Israel has said it does not plan to take long-term control over the Gaza Strip after an expected ground offensive to root out Hamas militants that rule the territory.
The Israeli military punished Gaza with air strikes, and authorities inched closer to bringing aid to desperate families and hospitals, as people across Muslim countries protested in solidarity with Palestinians.
Israel bombed areas in southern Gaza where Palestinians had been told to seek safety while it aims to destroy Hamas in retaliation for its brutal rampage in Israel two weeks ago.
Fighting between Israel and militants in neighbouring Lebanon also raged, prompting evacuations of Israeli border towns as fears of a widening conflict grew.
Speaking to legislators about Israel’s long-term plans for the Gaza Strip, defence minister Yoav Gallant laid out a three-stage plan that seemed to suggest Israel did not intend to reoccupy the territory it left in 2005.
First, Israeli air strikes and “manoeuvring” — a presumed reference to a ground attack — would aim to root out Hamas. Next will come a lower intensity fight to defeat remaining pockets of resistance, and finally, a new “security regime” will be created in Gaza along with “the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life” in the territory.
Mr Gallant did not say who Israel expected to run the territory if Hamas is toppled.
Israel occupied Gaza from 1967 until 2005, when it pulled up settlements and withdrew soldiers. Two years later, Hamas took over. Some Israelis blame the withdrawal from Gaza for the sporadic violence that has persisted since then.
As the humanitarian crisis worsened for Gaza’s 2.3 million civilians, workers along its border with Egypt began work to repair the border crossing in a first step to getting aid to besieged Palestinians, who were running out of fuel, food, water and medicine.
More than a million people have been displaced in Gaza. Many heeded Israel’s orders to evacuate the northern part of the sealed-off enclave on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called areas in southern Gaza “safe zones” earlier this week, Israeli military spokesman Nir Dinar said on Friday: “There are no safe zones.”
UN officials said that with the bombings across all of Gaza, some Palestinians who had fled the north appeared to be going back.
“The strikes, coupled with extremely difficult living conditions in the south, appear to have pushed some to return to the north, despite the continuing heavy bombing there,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN human rights office.
Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals were rationing their dwindling resources as authorities worked out logistics for a desperately needed aid delivery from Egypt.
Generators in Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, were operating at the lowest setting to conserve fuel while providing power to vital departments such as intensive care, hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said. Others worked in darkness.
The lack of medical supplies and water are making it difficult to treat the mass of victims from the Israeli strikes, he said.
The deal to get aid into Gaza through the territory’s only entry point not controlled by Israel remained fragile. Israel said the supplies could only go to civilians and that it would “thwart” any diversions by Hamas. It was unclear if fuel for the hospital generators would be allowed to enter.
Work continued on Friday to repair the road at the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza that had been damaged in air strikes.
A US official said aid had been delayed because of ongoing road repairs, and that it was expected to move across the border on Saturday. More than 200 trucks and 3,000 tons of aid were positioned near the crossing.
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres visited the crossing on Friday and appealed for the quick movement of aid into the Gaza Strip, calling it “the difference between life and death”.
Israel has evacuated its own communities near Gaza and Lebanon, putting residents in hotels elsewhere in the country.
The Defence Ministry announced evacuation plans on Friday for Kiryat Shmona, a town of more than 20,000 residents near the Lebanese border. Three Israelis including a five-year-old girl were wounded in a rocket attack there on Thursday, according to Israeli health services.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, which has a massive arsenal of long-range rockets, has traded fire with Israel along the border on a near-daily basis and hinted it might join the war if Israel seeks to annihilate Hamas. Iran supports both armed groups.
More than 4,200 people have been displaced from villages in south Lebanon by clashes on the border with Israel, and local officials said on Friday that they are ill-prepared for the much larger exodus that would ensue if the conflict escalates to an all-out war.
The violence in Gaza has also sparked protests across the region, including in Arab countries allied with the US.
Palestinians in Gaza reported heavy air strikes in Khan Younis, a town in the territory’s south, and ambulances carrying men, women and children streamed into the local Nasser Hospital.
An Israeli air strike hit a Greek Orthodox church housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City on Thursday. The military said it had targeted a Hamas command centre nearby, causing damage to a church wall. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said 16 Palestinian Christians were killed.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchy of Jerusalem condemned the attack and said it would “not abandon its religious and humanitarian duty” to provide assistance.
Palestinian militants have launched unrelenting rocket attacks into Israel — more than 6,900 since October 7, according to Israel — and tensions have flared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
On Friday, two Palestinian teenagers were killed in clashes in the West Bank, where more than 80 Palestinians have been killed over the past two weeks.
Thirteen Palestinians, including five minors, were killed on Thursday during a battle with Israeli troops in which Israel called in an air strike, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. An Israeli border police officer was killed in the fighting, Israel said.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 4,137 people have been killed in the territory since the war began.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly civilians who died during Hamas’s deadly incursion. Israel says 203 people were taken hostage into the Gaza Strip.
On Friday, Hamas militants freed two Americans, Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie, who also hold Israeli citizenship.
They had been held hostage in the Gaza Strip after being taken from the kibbutz of Nahal Oz during a trip to southern Israel from their home in suburban Chicago.
