GAZA STRIP/TEL AVIV/AMMAN - Israel’s unrelenting offensive against Hamas battled on into its fifth week with no sign of slowing Saturday, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Arab foreign ministers in search of a diplomatic opening to ease the crisis.
A total of 9,425 people have been martyred in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, according to figures released Saturday by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah. An additional 24,000 others have been injured, the ministry said. The figures are drawn from sources inside the Hamas-controlled enclave. The number of deaths reported Saturday is 270 higher than that reported by the Ministry on Friday, with the number injured about 1,000 higher.
The Israeli military continues to encircle and pound the Gaza Strip with airstrikes in response to a cross-border terror attack launched by Hamas militants on October 7.
The Israel Defense Forces announces the deaths of four soldiers killed during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday yesterday. Their deaths bring the toll of slain soldiers since Israel launched its ground operation in the Gaza Strip last week to 28, and 345 since October 7.
Additionally, a soldier in the Givati Brigade’s reconnaissance unit and a soldier of the Nahal Brigade’s 931st Battalaion were seriously wounded in separate clashes in Gaza on Saturday, the IDF says.
Washington’s top envoy arrived in Jordan for talks with five of his counterparts one day after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuffed his call for a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid into Gaza.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has begun meeting Arab leaders in Jordan as he continues his Middle East shuttle diplomacy in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
Blinken met first with Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, whose economically and politically ravaged country is home to Hezbollah — an Iranian-backed terror group hostile to Israel.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi tells reporters that though he condemns the Hamas attacks of October 7 and that though “nobody in their right mind” would “belittle” the pain felt by Israel that day, the war in Gaza cannot be permitted to continue.
“The whole region in sinking in a sea of hatred that will define generations to come,” Safadi says after a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.
He says the Arab countries were demanding an immediate ceasefire, a more dramatic action than the humanitarian pauses supported by the Biden administration, to allow for the delivery of food and other supplies and to enable time to secure the release of hostages.
“We don’t accept that this is self-defense,” Safadi says, adding, “It cannot be justified under any pretext and it will not bring Israel security, it will not bring the region peace.”
The Israeli army said its troops had launched an operation in southern Gaza overnight after deadly strikes hit an ambulance convoy and a school-turned-refugee shelter in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Israeli forces have encircled Gaza’s largest city, trying to crush Hamas.
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had come under attack several times from Hamas “tunnel shafts and military compounds” in northern Gaza and had killed many armed men and destroyed three observation posts. Hamas said it had hit an Israeli convoy with mortars.
The health ministry in Gaza, which is run by Hamas, says more than 9,200 Gazans, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israeli strikes and the intensifying ground campaign.
The ministry said at least 12 people had been killed when Israel struck a United Nations school where thousands of displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
Separately, at the Osama bin Zaid Boys School north of Gaza City, AFP saw the aftermath of what Hamas authorities said was Israeli tank shelling that killed 20 people.
Ambulance teams rushed into the debris-littered building to aid the wounded and remove the dead.
Stunned onlookers wept and wandered the scene with their hands clasped on their heads in horror.
A long row of washing still hung from windows on the building’s first storey, evidence the school had become a temporary home for some of the hundreds of thousands displaced by the war.
Overnight, Israeli ground forces launched “a targeted raid” to map tunnels and clear explosive traps in southern Gaza, where it has struck before but rarely sent in troops, the military said.
Israel says it has struck 12,000 targets across the Palestinian territory since October 7.
The army on Saturday sent text messages to Gazans saying the territory’s main north-south road would be open for three hours in the afternoon so people can evacuate.
A key focus of Blinken’s Israel visit on Friday was to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enact “humanitarian pauses”, which the United States believes could help secure the release of roughly 240 hostages thought to be in Hamas captivity and to allow aid to be distributed to Gaza’s beleaguered population.
Netanyahu said later, however, that he would not agree to a “temporary truce” with Hamas until the Islamist group releases the hostages.
In Gaza City, an Israeli strike on Friday hit an ambulance convoy near the territory’s largest hospital Al-Shifa, killing 15 people, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent and the Hamas-run health ministry.
