CAIRO: As Israeli forces continued to engage Hamas members in the central and southern sections of the Gaza Strip, Palestinians who had been displaced by the fighting flocked onto the beach. Health officials said that at least 17 individuals had been killed in strikes on Tuesday.
There was no indication that the ceasefire negotiations in Cairo would result in any significant progress on the main points of contention between the parties, such as future authority over two corridors in the Gaza Strip when the war stops.
The number of evacuation orders Israel has issued in Gaza in recent days is the highest since the conflict’s ten-month start. This has infuriated Palestinians, the UN, and relief workers about the lack of safe areas and the shrinkage of humanitarian zones.
The majority of the population currently resides in the central Gazan cities of Deir Al Balah and Khan Yunis, where residents and displaced families claim they have been forced to live in tents that are now crammed onto the shore.
The 30-year-old Aya, a refugee from Gaza City who now resides with her family in western Deir Al Balah, said, “Maybe they should bring ships, so next time they order people to leave we can jump there.”
“Every day they claim that negotiations are going well and that an agreement is almost reached, but then everything crumbles apart. Are negotiators aware that Israeli bombardment is destroying more families every day? She said using a chat app, “Does the world understand that every day more costs us more lives?”
According to Palestinian health officials, Israeli strikes on two of Gaza’s eight historically significant refugee camps, Bureij and Maghazi, killed nine Palestinians; in Khan Yunis, five were murdered; and in Rafah, three more were killed.
The health ministry in Gaza reports that over 40,400 Palestinians have lost their lives in the violence. Humanitarian agencies report that the densely populated enclave has been abandoned, that the majority of its 2.3 million inhabitants have experienced repeated displacement, and that there are severe shortages of food and medication.
UN relief efforts were suspended.
According to a senior UN official, Israel gave further orders on Sunday for the evacuation of Deir Al Balah, the location of the UN operations center, which led to the suspension of UN humanitarian operations in Gaza on Monday.
The order to evacuate was issued while the UN was getting ready to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza against polio, following the discovery of at least one instance of the illness.
Negotiators in Cairo continued their negotiations as the fighting went on with the goal of putting an end to it and returning home 109 foreign and Israeli inmates in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
The United States, which is behind the negotiations together with Egypt and Qatar, has expressed hope, but Hamas and Israel have been assigning blame for the lack of advancement.
Israel’s insistence on keeping control of the so-called Philadelphi corridor on the Egyptian border, which it claims has been used as a major route for smuggling weapons into Gaza, has been one of the primary sources of contention.
In order to make sure armed militants cannot travel north, Israel has also insisted on inspections being placed on anyone traveling from southern and central Gaza into northern areas via the Netzarim corridor, which runs through the middle of the Gaza Strip.
