Thousands of people have fled the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis after the Israeli military warned of a new operation to dislodge Hamas militants it says have regrouped there.
In al-Jala, a neighborhood in the south of the city that the Israeli military had previously designated as a humanitarian zone, residents gathered their belongings on Sunday, unsure where to take shelter. Israel said rockets had been fired from the area.
“We don’t know where to go,” Amal Abu Yahia, a 42-year-old mother of three, told the Associated Press news agency. She took her children to al-Mawasi, a crowded tent camp on the coast, but found no shelter there.
Her husband was killed in an Israeli airstrike on their neighbours’ home in March, but they returned to Khan Younis in June to take shelter in their badly damaged house. “This is my fourth displacement,” she said.
Large swathes of Gaza have been bombed and reduced to rubble: Khan Younis suffered extensive destruction during months of battles by the IDF to take the city earlier this year.
Israeli troops are increasingly being forced back into areas that had previously been the target of intense fighting, re-engaging Hamas and other militants who have regrouped in urban areas.
The north of the territory is separated from the south by an Israeli military corridor, and the shrinking “humanitarian zones” that Israel considers safe for civilians are already overcrowded. Despite designating some areas as evacuation zones, including al-Mawasi, the Israeli military has carried out strikes there.
Philippe Lazzarini, executive director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said in a message on X: “The people of Gaza are trapped and have nowhere to go. In the last few days alone, more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwestern Gaza.
“Some can only take their children, others carry their whole life in a small bag. They go to overcrowded places where shelters are already full.”
The new Israeli operation in Khan Younis comes as ceasefire negotiations could resume in Cairo or Doha later this week, following calls from the United States, Egypt and Qatar for talks to resume. In a statement, the leaders of the three countries, which were instrumental in brokering a week-long ceasefire in November, said there was no excuse “from any side for further delay.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that his country will send a delegation to the negotiations that begin on August 15, despite repeated accusations that he is dragging his feet to ensure his own political survival. Hamas has yet to respond to the invitation.
The revival of the talks is seen as more vital than ever after the assassinations last month of a senior Hezbollah official and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political chief. The killings, in Beirut and Tehran, which the Lebanese group and Iran blame on Israel, threaten to turn the war in Gaza into a regional conflict.
Hezbollah and other Iranian allies in the region have said they will stop attacking Israel once the Gaza war ends. Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip in the conflict sparked by the October 7 massacre by Hamas in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said on Saturday that the need for a ceasefire and a deal to release the hostages was urgent.
“The deal has to be done. It has to be done now,” she said at an event in Phoenix, Arizona. She and President Joe Biden have been working “around the clock” on the negotiations, she added.
“Israel has the right to go after Hamas terrorists. But as I have said many times, they also have, I think, a significant responsibility to avoid civilian casualties,” she said, referring to the Israeli bombing of a school used as a shelter in Gaza City on Saturday that killed about 80 people.
Also on Sunday, the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he would travel to Moscow next week to discuss the war with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Abbas, who resides in the West Bank, last visited Moscow in February, when Russia hosted reconciliation talks between Fatah, Hamas and other Palestinian factions. Several attempts to ease tensions between Fatah and Hamas since the latter took control of Gaza after a brief civil war in 2007 have failed.