“We emphasise that this area in Gaza is a war zone. Civilians are repeatedly called upon to evacuate southward for their safety,” the army said.
An AFP journalist saw multiple bodies beside the blood-splattered Palestinian Red Crescent vehicle.
A child was carried away and a dead horse lay nearby, still tethered to a cart.
The Red Crescent said a convoy of five vehicles had been destined for the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, when they were struck multiple times.
One vehicle had been transporting a 35-year-old woman with shrapnel wounds.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “utterly shocked” by the strike.
“We reiterate: patients, health workers, facilities and ambulances must be protected at all times. Always,” he said.
Blinken began the day in Amman by holding talks with Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani of Qatar, a mediator in the conflict.
He is also scheduled to meet the foreign ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The talks come amid mounting Arab anger over the civilian death toll from war, and increasing fears that the conflict could spread.
Saturday’s six-nation talks are also likely to touch on the question of Gaza’s future beyond the war. The United States has renewed calls for the creation of a Palestinian state, but few expect success now after decades of failed international efforts to find a “two-state solution”.
Netanyahu has spent decades opposing that vision, and it is unclear what appetite shocked and grieving Israelis will have for reconciliation or concessions.
The United States has also urged the Palestinian Authority, which ceded power in Gaza to Hamas more than 15 years ago, to retake control. A representative of the Palestinian Authority led by president Mahmud Abbas will also attend the meeting in Amman.
ISRAEL, LEBANON CROSS-BORDER CLASHES
The Israeli military and powerful Lebanese movement Hezbollah engaged in cross-border clashes on Saturday, with both claiming to have hit each other’s positions along the frontier.
The latest skirmishes came a day after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned that the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip could turn into a regional conflict if Israel pushed on with its offensive in the Palestinian territory.
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had struck a Hezbollah post after an attempted attack from Lebanon.
“In response to two hide outs attempting to fire from Lebanon toward Israeli territory, the IDF (military) struck the cells and a Hezbollah observation post,” a military statement said.
It said it had also responded to mortar fire from Lebanon into northern Israel, where no casualties were reported.
Hezbollah said it had simultaneously attacked five Israeli positions along the border.
Hours later it announced a new attack on the Al-Abbad Israeli position without specifying what kind of weapon was used.
Israel’s military said in a new statement that its fighter jets struck “targets” of Hezbollah, accompanied by tank and artillery fire.
“The Hezbollah targets struck include infrastructure, rocket storage sites and military compounds,” it said.
The Lebanon-Israel border has seen regular cross-border shelling over the past month, with firing between the Israeli military on one side and the powerful Hezbollah and its allies on the other.
In his first speech since the Israel-Hamas war broke out four weeks ago, Nasrallah warned Friday that “all options” were open for an expansion of the conflict to Lebanon as he blamed the United States for the war in Gaza.
“America is entirely responsible for the ongoing war on Gaza and its people, and Israel is simply a tool of execution,” Nasrallah said in a televised broadcast, calling the conflict “decisive”.
“Whoever wants to prevent a regional war -- and this is addressed to the Americans -- must quickly stop the aggression on Gaza,” he said.
BLINKEN TO VISIT TURKEY AFTER ISRAEL, JORDAN: STATEMENT
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Turkey for two days from Sunday as part of a Middle East tour amid the Hamas-Israel war, the State Department said.
Blinken was meeting with Arab counterparts in the Jordanian capital Amman on Saturday after visiting Israel the day before.
But he left Israel empty-handed on Friday after urging its leaders to do more to protect civilians in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s war to destroy Hamas.
In Turkey, Blinken would “underscore the importance of protecting civilian lives in Israel and the Gaza Strip”, the US State Department said in a statement on Saturday.
He would also discuss “our shared commitment to facilitating the increased, sustained delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza” as well as ensuring Palestinians are not forcibly displaced outside of Gaza”.
He would also discuss ways to “stem violence, calm rhetoric, reduce regional tensions” as well as working towards a “durable and sustainable peace in the Middle East, to include the establishment of a Palestinian state”.
