The Israeli army is expanding the air and ground offensive to the center of the Gaza Strip, with an intensity in the attacks that is leading the area to a “terrifying” situation, according to the UN. Since Christmas Eve, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has been intensifying attacks on Gaza, with constant bombing and expanding the ground incursion.
Israeli forces bombed Palestinian refugee camps in central Gaza on Tuesday and issued orders to residents to evacuate the area. These are all clear signs that the army plans to expand its ground offensive to another section of the territory. Gaza’s main telecommunications provider, Paltel, announced another “total disruption” of services for both fixed and mobile lines.
The expansion of the conflict to a possible new area indicates the long and destructive path that still lies ahead until Israel completes its objectives. For weeks, Israeli forces have been engaged in bloody urban fighting in northern Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis, pushing Palestinians to more isolated corners of the territory in search of refuge, AP reports.
Despite international pressure to reach a ceasefire and calls from the United States to limit the number of civilian casualties, Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Christmas Day that the war is “nowhere near over” and the chief of staff of the Israeli army, Herzi Halevi assured yesterday that “there are still several months” of the offensive.
The war launched by Israel in response to the October 7 attacks is being one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than 20,900 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and more than 54,500 have been injured. In the 24 hours from Sunday afternoon (Christmas Eve) to Monday afternoon (Christmas), more than 240 people died, victims mainly of the intense bombings. The refugee camps in the center of the Strip alone were subject to 50 attacks in those hours.
“We are deeply concerned by the continued bombardment of central Gaza by Israeli forces,” the UN Human Rights office stated.
Residents of central Gaza on Tuesday described a night of shelling and airstrikes that rocked the Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij camps. The camps are small urbanized cities that house Palestinians expelled more than 70 years ago from their homes and their descendants from the territory now occupied by Israel. But these days they also welcome tens of thousands of people who have arrived fleeing from the North, which was already devastated by the Hebrew army in the first two months of the war, which is now in its 81st day.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared that his country is facing a “multi-arena war” from seven different fronts: Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran. “We have already responded and acted on six of these fronts,” he told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament).
In the North, troops are massing in the Daraj Tufah neighborhood of Gaza City, believed to be one of the last Hamas strongholds in the area, according to reports from Israeli military correspondents, who receive information from the army commanders.
According to these reports, the army intends to destroy approximately 70% of Hamas’ infrastructure, leaving the rest for new operations during the lower intensity phases of the fighting.
Still, Hamas fighters have shown great resilience. The Israeli army announced the death of two more soldiers, bringing the total number of deaths in the ground offensive to 158, according to official Israeli figures, which Hamas raises to 10 times that figure.
The executive director for Spain of the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Raquel Martí, has assured that the situation in the Gaza Strip is “terrifying” and that the cessation of the offensive and a halt to the fire that allows us to meet the “enormous needs” of a population that is forced to survive with hardly any humanitarian aid, reports Efe.
Martí stressed that more funding is needed to care for hundreds of thousands of people who are forced to survive without humanitarian aid, since Israel only allows 10% of what is needed, and not to all areas. In his opinion, a forceful political response is necessary from governments to put an end to this “bloody military offensive” and establish a ceasefire that allows the population to be served safely since “142 UNRWA colleagues have lost their lives.” “in this conflict.
Martí stressed that every day violations of international humanitarian law are being seen first hand, starting with an iron blockade within the Strip that prevents the entry of humanitarian aid, the bombings on the civilian population and civil infrastructure, and the forced displacement of the population. .
“The situation is terrifying. It has never been seen in any conflict that in such a short period of time there were more than 20,700 confirmed victims,” ??he concluded.
