Israel Turns Focus to Southern Gaza for War’s Next Phase

Israel-Hamas War

Israel Turns Focus to Southern Gaza for War’s Next Phase

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/02/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news

 

Here’s what we know:

Gazans were bracing for expanded hostilities on Saturday, a day after a weeklong truce between Israel and Hamas ended. Essential supplies were running low.

Southern Gaza girds for the war’s next phase.

Gazans under new bombardments say they have few options.

Talks broke down over the terms of exchanging more prisoners and hostages.

Concern grows for the oldest hostages left behind.

Here is a breakdown of the 240 Palestinians Israel released during the pause in fighting.

 

Gazans were bracing for expanded hostilities on Saturday, a day after the truce between Israel and Hamas ended, as Israel began turning its focus on southern Gaza for the war’s next phase, and the flow of vital supplies of food, water and medicine again slowed to a trickle.

 

The renewed bombardment — Israel’s military said it carried out 200 strikes on Friday — plunged the territory’s 2.2 million civilians back into the peril and suffering they have been living under since the war began on Oct 7. By evening, 178 people had been killed and an additional 578 injured, according to Gaza health officials. The wartime death toll had been about 13,000 when the temporary cease-fire took effect a week earlier.

 

After its four-week ground operation in the northern half of the Gaza Strip, Israel believes Hamas’s top leadership is now hiding in southern Gaza. Israeli leaders on Friday reiterated their resolve to ensure that the group responsible for the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel — killing 1,200 people, according to the Israeli authorities, making it the deadliest day in the country’s history — would never again be able to pose a threat to Israel.

 

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said in a statement on Telegram early Saturday that Israel had intensified artillery fire and airstrikes on Al Qarara, a town north of Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza.

 

Some Palestinians near Khan Younis said Friday that the Israeli military was directing them to evacuate farther south to Rafah, a city along Gaza’s border with Egypt. By Friday afternoon, Israeli warplanes had struck Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have been sheltering after being told to leave their homes in the north.

 

A campaign in the south would once again force people to flee, some for the second time. About 1.8 million Gazans have been displaced by the war, according to the United Nations, and many say there is nowhere left for them to seek refuge.

 

Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, posted a photo on social media of himself in an Israeli attack helicopter, saying he had watched some of Friday’s strikes on Gaza from the air.

 

“This morning we returned to hitting Hamas with full force,” he wrote on the social media platform X. “Hamas only understands force.”

 

The weeklong pause in fighting was an opportunity for hundreds of aid trucks to enter Gaza, carrying supplies of food, water, medicine and some fuel, although aid groups said the relief was still far short of what was needed.

 

On Friday, those shipments were initially halted after the cease-fire collapse, but Israel’s agency overseeing policy for the Palestinian territories said later in the day that “tens” of aid trucks had been allowed in.

 

John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Israel, at the United States’ urging, had agreed on Friday to allow a reduced number of aid trucks to continue entering Gaza.

 

“Probably in terms of dozens of trucks versus hundreds of trucks,” he said at a news briefing.

 

Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s chief official for humanitarian and relief affairs, called for a lasting humanitarian cease-fire, saying the level of destruction and death was “unacceptable.” The seven-day pause, he said, was a glimpse of what peace in Gaza could look like.

 

“While it barely scratched the surface of what people need, it still allowed aid agencies to provide some basic supplies, reach areas which have been cut off for weeks, and offer some respite to deeply traumatized families,” he said in a statement on Friday.

 

Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Cairo, and Erica L. Green from Washington.

 

— Patrick Kingsley, Ben Hubbard and Victoria Kim reporting from Jerusalem, Istanbul and Seoul