THOUSANDS of people have fled the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis after the Israeli military warned of a new operation to target Hamas militants still gathered there.
The al-Jala neighborhood, a neighborhood in the south of the city that the Israel Defense Forces had previously designated a humanitarian zone, was packed up on Sunday, unsure of where to seek shelter. Israel said rockets had been fired from the area.
“We don’t know where to go,” said Amal Abu Yahia, a 42-year-old mother of three.
She took her children to al-Mawasi, a crowded tent camp on the beach, but could find no shelter there.
Her husband was killed when an Israeli airstrike hit their neighbor’s house in March, but they returned to Khan Younis in June to take shelter in their badly damaged home.
“This is my fourth move,” he said.
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While much of Gaza has been bombed to rubble, Khan Younis suffered widespread destruction over months of Israeli military action to capture the city earlier this year.
Israeli forces are increasingly being forced to return to areas that were previously the target of heavy fighting and re-engage Hamas and other militants who have regrouped in urban areas.
The northern part of the area is separated from the south by an Israeli military corridor, and the shrinking “humanitarian zone” that Israel says is safe for civilians is already overcrowded.
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Despite designating several areas as evacuation zones, especially al-Mawasi, Israel continued to launch attacks there.
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said Gazans were trapped and had nowhere to go. In just the past few days, more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza.
“Some are only able to carry their children, others carry their whole lives in one small bag. They will go to crowded places and shelters are full,” he said in X.
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Israel’s new operation in Khan Younis comes amid speculation that ceasefire talks will resume in Cairo or Doha this weekend after calls from the US, Egypt and Qatar for the two sides to resume negotiations.
In a statement, the leaders of the three countries, who were instrumental in brokering a week-long ceasefire in November, said there was no reason from any side for further delay.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country will send a delegation to the talks starting on August 15, even though he has been repeatedly accused of stalling the deal to ensure his political survival. Hamas has not responded to the invitation.
The new push for negotiations is seen as more important after the assassination of a key Hezbollah commander and Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, last month.
The killings in Beirut and Tehran have prompted Lebanese and Iranian groups to threaten to turn the war in Gaza into a region-wide conflict.
Hezbollah and other Iranian allies in the region say they will stop attacking Israel when the war in Gaza ends.
Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip in the conflict sparked by a Hamas massacre on October 7 in southern Israel, which left about 1,200 dead and 251 hostages taken.
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said the need for a ceasefire and a hostage release deal was urgent.
“The deal needs to get done. It needs to get done now,” he said at an event in Phoenix, Arizona, as reported by the Guardian, Monday (12/8).
He and President Joe Biden said they had been working around the clock on the cease-fire negotiations. “Israel has the right to go after Hamas terrorists. But as I have said many times, I believe they also have an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties,” he said, referring to Israel’s bombing of a school used as a shelter in Gaza City that killed about 80 people.
On Sunday (11/8) the office of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas announced that he would visit Moscow next week to discuss the war with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Abbas, who is based in the West Bank, was last in Moscow in February, when Russia hosted reconciliation talks between Abbas’ Fatah, Hamas and other Palestinian factions.
Several attempts to heal the rift between Fatah and Hamas since Hamas seized control of Gaza after a brief civil war in 2007 have failed. (I-2)
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