Netanyahu promises to keep up the fight against Hamas as the war intensifies

Jerusalem: Although Palestinian residents in Gaza who follow Israeli evacuation orders cannot be guaranteed their safety, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to continue the war against Hamas operatives.

After touring Israeli forces in northern Gaza on Monday, Netanyahu warned Likud Party legislators that the battle was far from ended and denied media reports that his administration could declare a ceasefire.

He warned that without using military force, Israel would not be able to liberate the last of its captives that were being held by Hamas.

“We’re not going to stop. During his visit to Gaza, Netanyahu said, “The war will continue until the end, until we finish it, no less.” This statement contradicts pleas for a ceasefire from throughout the world.

Israel has been under pressure from its closest ally, the United States, to decrease civilian casualties and move operations in Gaza to a lower-intensity phase as retaliation for Hamas’ deadly cross-border incursion on October 7.

However, Gemma Connell, a U.N. team leader who has been stationed in Gaza for a few weeks, described what she saw as a “human chessboard” where thousands of previously displaced individuals are once again on the run with little assurance that their destination would be secure.

The Deir al-Balah area in central Gaza was visited by Connell on Monday. “There’s so little space left here in Rafah that people just don’t know where they will go and it really feels like people being moved around a human chessboard because there’s an evacuation order somewhere,” Connell said.

“People go from one location to another. However, she warned Reuters that they are not secure there.

For weeks, Washington has exerted pressure on Israel to designate safe zones and provide humanitarian corridors for refugees to flee in order to minimize injury to civilians. But Israeli operations have been more intense, and the death toll is going up.

When asked about the army’s reaction, a spokesman said that while the military has made an effort to remove people from combat zones, Hamas consistently works to thwart such efforts. The Palestinian Hamas organization denies using people as human shields, but the army spokeswoman said that’s what they do.

According to the spokesman, the army takes all reasonable safety measures to minimize danger to people.

ANOTHER AIRSTRIKE

Palestinian locals at Khan Younis, the main hospital in the southern Gaza Strip, reported several airstrikes early on Tuesday.

According to Palestinian health sources, an Israeli attack on a residence in Khan Younis’ Al-Amal neighborhood claimed the lives of seven individuals.

On Sunday night, one of the worst nights in the 11-week-old conflict between Israel and Hamas, Palestinians grieved the deaths of over 100 individuals, according to Gaza health authorities, as a result of Israeli bombings.

Palestinian mourners in a queue caressed the white shrouds covering the remains of at least seventy persons who, according to Palestinian health authorities, were killed by an airstrike that struck Maghazi in the middle of the strip during a burial in Gaza.

“LITTLE JESUSES”

In a sharply worded statement, Pope Francis said that children lost to violence, like the one in Gaza, were the “little Jesuses of today.” He said that the “appalling harvest” of innocent victims was being reaped by Israeli attacks.

Diplomatic efforts, however, did not provide any comfort.

Two Egyptian security sources told Reuters on Monday that Hamas and the affiliated Islamic Jihad have rejected an Egyptian proposal for them to cede control of the Gaza Strip in exchange for an ongoing truce. According to the sources, the factions declined to make any compromises other than the potential release of other captives.

Sworn to destroy Israel, Hamas and its smaller terrorist associate Islamic Jihad are said to be holding over 100 captives out of the 240 they took during their Oct. 7 rampage across Israeli cities, which resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people.

Israel has mostly wasted the tiny area ever since. Authorities in Gaza, which is administered by Hamas, report that about 20,700 Gazans have died, including 250 in the last 24 hours.

The United Nations reports that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is dire, with the great majority of its 2.3 million residents having been forced from their homes.