Palestinians check the damage in the al-Zahra school used as a refuge by displaced Palestinians following an Israeli strike, in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City on August 8, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant group Hamas.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The Israeli military has ordered another mass evacuation in large areas around Khan Younis in southern Gaza, saying its forces will soon operate there in response to Palestinian rocket fire. Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis suffered widespread destruction during air and ground operations earlier this year.

Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to heavily destroyed areas of Gaza where they had fought earlier battles against Hamas and other militants since the start of the 10-month-old war.

Gaza faces a severe humanitarian crisis with Israeli restrictions on aid and ongoing fighting limiting access to crucial medical, food and other supplies. The Health Ministry in Gaza says the death toll in the territory is nearing 40,000.

Regional tensions have soared since Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed July 31 in Iran by a presumed Israeli strike. Retaliation has been expected.

Cease-fire talks

World leaders have been pushing for a cease-fire in Gaza. On Thursday (August 8,2024), the foreign powers involved in brokering a possible deal — the U.S., Egypt and Qatar — issued a joint statement calling on Israel and Hamas to resume stalled cease-fire talks on Aug. 15.

Israel has confirmed it will send negotiators to resume indirect cease-fire talks with Hamas next week in response to a proposal by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Thursday (August 8,2024) that the government would heed the call by foreign mediators to revive negotiations aimed at halting the fighting in Gaza after 10 months of devastating war and bringing home Israeli hostages still captive in the enclave.

The statement said that on August 15, at a place to be determined, the parties would hash out the implementation of a “framework agreement” that has already been finalized. The mediators said the talks would take place either in Qatar’s capital of Doha or Egypt’s capital of Cairo.

There was no immediate response to the offer by Hamas. Last week’s killing of its top political leader in Tehran raised tensions across the region, an escalation widely seen as a blow to cease-fire talks.

The foreign powers involved in brokering a possible cease-fire aimed at halting the fighting in Gaza and releasing Israeli hostages have jointly appealed to Israel and Hamas to return to the negotiating table next week.

The statement issued Thursday (August 8,2024) by the United States, Egypt and Qatar, the three mediators in the monthslong Israel-Hamas war, called on the parties to resume stalled cease-fire talks on Aug. 15 in either Qatar’s capital of Doha or Egypt’s capital of Cairo.

“There is no further time to waste nor excuses from any party for further delay,” it said, adding that the negotiators have already finalized a “framework” for the deal. All that’s left to hammer out, it said, are the details of implementation.

Palestinians inspect the damage of destroyed buildings following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City, October 27, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

The United Nations said Friday it was concerned that war crimes were being committed on both sides in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

The U.N. human rights office cited forcible transfer, collective punishment and the taking of hostages as the war continued into its 21st day.

“We are concerned that war crimes are being committed. We are concerned about the collective punishment of Gazans in response to the atrocious attacks by Hamas, which also amounted to war crimes,” spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a press conference in Geneva.

Follow live updates from the Israel-Hamas war

She said that it was for an independent court of law to qualify whether war crimes had been committed.

Israel has heavily bombarded Gaza since Hamas gunmen stormed across the border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, kidnapping more than 220 others, according to Israeli officials.

The Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said the strikes have killed more than 7,000 people, mainly civilians and many of them children, leading to growing calls for protection of innocents caught up in the conflict.

Israel has cut supplies of food, water and power to Gaza, notably blocking all deliveries of fuel saying it would be exploited by Hamas to manufacture weapons and explosives.

Israel’s army called on people in the north of the Gaza Strip — nearly half of its 2.4-million population — to head south ahead of an expected ground offensive.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza. Compelling people to evacuate in these circumstances… and while under a complete siege raises serious concerns over forcible transfer, which is a war crime,” Shamdasani said.

“Israel’s use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated areas has caused extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and loss of civilian lives that, by all appearances, is difficult to reconcile with international humanitarian law,” she added.

Shamdasani said a humanitarian catastrophe was unfolding for the people “locked inside Gaza who are being collectively punished. Collective punishment is a war crime. Israel’s collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza must immediately cease.”

She said indiscriminate attacks by Palestinian armed groups, including through the launching of unguided rockets into Israel, had to stop.

“They must immediately and unconditionally release all civilians who are captured and are still being held. The taking of hostages is also a war crime,” the spokeswoman added.

A war crime is a serious violation of international law against civilians and combatants during armed conflict, a “grave breach” of the 1949 Geneva Conventions that established a legal framework for war after the Nuremberg tribunals of top Nazis.

The bodies of people killed during an Israeli airstrike are loaded onto a truck outside al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza Strip, on October 15, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

More than one million people have been forced from their homes in the northern Gaza Strip since Israel began its bombardment against Hamas, the UN said on Sunday, warning of dire conditions on the ground.

Israel declared war on the Islamist group last Sunday, a day after waves of its fighters broke through the heavily fortified border and shot, stabbed and burned to death more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

The relentless bombing since against those who masterminded the attack have flattened neighbourhoods and left at least 2,670 people dead in the Gaza Strip, the majority ordinary Palestinians.

But as Israel seeks to avenge the worst attack in its history, the Arab League and African Union warned the invasion could lead to “a genocide of unprecedented proportions”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Hamas to release all hostages and for Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, warning that the region was “on the verge of the abyss”.

Also read | Israel’s evacuation order for Gaza ‘tantamount to death sentence’ for patients: WHO

Israel also faced a grave warning about the wider security implications of putting boots on the ground in the densely populated enclave.

“No one can guarantee the control of the situation and the non-expansion of the conflicts” if Israel sends its soldiers into Gaza, said Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

“Those who are interested in preventing the scope of war and crisis from expanding need to prevent the current barbaric attacks… against citizens and civilians in Gaza,” he added.

Iran is Israel’s number one enemy and as well as funding Hamas also backs Hezbollah in Lebanon to the north, where cross-border fire has intensified in the last week, prompting Israel to shut the area to civilians.

Follow Israel-Hamas war, day 9 LIVE updates here

Escalation risk

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel had “no interest in a war in the north, we don’t want to escalate the situation.

“If Hezbollah chooses the path of war, it will pay a heavy price… but if it restrains itself, we’ll respect the situation,” he added.

The United States, which has given unequivocal backing to Israel, is concerned about violence spreading, and has sent two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean as a deterrent.

In Washington, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said they feared the prospect of Iran becoming “directly engaged”, after it praised the Hamas attack but insisted it was not involved.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has in recent days toured Middle Eastern capitals in a frantic round of diplomacy to try to avert a wider crisis in the volatile region.

On Sunday, he pointed to “determination in every country I went to make sure that this doesn’t spread,” as he left Egypt.

Mr. Blinken has appealed to China to use its influence in the region to ease tensions.

But on Sunday Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Israel’s response had “gone beyond the scope of self-defence”.

He called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his emergency government to “cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza”.

Aid agencies’ alarm

Israel has massed thousands of troops and heavy weaponry in the desert south of the country, waiting for the green light to go into northern Gaza.

The army has told 1.1 million Palestinians in the north of the Gaza Strip — nearly half of its 2.4-million population — to head south to safety.

But there were still Israeli air strikes in the south, including in Rafah, where one resident said a doctor’s house was targeted.

“All the family was wiped out,” said Khamis Abu Hilal.

Israeli military spokesmen Lieutenant Richard Hecht and Daniel Hagari said any ground offensive would be triggered by a “political decision”.

Mr. Hecht singled out Yahya Sinwar, the chief of Hamas in Gaza blamed for the October 7 attacks, calling him “a dead man walking”.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Sunday urged Hamas to release all civilian hostages, and also expressed concern at the price Palestinians civilians and children were paying in the Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Foreign governments and aid agencies, including the UN and ICRC, have repeatedly criticised Israel’s call for Gazans to leave their homes.

The UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees said Sunday that some one million Palestinians had already been displaced in the first week of the conflict — but the number was likely to be higher.

UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said Gaza was facing an “unprecedented human catastrophe” because of the blockade and bombings.

“Raise the alarm that as of today, my UNRWA colleagues in Gaza are no longer able to provide humanitarian assistance as I speak,” he told reporters.

New Delhi:

As gun battles raged between Israeli security forces and hundreds of Hamas group fighters in at least 22 locations, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant today issued a threat to “change the face of reality” in Gaza. 

Over 200 Israelis and 232 Palestinians were killed on Saturday in the deadliest escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades, after the Hamas group launched a massive rocket barrage and ground, air, and sea offensive, prompting Israel to respond with intense airstrikes.

“Today, we have seen the face of evil. Hamas launched a criminal attack, without distinguishing between women, children and the elderly. It will realise very quickly that it made a grave mistake. We will change the face of reality in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said in a video statement.

היום, ראינו את פני הרוע.

החמאס פתח בהתקפה נפשעת, ללא הבחנה בין נשים, ילדים וקשישים. הוא יבין מהר מאוד שעשה טעות חמורה.

אנחנו נשנה את פני המציאות ברצועת עזה עשרות שנים קדימה.

אזרחי ישראל, במיוחד בשעות קשות אלו, התאזרו בסבלנות וגבו את כוחות הביטחון. pic.twitter.com/psu4BOJg3w

— יואב גלנט – Yoav Gallant (@yoavgallant) October 7, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to demolish Hamas strongholds in Gaza, reducing them to rubble, as the conflict continued to escalate.

READ |Explained: Israel-Palestine And A History Of Conflict

Rockets pounded Israel from Gaza from 6:30 am on Saturday, following months of growing violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the highest death count in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, in years.

“Israel is now at war,” Prime Minister Netanyahu declared to the shocked nation Saturday morning, in what was the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

“I’m telling the people of Gaza: get out of there now, because we’re about to act everywhere with all our force,” he added. “We’ll strike them to the bitter end and avenge with force this black day they brought on Israel and its people.”

US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his “unwavering” support for the US ally, Israel, as the UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for Sunday. He also warned against any adversaries of Israel exploiting the situation.

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