Israeli Strikes, One on a School Building Turned Shelter, Kill More Than 20 (2024)

The Israeli military said it targeted militants operating in a shelter that had been a U.N. school.

It was the sixth site that had been a U.N.-run educational institution in Gaza to be hit in just 10 days, according to UNRWA, the agency for assisting Palestinian refugees. Last Tuesday, at least 27 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike near the entrance to a U.N. school used as a shelter on the outskirts of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

Roughly 17 people were killed on Tuesday in a separate Israeli strike in Mawasi, a coastal area that Israel has designated a safer zone, the Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement. Those figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants and could not be independently verified.

In a statement, the Israeli military said its aircraft had struck an Islamic Jihad commander in Khan Younis. It added that it was looking into reports that civilians had been wounded in the strike.

Since Oct. 7, Israeli aircraft have struck 37,000 targets in Gaza, laying waste to wide swaths of the enclave’s cities and towns, the military said on Tuesday. More than 38,000 people have been killed in the enclave during the Israeli military campaign against Hamas, now in its 10th month, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

In a separate statement on Tuesday, the Israeli military said that since the war began, roughly half of the leadership of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, has been “eliminated,” and about “14,000 terrorists eliminated or apprehended.”

It did not say how it arrived at that figure, or how it determined who was a terrorist. Hamas was estimated to have about 30,000 fighters before the war, but critics have accused Israel of labeling any adolescent or adult male killed in Gaza as a Hamas member.

Over the weekend, Israeli forces bombarded an area of Mawasi with heavy munitions in an attempt to kill Mohammed Deif, the Qassam leader. Scores of Gazans were killed in the attack, but Mr. Deif’s fate remained unclear.

Last week, Israeli negotiators led by the country’s Mossad intelligence chief traveled to Qatar for meetings with mediators on a possible cease-fire. But hopes for a deal — which would also see the release of the remaining 120 living and dead Israeli hostages held in Gaza — have since dimmed.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel emphasized that he would adhere to Israel’s demands, despite growing international calls for an immediate truce. He said the Israeli offensive was continuing to push Hamas to make more concessions.

“Hamas is feeling the pressure,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “They are feeling it because we are striking them, eliminating their senior commanders and thousands of terrorists.”

Nader Ibrahim contributed reporting.

The Israeli military says it will start drafting ultra-Orthodox students who have been exempt, and other news.

Hamas’s leader in Gaza is facing pressure to end the war, the C.I.A. director says.

Administration officials have expressed some optimism that a deal can be reached. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said in a recent interview that he saw a path forward for the talks.

Mr. Burns, whose comments were first reported by CNN, has led the American team in negotiations to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of hostages held by Hamas. Both Israel and Hamas have agreed to a framework deal that was hammered out by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

But U.S. officials do not believe that there will be any final agreement on the deal until after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel visits Washington next week.

Administration officials have said that Hamas has agreed to yield control of Gaza to an independent group. But other American officials are skeptical about whether Hamas’s willingness to cede power is permanent.

Surge in violence by West Bank settlers draws ire of Israel’s allies.

The West Bank is home to about 2.7 million Palestinians and more than 500,000 settlers. Israel seized control of the territory from Jordan in 1967 during a war with three Arab states, and Israelis have since settled there with both tacit and explicit government approval, though the international community largely considers settlements illegal, and many outposts also violate Israeli law. Settlers are governed by Israeli civil law while their Palestinian neighbors are subject to Israeli military law.

Palestinians have long argued that the settlements are a creeping annexation that turns land needed for any future independent Palestinian state into an unmanageable patchwork. But the war with Hamas in Gaza has given Israel’s right-wing government, intent on West Bank expansion, a way to bolster settlers who oppose the creation of a Palestinian state under the guise of providing added security amid heightened tensions, some rights groups say.

The army has shut down “so many roads” in the West Bank that thousands of acres of land have become off limits to Palestinians, Hagit Ofran of Peace Now’s “Settlement Watch” project said in a phone interview. The military erects gates in the name of security, but the result is that it shuts off Palestinians’ access to large areas they rely on, she added, and that ultimately advances settlers’ aims.

Notably, there are also more Israeli troops stationed in the area than before the war. “In every settlement, you now have reserve soldiers who are settlers and who take extremist measures against Palestinians,” Ms. Ofran said. “Settler soldiers are actually an armed militia.”

Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, is a settler himself and responsible for extremist policies meant to expand Israel’s hold over the West Bank. Mr. Smotrich is taking away much of the military’s authority there and instead putting settlers in charge of civil administration, effectively taking control, Ms. Ofran noted. In a secretly recorded speech on June 9, Mr. Smotrich outlined this carefully orchestrated program to take authority over the West Bank out of the hands of the Israeli military and turn it over to civilians working for him while deflecting international scrutiny.

From the perspective of some in the Israeli military, settler violence is a threat to Israel’s security. Retired Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, former chief of Israel’s Central Command, which oversees the West Bank, rebuked the Israeli government’s policies in the area and condemned the rising tide of “nationalist crime” in his departure speech last week.

But as the military’s presence in the West Bank has increased since Oct. 7, so have violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops meant to maintain order there, further escalating tensions in the already fraught region.

Israeli forces shot a man dead in the West Bank on Tuesday during clashes in Al Bireh, according to Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Israel’s military said on social media on Tuesday that it was chasing people who fired on a car with Israeli civilians inside in Ramin, a village in the northeast of the West Bank, adding that the civilians had been lightly injured in the attack and had been evacuated for treatment. It gave no further details.

