Israeli soldier Ori Megidish, centre, was freed from Hamas captivity during Israel's ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. Photo / Israeli Security Agency via AP
Israeli ground forces have pushed deeper into Gaza, advancing in tanks and other armoured vehicles on the territory’s main city and freeing a young soldier held captive by Hamas militants.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls for a ceasefire as airstrikes landed near hospitals where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering beside the wounded.
The military said a soldier captured during Hamas’ incursion into Israel at the start of October was rescued in Gaza – the first such rescue since the latest war began. Military officials provided few details but said in a statement that Private Ori Megidish, 19, was “doing well” and had been reunited with her family.
Netanyahu welcomed her home, saying the “achievement” by Israel’s security forces “illustrates our commitment to free all the hostages”.
He also rejected calls for a ceasefire to facilitate the release of captives or end the war, which he has said will be long and difficult.
“Calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas,” he told a news conference. “That will not happen.”
Netanyahu, who faces mounting anger over Israel’s failure to prevent the worst surprise attack on the country in half a century, also said he had no plans to resign.
Hamas and other militant groups are believed to be holding about 240 captives, including men, women and children. Netanyahu has faced mounting pressure to secure their release even as Israel acts to crush Hamas and end its 16-year rule over Gaza.
Hamas, which has freed four hostages, has said it would let the others go in return for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, including many implicated in deadly attacks on Israelis. Israel has dismissed the offer and Netanyahu said the ground invasion “creates the possibility” of getting the hostages out, adding that Hamas would “only do it under pressure”.
Hamas released a short video yesterday purporting to show three other female captives. One delivers a brief statement – probably under duress – criticising Israel’s response to the hostage crisis.
It was not clear when the video was made.
Amos Aloni, whose daughter Danielle appeared in the video, told reporters that he and his wife were shocked when she appeared on TV but also felt “relief from her being alive and seeing her”.
The Israeli military has been vague about its operations inside Gaza, including the location and number of troops. Israel has declared a new “phase” in the war but stopped short of declaring an all-out ground invasion.
Larger ground operations have been launched both north and east of Gaza City. Israel says many of Hamas’ forces and much of its militant infrastructure, including hundreds of kilometres of tunnels, are in Gaza City, which before the war was home to more than 650,000 people.
Though Israel ordered Palestinians to flee the north of the territory, where Gaza City is located, and move south, hundreds of thousands remain, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones. About 117,000 displaced people hoping to be safe from missile strikes are staying in hospitals in northern Gaza, alongside thousands of patients and staff, according to United Nations figures.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, says nearly 672,000 Palestinians are sheltering in its schools and other facilities across Gaza, which have reached four times their capacity.
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini accused Israel of “collective punishment” of the Palestinians and of forcing their displacement from northern Gaza to the south, where they are still not safe.
The death toll among Palestinians passed 8300, mostly women and children, the Gaza Health Ministry said this week. The figure is without precedent in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence. More than 1.4 million people in Gaza have fled their homes.
More than 1400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ initial attack, which is also an unprecedented figure.
Lazzarini said 64 of the agency’s staff were killed in the past three weeks, the latest death coming just two hours before he addressed an emergency UN Security Council meeting when an agency security official was killed with his wife and eight children.
Most Palestinians in Gaza “feel trapped in a war they have nothing to do with” and “feel the world is equating all of them to Hamas”, he told the Security Council.
Video circulating on social media showed an Israeli tank and bulldozer in central Gaza blocking the territory’s main north-south highway.
The video, taken by a local journalist, shows a car approaching an earth barrier across the road. The car stops and turns around. As it heads away, a tank appears to open fire and an explosion engulfs the car. The journalist, in another car, races away in terror, screaming, “Go back! Go back!” at an approaching ambulance and other vehicles.
The Gaza Health Ministry later said three people were killed in the car that was hit.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, declined to comment on where Israeli forces were deployed. He said additional infantry and armoured, engineering and artillery units had entered Gaza and the operations would continue to “expand and intensify”.
The military said troops had killed dozens of militants who attacked from inside buildings and tunnels. It said that, in the past few days, it had struck more than 600 militant targets, including weapons depots and anti-tank missile launching positions. Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, including towards its commercial hub, Tel Aviv.
Hamas said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops who entered the northwest. It was not possible to independently confirm battlefield claims made by either side.
Meanwhile, crowded hospitals in northern Gaza came under growing threat.
Gaza’s Health Ministry shared video footage that appeared to show an explosion and a column of smoke near the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital for cancer patients. Hospital director Sobhi Skaik said it had sustained damage in a strike that endangered patients.
All 10 hospitals operating in northern Gaza have received evacuation orders, the UN’s office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs said. Staff have refused to leave, saying evacuation would mean death for patients on ventilators.
Strikes hit within 50 metres of Al Quds Hospital after it received two calls from Israeli authorities last week ordering it to evacuate, the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said. Some windows were blown out and rooms were covered in debris. It said 14,000 people were sheltering there.
Israel says it targets Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate among civilians, putting them in danger.
Beyond the fighting, conditions for civilians in Gaza are continually deteriorating.
With no central power for weeks and little fuel, hospitals are struggling to keep emergency generators running to operate incubators and other life-saving equipment. UNRWA has been trying to keep water pumps and bakeries running.
On Sunday, the largest convoy of humanitarian aid yet – 33 trucks – entered Gaza from Egypt and another 26 entered yesterday. Relief workers say the amount is still far less than is needed for the population of 2.3 million people.
The fighting has raised concerns that the violence could spread across the region. Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have engaged in daily skirmishes along Israel’s northern border.
In the occupied West Bank, Israel carried out airstrikes this week against militants clashing with its forces in the Jenin refugee camp. Hamas said four of its fighters were killed there.
By Sunday, Israeli forces and settlers had killed 123 Palestinians, including 33 minors, in the West Bank, half of them during search-and-arrest operations, the UN said.
New York Times: The DIA report has become a flashpoint in the public discussion.