Israeli army intensifies Gaza attacks amid visit from top US official

The Israeli military intensified its attacks across Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians in the central part of the besieged enclave. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan traveled to Israel for talks with senior officials at the same time.

Sullivan is expected to press Israeli leaders on Sunday to take a more targeted approach to Israel’s offensive on Gaza and avoid a broader attack on the southern city of Rafah.

He met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and is also expected to hold talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has pledged to press ahead with the Rafah attack despite warnings from the United States.

Nearly 800,000 Palestinians have been displaced from Rafah since Israel launched an attack on the city last week, according to the United Nations, drawing condemnation from UN officials as well as human rights groups.

The Israeli government insists that a military operation there is necessary to destroy the last stronghold of the Palestinian Hamas movement.

The Israeli military carried out intense air and ground attacks across the Palestinian territories, with air strikes killing at least 31 people on Sunday in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Hani Mahmoud said from the site of the attack that a residential house was destroyed while surrounding buildings suffered “severe damage” and were rendered uninhabitable.

Mahmoud said that the building housed five families who initially fled violence in northern Gaza and then were forced to evacuate from Rafah after Israel expanded its military operations there. He added: “They fled to Nuseirat to be killed.

Residents said that Israeli forces also entered the narrow alleys of Jabalia in northern Gaza during the night and into Sunday, returning to an area they said they had cleared earlier in the conflict.

The Gaza Civil Emergency Service said in a statement that rescue teams have so far recovered the bodies of 150 Palestinians killed by the Israeli army in recent days and that 300 homes were hit by Israeli air and ground fire.

Open those crossings:

Sullivan’sSullivan’s trip to Israel — the latest by a senior US official since the war broke out in early October — comes as President Joe Biden has faced widespread criticism domestically for his steadfast support for Israel amid the Gaza war.

Although it said it did not agree to a large-scale operation in Rafah, the Biden administration continued to provide military and diplomatic support to Israel. Last week, Washington announced plans to provide additional military aid worth $1 billion to the United States’s most significant ally.

Israel already receives at least $3.8 billion in US military aid annually, and human rights advocates have urged the Biden administration to curb its support as the death toll in Gaza continues to rise.

More than 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli attacks so far.

The humanitarian situation in the Strip has also worsened since Israel took control of the Rafah land crossing with Egypt and closed it earlier this month.

Desperate Palestinians were filmed climbing onto aid trucks carrying supplies delivered via a newly constructed floating dock by the US.

The dock has been criticized as a complicated and expensive alternative to what humanitarian groups say is a much more convenient and more straightforward solution: for Israel to open land crossings into Gaza to allow aid trucks to deliver supplies.

The message from all humanitarian agencies is, ”Open those crossings”—it’s that simple,” UN Humanitarian Coordinator Martin Griffiths said in an interview on Sunday.

We are stuck in the south regarding our operations because we have no fuel, and trucks are not passing because the crossings are closed, so we have little to offer the people of Gaza,” Griffiths said.

Pressure on Netanyahu

Meanwhile, Netanyahu vowed to continue fighting Hamas until the group’s military capacity was destroyed.

But the Israeli prime minister has failed to deliver a post-war plan for Gaza and repatriate more than 100 prisoners still held in the Strip — and he faces mounting political pressure inside Israel.

 Israelis demonstrated in cities across the country, war cabinet member and former defence minister Benny Gantz threatened to resign from the government if Netanyahu failed to present a clear six-point vision once the conflict ends.

Gantz’s warning represents one of the most potent public displays of growing discord within the war cabinet.

It also came just days after Defense Minister Yoav Galant said Israel should not be involved in governing Gaza once the fighting is over — a statement that contradicts Netanyahu’sNetanyahu’s previous statements about the need to maintain Israeli control over the Strip.