war, which would prevent the elimination of Hamas.”
The Israeli army said earlier in the day that “suspicious aerial targets” had crossed from Lebanon and two were intercepted. Two Israeli soldiers were moderately wounded and a number of others lightly injured from shrapnel and smoke inhalation, it said. Italy, France and Germany called on the EU to impose sanctions on Hamas and its supporters in a joint letter to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, on Monday. The French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, said France was also considering imposing sanctions on Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Reuters, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed to this report In Israel’s north, violence escalated at the border with Lebanon on Sunday as Hezbollah launched explosive drones and missiles at Israeli positions and Israeli airstrikes rocked several towns and villages in south Lebanon. Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah have been trading fire since the war in Gaza erupted two months ago.