GAZA
Israeli drones fired at a hospital in Khan Younis on Friday, as a major advance in the main city in the southern Gaza Strip threatened the few healthcare facilities still open.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said displaced people were injured “due to intense gunfire from the Israeli drones targeting citizens at Al-Amal Hospital” as well as the rescue agency’s base. The military said it was checking the report.
Nearby in the same city, Israeli tanks were also approaching Gaza’s biggest remaining functioning hospital, Nasser, where people reported hearing shellfire from the west. Residents also reported fierce gun battles to the south.
Israel has launched a major new advance in Khan Younis this week to capture the city, which it says is now the primary base of Hamas fighters.
The Gaza health ministry said 142 Palestinians had been killed and 278 injured in Gaza in the past 24 hours, taking the death toll from more than three months of war there to 24,762.
The World Health Organization says most of the enclave’s 36 hospitals have stopped working. Only 15 are partially functioning and those are operating at up to three times their capacity, without adequate fuel or medical supplies, it says.
Israeli officials have accused Hamas fighters of operating from hospitals, including Nasser, which staff deny. Israel has so far been unable to provide any substantial proof legtimising its claim.
More than 1.7 million people – around 75% of Gaza’s population – are estimated to be displaced, many forced to move repeatedly, according to UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) figures. Many have sought refuge in tents that do little to protect them from the elements and disease.
Among them, Mohammed al-Ghandour wanted to give his bride a beautiful wedding but they had to flee their homes in Gaza City and the couple finally got married this week in a tent city in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, where they now live.
“My happiness is maybe at 3% but will get myself ready for my wife. I want to make her happy,” Ghandour said.
While saying he was not shying away from the “human tragedy” inflicted on Gaza civilians, Israeli President Isaac Herzog cast the offensive as a step towards more peaceful relations with the Palestinians in the future, and bolstering global security, during his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
In the north, where Israel says it has started pulling out troops and shifting to smaller scale operations, 12 people were killed in Israeli strikes on a residential building near the largely non-functioning Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
An Israeli strike on a house in Al-Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip killed five Palestinians.
Read US says ‘no way’ to solve Gaza conflict without Palestinian state
Washington has had scant success in persuading its ally to alleviate the plight of the civilian population, deprived since October of regular aid and adequate medical care.
Israel says it will fight on until Hamas is eradicated, an aim Palestinians call unachievable because of the group’s structure and deep roots in an enclave it has run since 2007.
Diplomats were dealing on Friday with the repercussions after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to rule out an independent Palestinian state, rejecting a long-standing pillar of US strategy in the Middle East.
“Israel must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu told a briefing in Tel Aviv on Thursday. “It clashes with the principle of sovereignty, but what can you do
