A war on two fronts: Israel is forced to fight in both the north and the south

On Sunday evening, Gaza was rocked by a series of powerful explosions and communications with the coastal strip were cut off. At the same time, an escalation of violence also occurred on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, The Guardian reports.

According to Israeli media reports, the strikes on Gaza came after the Israel Defense Forces indicated that Israeli troops were planning to enter Gaza City, possibly within the next 48 hours.

Journalists in Gaza watching from the Israeli border described intense Israeli strikes along the coastal strip, and video showed powerful explosions in the night sky. Reports from Gaza said the strikes came from air, sea and land, including from the north of the strip where Israeli troops are currently stationed.

In northern Israel, border communities including the town of Kiryat Shmona came under mortar and rocket fire from Hezbollah after an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed three girls aged between eight and 14 and their grandmother. A Hezbollah MP called the attack a “dangerous development” for which Israel would pay a heavy price, as Israelis were ordered to take shelter in safe quarters and the main road to the north was closed to traffic.

Residents in northern Israel reported at least one direct hit on a building in Kiryat Shmona when Hezbollah fired rockets and mortars across the border. Officials said one Israeli was killed. The Lebanese militant group said in a statement that its attack was in response to Israel’s “heinous and brutal crime.”

Earlier on Sunday, officials at Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry blamed Israeli jets for striking the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 47 people and wounding dozens more.

The escalation of violence on two fronts has been accompanied by stepped-up US diplomacy in efforts to force a pause in fighting to ease the acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza and free hostages amid fears of a regional escalation of the war between Israel and Hamas. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on his last stop before leaving for Cyprus and Turkey after meeting with Arab leaders on Saturday.

A senior US State Department official said Blinken told President Abbas that the Palestinian Authority must play a central role in Gaza’s future. The secretary of state drove through Israeli checkpoints to enter the West Bank city of Ramallah on his second visit to the region since Hamas militants carried out attacks in southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1,400 people.

Abbas’ spokesman said after the meeting that the Palestinian president called for an immediate ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza and that the Palestinian Authority would take power in Gaza only as part of a “comprehensive political solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Blinken reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to delivering life-saving humanitarian aid and resuming essential services in Gaza and made clear that Palestinians should not be subjected to forced displacement.

While Washington, the international community and Israel struggled to articulate what would happen “the day after tomorrow” – if Israel succeeded in defeating Hamas.

As The Guardian recalls, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have played no role in Gaza’s governance since 2007, when Hamas took control of the coastal strip after the Hamas-backed Change and Reform Party won the most votes in parliamentary elections in 2006. Last month, in an interview with The Guardian, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh rejected the Palestinian Authority returning to governing Gaza without a comprehensive agreement incorporating the West Bank into the Palestinian state.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated the government’s long-standing position that there can be no temporary ceasefire until Hamas releases its hostages held in Gaza. “There will be no ceasefire without the return of the hostages. This should be completely eliminated from the lexicon,” the prime minister told crews at Ramon Air Force Base in southern Israel.

Blinken has argued that humanitarian pauses can be critical to protecting civilians, delivering aid and removing foreign nationals, but he has rejected a full ceasefire. “We now believe that a ceasefire will simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on October 7,” he told Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi.

In the Magaz refugee camp in central Gaza, the site of the latest airstrike that killed dozens overnight, journalists saw rescue workers and local residents clearing the rubble in hopes of finding survivors.

An Associated Press reporter at a nearby hospital saw the bodies of at least five children, including a baby who was pulled from the wreckage.

Arafat Abu Mashaya, who lives in the camp, said the Israeli airstrike leveled several high-rise buildings housing people forced to flee other parts of Gaza.

“It was a real massacre,” he said early Sunday morning, standing among the rubble of destroyed houses. “Everyone here is peaceful people. I defy anyone who says they were here [бойцы сопротивления]”

Conditions in Gaza continue to deteriorate and the evacuation of civilians and seriously wounded Palestinians from Gaza has been suspended since Saturday, according to Egyptian security and medical sources, following an Israeli strike on ambulances at the entrance to Gaza City’s main hospital, Dar al-Shifa. Israel later said Hamas used the ambulance to transport its fighters.

Underscoring the nature of the conflict, which is dominated by Israeli and Hamas attempts to push their own divergent narratives, the Israel Defense Forces accompanied a select group of foreign and Israeli reporters to Gaza for several hours over the weekend to report under Israeli military restrictions.

During the last major conflict in Gaza in 2014, international media were able to operate inside the coastal strip by entering from Israel, but in the current conflict journalists have been denied access either from Israel or via Egypt, while a number of Palestinian journalists workers in Gaza were killed during Israeli attacks.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said the war between Israel and Hamas has killed more media workers than in any other conflict in the region since it began monitoring in 1992. As of Friday, 36 media workers – 31 Palestinians, four Israelis and one Lebanese – had been killed since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, the group said.

The rising death toll in Gaza has sparked growing international anger, with crowds of tens of thousands of people taking to the streets Saturday from Washington to Berlin to demand an immediate ceasefire.

Israel has repeatedly rejected the idea of ​​halting its offensive even during the brief humanitarian pauses proposed by Blinken during his tour of the region. Instead, it said Hamas was “faced with the full force” of its troops. “Every resident of Gaza City risks his life,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Israeli military officials on Sunday once again presented what they called evidence of Hamas tunnels under several hospitals in the Gaza Strip, a claim they have made repeatedly.

Senior IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari showed footage he said showed an underground entrance from Sheikh Hamad Hospital, which he said was connected to a network of Hamas tunnels, and Hamas militants opening fire on Israeli forces from the hospital.

He also claimed the existence of tunnels under an Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, raising fears that Israel may be planning to attack them.