Israeli forces have killed more than 530 West Bank Palestinians since the war in Gaza began, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which tracks West Bank violence on a weekly basis. In its latest update, the agency said that the Israeli military on July 9 killed a 13-year old Palestinian boy in Deir Abu Mash’al village near Ramallah and injured three other boys.

The Israeli military, in response to a query about the incident, said in a statement that since Oct. 7, there had been “a significant increase” in attempted terrorist attacks in the West Bank and nearby area — more than 2,000 in total — and that it is “actively conducting operations” to prevent terrorism. The military confirmed the U.N. report of violence on July 9, but not a death or the involvement of any children in the confrontation, stating that “masked terrorists hurled rocks” at Israeli military vehicles and a “soldier in the area responded with live fire, hitting one of the terrorists.”

Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.

Civilian casualties in Gaza remain unacceptably high, the State Department says.

The Health Ministry in Gaza says that more than 38,000 people have died in the territory since Oct. 7, when Hamas led an attack on Israel in which around 1,200 people were killed, according to the Israeli authorities. The ministry’s count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. On Tuesday, it reported dozens of deaths in the previous 24 hours.

The U.S. government has repeatedly criticized Mr. Netanyahu’s administration over civilian casualties in Gaza, but critics of President Biden have said that Washington undermines that message by continuing to supply Israel with weapons for use in the conflict.

The Israeli military argues that it does all it can to spare civilians but that it is fighting an adversary that hides within the civilian population and sets up military bases in densely populated areas.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said that 90 people were killed on Saturday, half of them women and children, and that 300 other people were wounded when Israel conducted a major airstrike in southern Gaza targeting a top Hamas military commander, Muhammad Deif, who is considered one of the architects of the Oct. 7 attack.

The secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, called on Monday for a cease-fire, saying said that the “extreme level of fighting and devastation in Gaza is incomprehensible and inexcusable.”

“Nowhere is safe,” he said. “Everywhere is a potential killing zone.”

A U.N. school turned shelter is hit as Israeli airstrikes kill more than 20 in the Gaza Strip.

It was the sixth former U.N. school facility to be hit in 10 days, according to the main United Nations agency aiding Palestinian refugees in the area, UNRWA. Last Tuesday, at least 27 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike near the entrance to a school turned shelter on the outskirts of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, according to the local health authorities.

About 17 people were killed in a separate Israeli strike on Tuesday in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area west of Khan Younis that the Israeli military has designated as a “safer” zone, the Gazan Health Ministry said. The Israeli military said that its aircraft had been targeting an Islamic Jihad commander in Khan Younis, but did not say whether the strike had landed in the designated zone. It said it was looking into reports that civilians had been wounded in the strike.

In a statement, Hamas condemned the two Israeli attacks, and called the United States “a partner” in them because of its support of Israel.

Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Israeli aircraft have struck 37,000 targets in Gaza, the military said on Tuesday, offering an accounting of the strikes that have laid waste to wide swaths of the enclave. More than 38,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the Israeli military campaign, which is now in its 10th month, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.

In a statement, the Israeli military said that since the war began, it has killed about half of the leadership of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades. In all, some 14,000 militants have been killed or captured, it said. The claims could not be independently confirmed.

Critics have accused Israel of labeling any adolescent or adult male killed in Gaza as a Hamas member.

Over the weekend, Israeli forces bombarded an area of Al-Mawasi with heavy munitions in an attempt to kill the Qassam leader, Mohammed Deif. Scores of Gazans were killed in the attack, but Mr. Deif’s fate remained unclear.

In a meeting with two top Israeli officials on Monday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken expressed “serious concerns” about the civilian death toll in Gaza, according to a State Department spokesman.

“We have seen civilian casualties come down from the high points of the conflict,” the spokesman, Matthew Miller, said. “But they still remain unacceptably high. We continue to see far too many civilians killed in this conflict.”

Critics of the Biden administration have said it undermines such statements of concern by continuing to supply Israel with weapons.

Last week, Israeli negotiators led by the chief of Mossad, the intelligence agency, traveled to Qatar for meetings on a possible cease-fire. Both Israel and Hamas have agreed to a framework hammered out by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

But American officials say they do not believe that a final deal will be reached until after Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visits Washington next week. Mr. Netanyahu said on Tuesday that he would not agree to any deal that did not require Hamas to cede control of Gaza.

“Hamas is feeling the pressure,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “They are feeling it because we are striking them, eliminating their senior commanders and thousands of terrorists.”

The C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, said in a closed-door gathering on Saturday that Hamas’s top leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was under increased pressure from his military commanders to agree to a cease-fire and to the release of hostages seized on Oct. 7, according to a person briefed on his remarks.

Mr. Burns said the internal pressure on Mr. Sinwar had been building for the past two weeks, as Hamas commanders and ordinary Palestinians tire of the war. Mr. Sinwar is believed to be hiding in tunnels under Khan Younis.

The C.I.A. declined to discuss Mr. Burns’s comments, which were previously reported by CNN and were made at an annual conference of business leaders held in Sun Valley, Idaho, by Allen & Company, an investment bank.

This week, Israel also carried out what appeared to be a drone attack in Syria, near the border with Lebanon, that killed a businessman who had helped finance Syrian militant groups, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor. The businessman, Baraa’ al-Qaterjy, was driving between Beirut and Damascus when his vehicle was hit, the observatory said.

Nader Ibrahim contributed reporting.