U.S. diplomacy tour aims to calm tensions as Israel-Hamas war enters 4th month
Fighting continues to escalate in Lebanon, occupied West Bank and southern Gaza
The Israeli military signalled that it has wrapped up major combat in northern Gaza, saying it has completed dismantling Hamas's military infrastructure there, as the war against the militant group entered its fourth month on Sunday.
Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said late Saturday that forces would "continue to deepen the achievement" there and strengthen defences along the Israel-Gaza border fence.
The announcement came ahead of Tuesday's visit to Israel by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Biden administration officials, including Blinken, have repeatedly urged Israel to wind down its blistering air and ground offensive in Gaza and shift to more targeted attacks against Hamas leaders to prevent harm to Palestinian civilians.
During his stop in Qatar on Sunday, Bliken said that when he visits Israel, he will tell Israeli officials it is imperative they do more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza. He also said Palestinian civilians must be allowed to return home and must not be pressed to leave Gaza.
In recent weeks, Israel has already been scaling back its military assault in northern Gaza and pressing its offensive in the territory's south, where most of Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians are being squeezed into smaller areas while being pounded by Israeli airstrikes, contributing to a humanitarian disaster .
The war was triggered by a Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 when militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 people hostage — some of whom have since been released.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the war will not end until three objectives are met: eliminating Hamas, getting Israel's hostages returned and ensuring that Gaza won't be a threat to Israel.
Israel's retaliation by air, land and sea has killed more than 22,800 Palestinians and wounded more than 58,000, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. Health officials say about two-thirds of those killed have been women and minors.
On Sunday, officials at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis received the bodies of 18 people, including 12 children, who were killed in an Israeli strike late Saturday. More than 50 people were injured in the strike on a home in the Khan Younis refugee camp, which was set up decades ago to house refugees from the 1948 Mideast war over Israel's creation and morphed into a neighbourhood of the city.
Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials said on Sunday. Israeli officials say a police officer was also killed.
Israel said its aircraft fired on Palestinian militants who had attacked troops in the city of Jenin. The Palestinian ministry said the strike targeted people who had gathered at the site. Eyewitnesses said the attack happened as Israeli forces were withdrawing. Four of those killed were brothers, according to family members.
Israeli forces were also pushing deeper into the central city of Deir al-Balah, where on Saturday residents in several neighbourhoods were warned in flyers dropped over the city that they must evacuate their homes.
The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by the acronym MSF, said it was evacuating its medical staff and their families from Deir al-Balah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital because of the growing danger.
"The situation became so dangerous that some staff living in the neighbouring areas were not able to leave their houses because of the constant threats of drones and snipers," said Carolina Lopez, the group's emergency co-ordinator at the hospital.
"On some days, we have received more dead than injured," Lopez said. "No one and nowhere is safe in Gaza."
Dr. Anas Al-Kassem, a Canadian trauma surgeon, recently returned from volunteering in Gaza.
He described to CBC News the scenes he encountered in hospitals, making tough life-and-death choices and how he and his colleagues were able to save the life of an eight-year-old boy who was hit by shrapnel from an airstrike.
"It doesn't look like any hospital in Canada, unfortunately," Al-Kassem said.
Hagari, the military spokesperson, said the scattered fighting in northern Gaza was to be expected, along with rockets sporadically being launched from there toward Israel. He said Hamas no longer operates in an organized manner in the area but that militants "without a framework and without commanders" are still present.
His comments about changing the way the forces are fighting appeared to be a nod to Blinken, who is on his fourth Mideast trip in three months.
In addition to appeals for scaling back high-intensity combat, Blinken has called for more aid to reach Gaza and urged Israel's leaders to come up with a vision for post-war Gaza.
No one escaping hunger in Gaza: WFP official
Arif Husain, chief economist for the World Food Program, said all of the people living in Gaza are suffering from hunger and about 577,000 of them, or 26 per cent, are "literally starving."
Speaking on CBC's Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday, he said that within six months, there will be a "full-fledged famine" without a sustained humanitarian ceasefire that will help get more food and medicine into the territory.
Two U.S. senators who inspected aid deliveries over the weekend described a cumbersome process that is slowing relief to the Palestinian population in the besieged territory — largely due to Israeli inspections of cargo trucks, with seemingly arbitrary rejections of vital humanitarian equipment.
The system to ensure that aid deliveries within Gaza don't get hit by Israeli forces is "totally broken," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Sen. Jeff Merkley, both Democrats.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration and Netanyahu remain far apart on who should run the territory after the war, with the Israeli leader repeatedly rejecting the Washington-floated idea of having a reformed Palestinian Authority to head an autonomous government in parts of the occupied West Bank that would eventually administer Gaza.
In a further complication of Blinken's diplomatic mission, a new escalation of cross-border fighting between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah has put strains on a U.S. push to prevent a regional conflagration. Saturday's fighting was described by Hezbollah as an "initial response" to the targeted killing of a top Hamas leader in a Hezbollah stronghold of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, last week. The strike was presumed to have been carried out by Israel.
Civilians displaced by border clashes
"We think [Blinken's] visit is extremely important, because we are seeing what is happening in the Red Sea, we see what is happening on our northern border. We expect countries like Lebanon and Yemen to be held accountable for the attacks emanating from their territory," Gilad Erdan, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday on Rosemary Barton Live.
Erdan said about 50,000 Israeli civilians have been displaced along Israel's northern border because of attacks by Iranian-backed Hezbollah from Lebanon.
"This is a situation that we cannot tolerate anymore because they might initiate the same massacre and attack that Hamas initiated on our southern community," Erdan said.
He said Israel prefers a diplomatic solution, but if that's not possible, "we'll have to solve it with military means."
With files from CBC News and Reuters