JerusalemIsrael declared on Saturday that it is getting ready to relocate Palestinians from areas of conflict to southern Gaza as part of its preparations for a military offensive in some of the most densely populated parts of the region.
Tent supplies to Gaza will start on Sunday, according to COGAT, the Israeli military organization in charge of providing humanitarian help to the area. Defense Minister Israel Katz stated on social media that we are currently at the stage of discussions to finalize the plan to defeat Hamas in Gaza, but the military claimed it had no comment on when the mass Palestinian movement would start.
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In the meantime, worried relatives of Israeli hostages demanded a national day of stoppage in Israel on Sunday in an effort to voice their mounting dissatisfaction about the conflict’s 22-month duration.
Hostage families worry that the upcoming offensive puts the 50 captives who are still in Gaza—of whom only 20 are believed to be alive—in much greater danger. The recent revelation of footage depicting malnourished detainees speaking under pressure and begging for food and assistance appalled them and other Israelis.
Families and supporters have put pressure on the government to reach an agreement to end the war; in recent weeks, some former Israeli army and intelligence officers have also made this demand.
Israelis were invited into the streets on Sunday by a group that represents the families. According to a statement, hundreds of citizen-led projects nationwide would stop their regular activities to support the most moral and right cause: the fight to free all 50 hostages.
Dana Silberman Sitton, the sister of Shiri Bibas and the aunt of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who were killed in captivity, stated, “I want to believe that there is hope, and it will not come from above, it will come only from us.”
She and Pushpa Joshi, the sister of Nepalese hostage Bipin Joshi, a student taken from a kibbutz, spoke at a weekly rally in Tel Aviv.
My best friend is missed. “Pushpa said.”
A baby girl and her parents are killed in an airstrike.
A baby girl and her parents were murdered in an Israeli bombing in Gaza on Saturday, according to witnesses and officials at Nasser Hospital. In the congested Muwasi region, Motasem al-Batta, his wife, and the girl were slaughtered in their tent.
What has she done in the past two and a half months? As temperatures in the devastated area rose over 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), neighbor Fathi Shubeir inquired, perspiring. They are citizens in a zone that has been declared secure.
Without further information, Israel’s military said it was unable to comment on the strike. It claimed to be taking efforts to protect people and eliminating Hamas’ military capabilities.
Along with Gaza City and the central camps—presumably a reference to the densely inhabited Nuseirat and Bureij camps in central Gaza—Muwasi is one of the densely populated districts of Gaza where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that Israel intends to expand the upcoming military attack.
Israel might be using the threat to coerce Hamas into releasing further prisoners that were abducted during the war-starting Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
In other news, a representative at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital reported that it had received the bodies of four shelling victims and six victims murdered in the northern Gazan neighborhood of Zikim.
11 more malnutrition-related fatalities
The territory’s Health Ministry reported on Saturday that 11 more deaths in Gaza were caused by malnutrition in the last 24 hours, including one child. This raises the number of wartime deaths from hunger to 251.
Levels of malnutrition and starvation in Gaza are at their highest since the start of the conflict, the UN warns. As illnesses grow, Palestinians are drinking tainted water, and some Israeli officials are still publicly discussing the large-scale exodus from Gaza.
After being sent from Gaza to Italy for treatment, a 20-year-old Palestinian woman who was characterized as being in a state of extreme bodily deterioration passed away on Friday, the hospital announced on Saturday.
With Israeli restrictions and pressure from hungry Palestinian crowds, the U.N. and its partners say it is still very difficult to bring food and other supplies into the territory of more than 2 million people and then on to distribution stations.
Between May 27 and Wednesday, at least 1,760 individuals were killed while trying to get relief, according to the U.N. human rights office. It claims that 766 people were killed along supply convoy routes and 994 people were killed near non-UN-militarized areas. This is a reference to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been the main distributor of aid in Gaza since May and is supported by both the United States and Israel.
The United States suspends guest permits for Gazans.
The U.S. State Department announced on Saturday that all visiting visas for citizens of Gaza will be suspended while an investigation into the issuance of a limited number of short-term medical-humanitarian visas in recent days is conducted.
In 2023, an attack led by Hamas killed almost 1,200 people in Israel. The Health Ministry reports that Israel’s retaliatory attack has killed 61,897 individuals in Gaza, with about half of those dead being women and children. The ministry does not disclose how many of the deaths were militants or civilians.
The ministry employs medical experts and is a part of the Hamas-run government. It is regarded as the most trustworthy source of casualties by the U.N. and independent experts. Israel denies its numbers but hasn’t offered any of its own.
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Bassem Mroue, a writer for the Associated Press in Beirut, contributed.
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Visit https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war to follow AP’s coverage of the conflict.
