GAZA — The Israeli military pushed deeper into Gaza City on Wednesday, with forces and tanks advancing into Sheikh Redwan neighborhood, one of the urban centre’s largest and most crowded neighbourhoods, forcing residents to flee amid intense bombardment.
In recent weeks, Israeli forces have advanced into Gaza City’s Zeitoun and Sabra neighborhoods and are now reportedly just a few kilometres from the city centre despite international calls and condemnations to halt the stated plans to occupy the city.
According to reports, including Reuters, the Israeli military moved deeper into Gaza City on Wednesday, with soldiers and tanks pushing into Sheikh Redwan.
“Sheikh Radwan is being burnt upside down. The occupation destroyed houses, burnt tents, and drones played audio messages ordering people to leave the area,” said Zakeya Sami, referring to the Israeli forces.
“If the takeover of Gaza City isn’t stopped, we might die, and we are not going to forgive anyone who stands and watches without doing anything to prevent our death,” she told Reuters.
Last night, Israeli forces dropped grenades on three schools in the Sheikh Redwan neighborhood that had been used to shelter displaced Palestinian families, setting tents and parked vehicles ablaze, according to residents.
The military also detonated a number of booby-trapped robots to destroy homes in Sheikh Redwan’s east and bombed a medical clinic, destroying two ambulances, according to the residents.
A large part of the Zeitoun neighborhood was still standing just three weeks ago, according to satellite images reviewed by The New York Times.
In Zeitoun, forces have already been operating for weeks, forcing residents to flee under heavy bombardment.
Israeli forces have completely destroyed more than 1,000 buildings in the Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods of Gaza City since it started its invasion of the city on August 6, trapping hundreds under the rubble, the Palestinian Civil Defence said on Sunday.
A satellite image from Aug. 8 showed scores of buildings intact and what appear to be several tent encampments. A separate image of the same area from Aug. 25 showed many, if not most, of the buildings reduced to piles of rubble and the apparent encampments gone.
Israel’s security cabinet approved weeks ago plans to seize Gaza City, despite international condemnation from the United Nations and states.
The plan reportedly involves forcing around one million residents southwards before surrounding the city and launching incursions into residential areas, followed by an expansion into refugee camps in central Gaza.
Netanyahu gave the final approval for the seizure of Gaza City, the densely populated centre at the heart of the Palestinian enclave, forcibly displacing close to 1 million people and carrying out the systematic demolitions of Palestinian homes.
Israeli forces have already stepped up attacks there, and thousands of Palestinians have left their homes as Israeli tanks edged closer to Gaza City over the past days.
The scale of the destruction resembles that of places in Gaza that have been largely flattened over the course of the war, such as Rafah in the south and Beit Hanoun in the north.
“It’s enormous,” said Fadl al-Saifi, 33, a resident of Sabra, an adjacent neighborhood to the Zeitoun. “It’s heartbreaking to see your friends’ homes in ruins.”
In recent days, al-Saifi said that he heard explosions throughout the day and that they would make his home shake.
“It is so routine that it has become background noise,” he said, adding that he and his younger brother had not evacuated so as to protect their home from looters.
Eli Cohen, a minister in Israel’s high-level security cabinet, has said the Israeli operation in Gaza City should reduce the city to rubble. “Gaza City itself should be exactly like Rafah, which we turned into a city of ruins,” he told Channel 14, a right-wing television station, this month. Some of Israel’s European allies have condemned its plans for an expanded offensive.
Witnesses reported the sound of nonstop explosions overnights in Gaza City, with several buildings being blown up in the northern city of Jabalia and east Sheikh Redwan.
Residents and journalists have also documented that Israel has been heavily using booby-trapped robots in these areas.
One described the past nights as “from hell,” marked by relentless Israeli bombardment, including quadcopter fire, tank shelling, Apache helicopter strikes and fire, and the detonation of booby-trapped robots.
Three weeks ago, Hamas agreed to a proposal by Qatari and Egyptian mediators for a 60-day ceasefire, which according to Qatar would see the release of half of the remaining captives in Gaza.
But Netanyahu has apparently rejected this, saying he had instructed negotiations to begin only for the release of all remaining captives and an end to the war in Gaza on terms “acceptable to Israel”.
Once the temporary ceasefire begins, the proposal is for Hamas and Israel to begin negotiations on a permanent ceasefire that would include the return of the remaining captives.
However, mediators have been waiting for days for an official Israeli response to their latest ceasefire proposal.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) estimated that 90 percent of Gaza’s residents have been displaced, warning that shelters are deteriorating and any further displacement will worsen the catastrophic situation.
The Palestinian Ministry of Interior denounced Israel’s push to seize Gaza City as a “death sentence” for the more than one million people living there.
C. QNN
