Israel sends troops into Gaza as Arab nations condemn bombardment

As Arab indignation over Israel’s ceaseless bombardment of the beleaguered Palestinian enclave grew, Israeli ground forces launched a major raid into Gaza overnight against Hamas targets.

While the United States and other nations pushed Israel to postpone such action out of concern that it could spark wars on other Middle East fronts, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that Israeli troops were still getting ready for a complete ground invasion.

In light of the acute need for food, water, shelter, and medical attention in the Hamas-ruled region, the U.N. organisation that is assisting Palestinian people in Gaza warned that it would have to cease operations very soon if fuel is not delivered.

After Hamas attacked Israeli communities on October 7, Israel pounded the heavily populated Gaza Strip for almost three weeks. Israel claims that over 200 individuals have been kidnapped and 1,400 people slain by Hamas.

2,913 children were among the 7,028 Palestinians who died as a result of the retaliatory airstrikes, according to the health ministry in Gaza on Thursday.

The Palestinian casualty estimates were questioned by US President Joe Biden on Wednesday, as an Israeli military official stated they could not be relied upon.

The military has not released any evaluation of its own, and Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, dismissed any claims that cast doubt on the numbers.

The names and ID numbers of all the victims who have been identified are listed in a document that the government released on Thursday.

Israeli army radio said the military had overnight staged its biggest incursion into northern Gaza of the current war. Armoured vehicles crossed the fortified border and blew up buildings, a military video showed.

“Tanks and infantry struck numerous terrorist cells, infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch posts,” it said.

Palestinians said Israeli air strikes pounded the territory again overnight and people in central Gaza reported intensive tank shelling all night.

The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia denounced what they called the targeting of civilians and breaches of international law, with no signs of a slowdown in Gaza.

According to their joint statement, Israel’s right to self-defense does not excuse breaching the law or ignoring the rights of the Palestinian people. The collective punishment and forcible relocation of Palestinians in Gaza were denounced by the Arab ministers.

Along with criticising Israel’s occupation of Palestinian regions, they demanded further efforts to realise the long-awaited goal of long-term peacemaking: a two-state solution to the conflict that has lasted for decades.

“The absence of a political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has led to repeated acts of violence and suffering for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples and the peoples of the region,” it said.

Governments in Europe supported Israel.

Olaf Scholz, the chancellor of Germany, stated that Friday’s EU summit in Brussels will convey a strong message of support for Israel.

“We can be certain that the Israeli army will respect the rules that arise from international law in everything it does,” Scholz said.

However, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo cautioned Israel against starving Gaza in remarks that revealed divides within the alliance.

He claimed that Israel had the right to respond and stop such attacks in the future.

“But that is never an excuse for blocking a whole region, for blocking humanitarian aid. It cannot be an excuse to starve a population.”

The fate of the more than 200 hostages that Hamas took during the attack on October 7 and sent to Gaza also became a source of concern.

About fifty prisoners had died in Gaza as a result of Israeli strikes, according to a spokesman for the armed branch of Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, on Thursday. He did not provide any more information, and Reuters was unable to confirm the figures.

Any Israeli ground attack is complicated by the presence of the 224 hostages, according to Israel. Several people with foreign passports are included in this. Since Friday, Hamas has released four prisoners.

According to a Qatari negotiator who spoke with Sky News, more hostages may be freed in the next few days if the fighting stops.

Qatari Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Mohammed Al Khulaifi said: “It’s a very, very difficult negotiation … With the bombing continuing every day, our task becomes more difficult. But despite that we remain hopeful.”

In Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, an Israeli air strike hit a house, killing a mother, her three daughters and a baby boy, whose father held his body in hospital.

“Did he kill? Did he wound someone? Did he capture someone? They were innocent children inside their house,” he said.

The director of the Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, Nahed Abu Taaema, said the bodies of 77 people killed in airstrikes had been brought in overnight, most of them women and children, Hamas’s Al-Aqsa radio station reported.

Around midday on Thursday, Nasser hospital officials said, Israel bombed an area not far from an UNRWA shelter for displaced people, killing at least 18 people.

Israel said its forces had struck a Hamas missile launch post in the Khan Younis area that was next to a mosque and kindergarten. It was unclear whether the two sides were referring to the same incident.

Many Palestinians are sheltering in Khan Younis hospitals, schools, homes and refugee camps and on the street after Israel warned them to leave their homes in the north.

Fuel is desperately needed, according to UNRWA, the UN organisation for Palestinian refugees, in order to continue life-saving humanitarian activities in Gaza. Israel has resisted allowing aid shipments to contain fuel, claiming that Hamas might grab it.

Over 613,000 war-displaced persons are taking refuge at 150 UNRWA locations throughout the devastated region.

At the UN, world powers were unable to come to a consensus on how to request a pause in hostilities so that substantial quantities of humanitarian relief could be sent, despite the dire shortage of supplies.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, speaking at the U.N., said that if Israel’s offensive against Hamas did not stop, the United States will “not be spared from this fire.”

(With agency inputs)