Some 77,000 people were injured, according to health authorities led by the Gaza government. Those figures do not include tens of thousands of dead believed to be buried in the ruins of bombed homes, stores, shelters and other buildings, the Associated Press reported. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 13,000 Hamas members.
With talks effectively suspended, Israel has signaled that it plans to continue the ground operation in southern Rafah, the only part of Gaza where it has not sent troops. Airstrikes continued in Rafah, with one hitting a house in the western Tel el-Sultan neighborhood on Friday night and killing nine people.
Israel’s international allies and aid organizations working in Gaza have warned that a large-scale ground offensive in a city full of displaced people from the north of the enclave would have devastating consequences. A famine is looming, exacerbated by severe shortages of housing, medicine and clean water. Nearly everyone in the enclave now relies on donated food after more than six months of war that destroyed homes and crippled Gaza’s economy.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said Israel should not enter Rafah without credible plans to protect civilians, and G7 foreign ministers said on Friday they opposed a large-scale military operation on the grounds of which would be a disaster for the people who take refuge there. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said four Hamas brigades were hiding in Rafah and must be destroyed. More than a hundred hostages were freed in November as part of a temporary ceasefire, but talks about a new pause in fighting and the release of more detainees have stalled. Qatar, the Gulf state that was a key mediator in talks between Hamas and Israel, is reviewing its role as a mediator because its work has been subject to “political exploitation,” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said. The country is often criticized for its ties to Hamas and for allowing the group’s leaders to establish a base in Doha, even though it did so a decade ago at the request of the United States.
Hamas leaders are now considering moving elsewhere, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. This is likely to further undermine failed talks on a deal to end fighting in the Gaza Strip and free hostages, even as suffering in the enclave worsens by the day. Daily aid deliveries remain less than half the minimum level the UN says is needed to keep more than two million people alive. Israeli authorities, the United States and aid groups have said supplies should return to pre-war levels, about 500 aid trucks per day. Only 250 trucks entered the enclave on Friday, the highest number in April, according to the UN. Some trucks were allowed to enter northern Gaza through new checkpoints, but they were not open to the UN, which provides the vast majority of food aid there.
Meanwhile
The occupied West Bank has also seen a rise in violence, with a boy and three men killed in an Israeli military raid on a refugee camp near the northern town of Tulkarem on Friday afternoon. Residents closed shops, restaurants and government offices on Saturday during a general strike to protest the attack on the Nur Shams refugee camp, the AP reported. Since October 7, Israeli fire has killed more than 460 Palestinians in the West Bank, Palestinian health officials say. Some of them were killed by the Israeli army, others as a result of attacks by Israeli settlers.
