Israel bombs south Gaza having declared it a ‘safe zone’ for displaced people

Palestinian Territories — AFP

Israel bombed southern Gaza’s main city on Monday after Hamas warned no Israeli prisoners would leave the territory alive unless its demands for the release of Palestinian prisoners were met.

Israel has killed nearly 18,000 people — mostly women and children — in a deadly military offensive in Gaza since October 7 after an attack by Hamas.

Israeli strikes on Monday battered the main southern city of Khan Yunis, killing dozens of civilians.

Hamas on Sunday warned that Israel would not receive “their prisoners alive without an exchange and negotiation and meeting the demands of the resistance”.

Israel continues its relentless airstrikes claiming there are still 137 prisoners in Gaza. There are more than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, many of them children. Several have been arrested under the controversial “administrative detention” policy, without charge or trial.

The intense bombardment has left Gaza’s health system on the brink of collapse, with most hospitals no longer functioning and nearly two million people displaced.

A team of journalists visited the bombed-out ruins of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and found at least 30,000 desperate, shelter-less people taking refuge amid the rubble after Israeli forces had raided the medical facility last month.

“Our life has become a living hell, there’s no electricity, no water, no flour, no bread, no medicine for the children who are all sick,” said Mohammed Daloul, 38, who fled there with his wife and three children.

– ‘Collapsing’ health system –

The UN estimates 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced from their homes — roughly half of them children.

Israel had initially ordered people to evacuate to the south, but after expanding the war to the south, there are no safe places for civilians to go.

Humanitarian organizations continue to press Israel for protection of civilians, but their pleas have been dismissed.

Mapping software deployed by Israel’s army to ostensibly “try to reduce non-combatant deaths” was rejected as utterly futile by Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories.

“A unilateral declaration by an occupying power that patches of land where there is no infrastructure, food, water, health care, or hygiene are ‘safe zones’ does not mean they are safe,” she said.

Only 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning at any capacity, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA.