WARNING: This story contains distressing images.
Battles raged across Gaza on Sunday as Israel indicated it was willing to fight for months or longer to defeat the territory’s Hamas rulers, and a key mediator said willingness to discuss a ceasefire was fading.
Israel faces international outrage after its military offensive — with diplomatic support and arms from its close ally, the United States — has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians. About 90 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced within the besieged territory, where UN agencies say there is no safe place to flee.
The U.S. has lent vital support in recent days by vetoing a United Nations Security Council effort to end the fighting and pushing through an emergency sale of more than $100 million US worth of tank ammunition to Israel.
Israel’s air and ground war has killed thousands of Palestinians, mostly civilians, since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that Israel says killed 1,200 people — including several Canadians — and saw around 240 taken hostage. More than 100 of the hostages were released during a week-long ceasefire late last month.
With very little aid allowed in, Palestinians face severe shortages of food, water and other basic goods. Some observers openly worry that Palestinians will be forced out of Gaza altogether.
“Expect public order to completely break down soon, and an even worse situation could unfold, including epidemic diseases and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a forum in Qatar, a key intermediary.
Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesperson, called allegations of mass displacement from Gaza “outrageous and false.”
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani told the forum 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.”
Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, told Israel’s Channel 12 TV that the U.S. 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.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN that it would be up to Israel to determine the duration and the conduct of the fighting. He also told ABC that with Hamas still intact, a ceasefire now “would simply perpetuate the problem.”
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, told the Qatar forum that this is a war that cannot be won, warning that “Israel has created an amount of hatred that will haunt this region that will define generations to come.”
Fighting, mass arrests in northern Gaza
Israeli forces face heavy resistance, including in northern Gaza, where neighbourhoods have been flattened by airstrikes and where ground troops have operated for more than six weeks.
Israel’s Channel 13 TV broadcast footage showing dozens of men detained by the Israeli military, stripped to their underwear with their hands in the air. Several held assault rifles above their heads, and one man walked forward and placed a gun on the ground.
Other videos have shown groups of unarmed men held in similar conditions — without clothes, bound and blindfolded. Detainees from a group who were released Saturday told The Associated Press they had been beaten and denied food and water.
Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the arrests took place in two Hamas strongholds, the Gaza City neighbourhood of Shijaiyah and the Jabalia refugee camp. He said that detainees are undressed to make sure they are not hiding explosives, and those believed to be Hamas members are taken away for investigation while others are told to head south.
“We have arrested dozens of terrorists,” Hagari asserted.
Residents said there was still heavy fighting in Shijaiyah and Jabalia, a dense urban area housing Palestinian families who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.
Caught between Hamas militants and Israeli soldiers, the people of Gaza have suffered through mass displacement, precarious living situations and constant fear. With fighting reaching the two-month mark, some are losing hope that things will ever return to the way they were.
“They are attacking anything that moves,” said Hamza Abu Fatouh, a Shijaiyah resident. He said the dead and wounded were left in the streets as ambulances could no longer reach the area, where Israeli snipers and tanks positioned themselves among abandoned buildings.
“The resistance also fights back,” he added.
Israel ordered the evacuation of the northern third of the territory, including Gaza City, early in the war, but tens of thousands of people have remained, fearing that the south would be no safer or that they would never be allowed to return home.
Heavy fighting was also underway in and around the southern city of Khan Younis, where many of the evacuees from the north have fled.
Waiting days for food
The price of dwindling food in Gaza has soared. Abdulsalam al-Majdalawi said he had come to a UN distribution centre every day for nearly two weeks, hoping to get supplies for his family of seven.
“Every day, we spend five or six hours here and return home [empty handed],” he said. “Thank God, today they drew our name.”
One hundred trucks with humanitarian aid entered Sunday, said Wael Abu Omar, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Crossings Authority. That’s far short of what’s needed.
With the war in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,900, the majority women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory. The Hamas-run ministry, which has been deemed credible by the UN, does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian casualties, saying the militants put civilians in danger by fighting in dense, residential neighbourhoods. The military says 97 Israeli soldiers have died in the offensive. Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Hamas still has 117 hostages and the remains of 20 people killed in captivity or during the Oct. 7 attack. The militants hope to exchange them for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Israel says it has provided detailed instructions for civilians to evacuate to safer areas, even as it strikes what it says are militant targets in all parts of the territory. Thousands have fled to areas along Gaza’s border with Egypt — one of the last places where aid agencies are able to deliver food and water.
Demonstrations were again held in several cities in support of the Palestinians and calling for an end to the war, while thousands marched in Europe against antisemitism.
The war has raised tensions across the Middle East, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah trading fire with Israel along their shared border and other Iran-backed militant groups targeting the U.S. in Syria and Iraq.