Israel says it has begun ground offensive in Gaza City, moving in thousands of troops

Beirut – Israel began an offensive on the ground in the city of Gaza, military officials announced on Tuesday, in slow rotation in the besieged city from several directions despite the international opprobrium and even if hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents remain within the devastated limits of Gaza.

Weeks of intense bombing that almost equaled the largest urban center of the Gaza Strip have given way to the Israeli military officials said that the land maneuver phase was the operation to occupy the city.

“We are determined and offensive. We have defeated Hamas militarily wherever we fought them, and we will act until the Hamas rule is dismantled,” the Israeli military statement said.

Two divisions – including tens of thousands of soldiers – began to enter the city on Monday evening from its western flank, with two other divisions surrounding the city. Some 130,000 reservists are expected to be mobilized in the coming days, said the Israeli army.

“Gaza burns,” said Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, in an article on X. “We will not give in nor bring back until the mission is finished.”

Residents reported that the Israeli army had sent what they called “trapped robots” – armored personnel carriers filled with reused explosives as drones without pilot – in city districts. Military officials mentioned in the Israeli media say that the troops were cautious, awaiting some 2,000 Hamas fighters, launched in the city.

The operation continued despite the general conviction of European allies and accusations of Israel on an international scale that it committed a genocide, according to a report by the United Nations Commission published on Tuesday. Israel rejected the committee’s conclusions.

Germany, one of the largest supporters in Israel, has excited the decision to occupy Gaza City.

This is “the wrong path,” German Minister for Foreign Affairs said Johann Wadephul on Tuesday.

“We reject this and told this to the Israeli government,” Wadephul said. He urged the Israeli government to “return to the negotiations for a cease-fire and an agreement”.

Wadephul called on the Israeli government to return to the place “on the path of negotiations for a cease-fire and an agreement” on the release of captives held in Gaza.

In Israel, the decision to launch the offensive – taken by the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in August – continues to be a controversial affair that divided military leadership and stimulated demonstrations against Netanyahu. Tuesday morning, hostage families kidnapped by Hamas protested in front of the house of Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

Despite the coupling and rehearsal warnings that residents of around 1 million residents of the city of Gaza should flee south in so -called humanitarian areas, more than two thirds remain, according to Israeli military estimates.

“The escape is impossible for many. … The people left behind have been sentenced to death,” said Christoph Lockyear, secretary general of Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF, in a statement on Monday. He added that even those who survived the bombing during their trip to the south of Gaza “would find neither the security nor the bases they need to exist”.

Israeli soldiers work on their tanks and armored vehicles in a staging area at the border with the Gaza Strip, like the south of Israel on Tuesday.

(Leo Correa / Associated Press)

“What is happening in Gaza is not only a humanitarian disaster is the systematic destruction of a people. MSF is clear: Israel commits a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the fact with absolute impunity. ”

Many residents also say that they cannot afford to go to the Al-Mawasi camp, the area south of the enclave designated by the Israeli army as a safe area. Even if they did, overcrowding means that there is no shelter to find or even a space for tents; And Israeli strikes have struck security areas in the past.

Nevertheless, news emissions on the Place de la Côte south of Gaza City have shown a deluge of thousands of vehicles, many stretching in random -storing mattresses, plastic chairs, bags of clothing – all that people could save from their house before what should be the complete destruction of the city.

The enclave health authorities said 82 people had been killed and injured in the early hours of the offensive, and that the emergency rooms of the rare Gaza City hospitals were extremely congested and suffering from drug and blood shortages.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets the emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha, in Qatar.

(Nathan Howard / Associated Press)

While Israeli armor advanced in Gaza, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was traveling from Tel Aviv to Doha on Tuesday morning, where he hoped to appease the anger of Qatar on an Israeli strike on the Qatari capital targeting Hamas leaders last week.

In response to the strike, Qatar had threatened to suspend its long -standing mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel. At a summit of the Arab and Islamic states held in Doha on Monday, its leaders reprimanded Israel and demanded concrete punitive actions. (A collective statement from the summit announced nothing that the conviction.)

But Rubio said he hoped that the government would continue to do negotiations.

“If a country of the world can help with the Medier, Qatar is this,” he said.

He added that Hamas had a “very short time window in which an agreement can occur” and that the preference of the Trump administration was for a negotiated regulation.

The demonstrators of Jerusalem hold photos on Tuesday representing Israeli hostages which stand in the Gaza Strip.

(Mahmoud Ilan / Associated Press)

Hamas rejected its words in a statement on Tuesday, saying that Netanyahu “my totality of responsibility” for the life of the hostages, and that the United States has used a “deception policy” to cover Israeli “war crimes”.

Israel demands the return group on all hostages, disarm and disarm. Hamas insists on a ceasefire with negotiations which would lead to an exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and Israeli troops withdrawing from the Gaza Strip; Disarmament would occur when Israel accepts the creation of an independent Palestinian State.

The war sparked on October 7, 2023, when Hamas activists attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people – two -thirds of these civilians, say the Israeli totalities – and kidnapping 251 others.

Israel has retaliated with a complete offensive that has sprayed large expanses of the enclave and has so far killed more than 64,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians, according to health authorities and Gaza aid groups; The former Chief of the Israeli Army Staff said that in a recent interview, more than 200,000 people had been killed or injured – more than 10% of the population of 2.2 million Gaza, a figure that aligns the estimates of the Palestinian Ministry of Health.