Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City as Hamas warns escalation will jeopardize ceasefire talks

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces pushed deeper into Gaza’s largest city in pursuit of newly formed militants, forcing thousands of Palestinians to flee Monday from an area devastated in the early weeks of war. nine months of war.

Hamas warned that the recent raids and expulsions in Gaza City could lead to the collapse of long-running negotiations on a ceasefire and the release of the hostages after it appeared that both sides had The gaps in the last few days have been reduced.

Israeli troops again fought militants in areas of northern Gaza that the army said had been largely cleared months ago. The military ordered evacuations before the attacks, but Palestinians said they did not feel safe anywhere. The majority of the 2.3 million residents have been displaced, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are crammed together in scorching hot tent camps.

Israel ordered the evacuation of the northern Gaza Strip in the first weeks of the war, preventing most people from returning. However, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still live in makeshift shelters or the ruins of their homes.

“We fled in the dark, amid heavy attacks,” said Sayeda Abdel-Baki, a mother of three who was staying with relatives in the Daraj neighborhood. “This is my fifth displacement.”

Residents reported artillery and tank fire as well as air strikes. The Health Ministry of the Gaza Strip, which has only limited access to the north, initially reported no casualties.

Israel issued additional evacuation orders for areas in other central Gaza neighborhoods. The military said it had intelligence showing that fighters from Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group were in the area and urged residents to head south to the town of Deir al-Balah.

Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding among civilians. In Shijaiyah, a district of Gaza where fighting has been taking place for weeks, troops stormed and destroyed schools and a clinic that had been converted into militant camps, according to the military.

The war has destroyed large parts of the city and caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

Obstacles to a deal

Israel and Hamas appear to be closer to a ceasefire than they have been in months. Fighting would cease in return for the release of dozens of hostages captured by Hamas in the October 7 attack that sparked the war.

CIA Director William Burns returned to Cairo for talks on Monday, according to Egyptian state broadcaster Qahera TV, which is close to the intelligence services. An Israeli delegation is also on its way to the Egyptian capital, Israeli media reported.

But obstacles remain, even after Hamas agreed to back down from its central demand that Israel commit to ending the war as part of an agreement. A key part of that shift, officials told the Associated Press, is the extent of the destruction caused by Israel’s rolling offensive.

Hamas still wants mediators to guarantee that negotiations end with a permanent ceasefire, according to two officials familiar with the talks. The current draft says the mediators – the United States, Qatar and Egypt – “will do their best” to ensure that negotiations lead to an agreement to end the war.

Israel has rejected any agreement that would force it to end the war with the intact Hamas – a Netanyahu reiterated his condition on Sunday.

Hamas said on Monday it was showing “flexibility and a positive attitude” to facilitate an agreement, while accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “putting further obstacles in the way of negotiations.”

Meanwhile, Hamas’s top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, warned the mediators of “catastrophic consequences” if Israel continued its operations in Gaza City. Netanyahu and the army would bear “full responsibility” for the failure of the talks, the group said in a subsequent statement.

The two officials said there is also an impasse over whether Hamas can choose the high-profile prisoners Israel wants to release in exchange for hostages. Some prisoners have been convicted of killing Israelis, and Israel does not want Hamas to determine who is released. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with the media.

Bombing keeps aid workers away from corpses

The residents of the Gaza Strip saw no end to their suffering.

Maha Mahfouz fled her home in Gaza’s Zaytoun neighborhood with her two children and many neighbors. She said her area was not included in the latest evacuation orders, but “we are panicking because the bombs and gunfire are very close to us.”

Fadel Naeem, the director of Al-Ahli Hospital, said patients had fled the facility despite there being no evacuation order for the surrounding area. He said patients in critical condition had been evacuated to other hospitals in northern Gaza.

Marwan al-Sultan, director of the Indonesian hospital, said 80 patients and injured people from Al-Ahli had been admitted, crammed into “every corner”.

“Many cases require urgent operations. Many suffer direct gunshot wounds to the head and require intensive care. Fuel and medical supplies are running low,” he said in a text message. He said the hospital had also received 16 bodies of people killed in the Israeli incursion, half of them women and children.

Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the civil defense first responders working under the Hamas government, said the Tufah, Daraj and Shijaiyah neighborhoods had become inaccessible due to Israeli bombardments. In a voice message, he said the military had shelled houses in the Jaffa neighborhood of Gaza City and first responders “saw people lying on the ground and could not rescue them.”

According to the Ministry of Health, more than 38,000 people have died as a result of the war in Gaza; the count does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.

According to Israeli authorities, 1,200 people were killed in a cross-border raid by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, most of them civilians. The militants took around 250 people hostage. Around 120 of them are still in captivity, and around a third are said to be dead.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

___

For more AP reports, see https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war