By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Emily Rose
CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel’s military pounded Gaza City on Wednesday prior to a planned takeover, with another 123 people killed in the last day according to the Gaza health ministry, while militant group Hamas held further talks with Egyptian mediators.
The 24-hour death toll was the worst in a week and added to the massive fatalities from the nearly two-year war that has shattered the enclave housing more than 2 million Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated an idea – also enthusiastically floated by U.S. President Donald Trump – that Palestinians should simply leave.
“They’re not being pushed out, they’ll be allowed to exit,” he told Israeli television channel i24NEWS. “All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their gates and stop lecturing us.”
Arabs and many world leaders are aghast at the idea of displacing the Gaza population, which Palestinians say would be like another “Nakba” (catastrophe) when hundreds of thousands fled or were forced out during a 1948 war.
Israel’s planned re-seizure of Gaza City – which it took in the early days of the war before withdrawing – is probably weeks away, officials say. That means a ceasefire is still possible though talks have been floundering and conflict still rages.
Israeli planes and tanks bombed eastern areas of Gaza City heavily, residents said, with many homes destroyed in the Zeitoun and Shejaia neighbourhoods overnight. Al-Ahli hospital said 12 people were killed in an airstrike on a home in Zeitoun.
Tanks also destroyed several houses in the east of Khan Younis in south Gaza too, while in the centre Israeli gunfire killed nine aid-seekers in two separate incidents, Palestinian medics said. Israel’s military did not comment.
Eight more people, including three children, have died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the territory’s health ministry said. That took the total to 235, including 106 children, since the war began.
Israel disputes those malnutrition and hunger figures reported by the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave.
Hamas chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya’s meetings with Egyptian officials in Cairo on Wednesday were to focus on stopping the war, delivering aid and “ending the suffering of our people in Gaza,” Hamas official Taher al-Nono said in a statement.
CEASEFIRE POSSIBILITIES
Egyptian security sources said the talks would also discuss the possibility of a comprehensive ceasefire that would see Hamas relinquish governance in Gaza and concede its weapons.
A Hamas official told Reuters the group was open to all ideas if Israel ends the war and pulls out. However, “Laying down arms before the occupation is dismissed is impossible,” the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.
Netanyahu’s plan to expand military control over Gaza, which Israeli sources said could be launched in October, has heightened global outcry over the widespread devastation, displacement and hunger in the enclave.
Twenty-four nations this week decried the “unimaginable levels” of suffering and urged Israel to allow unrestricted aid.
Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid and says it has taken steps to increase supplies, including daily combat pauses in some areas and protected routes for convoys.
The Israeli military on Wednesday said that nearly 320 trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings and that a further nearly 320 trucks were collected and distributed by the U.N. and international organizations in the past 24 hours along with three tankers of fuel and 97 pallets of air-dropped aid.
But the U.N. and Palestinians say aid remains far from sufficient.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures. Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza since then has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
Arab states and much of the international community want post-war Gaza to be governed by the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited governance in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The authority’s foreign minister, Varsen Aghabekian Shahin, told reporters it was ready to assume full responsibility in Gaza. Hamas would have no role and be required to hand over arms, she added, calling for an international peacekeeping force and withdrawal by Israel.
Hamas says it is ready to quit Gaza governance for a non-partisan technocratic entity agreed by all Palestinian parties.
Israel says it does not trust the PA to rule Gaza.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Emily Rose in Jerusalem. Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Ramallah; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
