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Israel’s military said early Friday that it had launched another offensive in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, in an attack involving ground troops, fighter jets, helicopter gunships and paratroopers, after ordering thousands of Palestinians to flee the area.
The attack was the latest in which Israeli forces have returned to devastated cities and neighborhoods where they fought Hamas for months, saying that militants had managed to regroup there. Israel is still struggling to achieve one of its main war aims: wiping out Hamas, which planned and led the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel that set off the war in Gaza.
Hours earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he would send negotiators next week to what President Biden and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar said would be the presentation of a “final” cease-fire proposal.
“The time has come” for an agreement, the leaders said in a joint statement, the latest push for peace talks amid concerns that the conflict will engulf more of the region.
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Before the attack, the Israeli military ordered thousands of Palestinians to leave the area, again displacing people who have repeatedly moved across the 140-square-mile territory in search of elusive safety, with no end to the war in sight.
Photos and videos from Gaza on Thursday showed streams of people trudging through piles of rubble, carrying bedding and bags, to leave the evacuation areas in anticipation of the attack.
The Israeli military said its coordinated attack had struck “more than 30 terrorist targets” and that it had killed several militants. Israel said it had ordered the evacuation to protect the safety of civilians living in the areas, from which some rockets had been fired at Israeli territory.
It is at least the third time that Israeli soldiers have launched a major operation around Khan Younis. The Israeli military withdrew in April after fighting there for about four months, destroying large swaths of the city. Some residents went home and began laboriously clearing rubble from the streets — only to flee again in the face of the new operations.
Elsewhere in Gaza, at least 16 people were killed in airstrikes on Thursday on two school complexes in the northern part of the enclave. Schools in Gaza have been closed since the war began 10 months ago, but displaced people have crowded into the buildings, seeking safety.
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Israel’s military said that the strikes had been intended to destroy Hamas “command-and-control centers” inside the compounds and that measures had been taken to protect civilians. Israeli officials have blamed Hamas for hiding among displaced people, while rights groups have said Israel must do more to protect civilians.
Earlier in the week, the United Nations Human Rights Office expressed “horror” over what it called an “escalating pattern” of attacks in the past month on schools turned into shelters.
Key Developments
A Hamas official responsible for security at a large Palestinian refugee camp was killed in an Israeli strike on Friday in the Lebanese coastal city of Sidon, south of Beirut, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency. The official was identified as Samer al-Hajj, who oversaw Hamas security forces in the Ein al-Hilweh camp. Two civilians were also injured in the strike, the news agency reported. The Israeli military claimed responsibility for the strike, calling Mr. al-Hajj a Hamas “commander” who was “responsible for promoting and executing terrorist plans and launches from Lebanon into Israeli territory.” Hamas did not comment on the reports.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry accused Israel on Friday of being responsible for repeated attacks on ambulance crews in southern Lebanon. The statement came after an Israeli strike on an ambulance in the Lebanese town of Mays al-Jabal on Friday that injured a health worker, the ministry said. The Israeli military said its artillery did hit targets in Mays al-Jabal on Friday after rocket launches toward Israel originated there, although the military did not say if an ambulance had been hit. At least 21 health workers have been killed in Lebanon over the last 10 months in the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah, according to the United Nations.
The volume of aid being brought from working border crossings into Gaza has fallen by more than half since early May, when the Rafah crossing was closed, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Friday. For months, aid groups have said they cannot distribute needed food and supplies because of the chaos and anarchy in Gaza, part of the domino effect of the Israeli military campaign in the enclave, which has toppled much of the Hamas government without any civilian administration to take its place.
Israeli and American military officials continued to coordinate ahead of the highly anticipated Iranian retaliation for the assassination of two Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. On Friday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin and Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, spoke for at least the sixth time since the latest escalation began last month. The day before, Michael Kurilla, the U.S. general who oversees Central Command — which includes the Middle East — arrived in Israel for his second visit in less than a week.
Houthi militia targeted a Liberian-flagged oil tanker in the Bab el Mandab strait with four attempted attacks, United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which tracks commercial ship activities, said on Friday. The attacks on Thursday involved attempted drone strikes and rocket strikes from small manned vessels. Armed security personnel on the ship shot at one of the drones aimed at them, causing it to explode at a distance from the vessel. No injuries or damage was reported in any of the attacks. The Iran-backed Houthis have been targeting commercial ships in allegiance with Hamas fighters in Gaza since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 set off the war in Gaza.
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Tens of thousands of Palestinians in southern Gaza are fleeing homes and shelters once again, according to the United Nations, many for a third time or more, after the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of a large part of the city of Khan Younis and launched a renewed attack.
Between 60,000 and 70,000 had fled by 7 p.m. Thursday, according to UNRWA, the United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees. More continued to flee into the night and into Friday.
“The situation is very difficult,” Yafa Abu Aker, a resident of Khan Younis and an independent journalist, told The New York Times in a text message. “People are sleeping in the streets. Children and women are on the ground without mattresses.”
Under a blazing sun, women carrying babies and blankets, men pushing carts and wheelchairs over the sandy road and young children carrying suitcases and backpacks have walked away from homes and shelters and toward unknown destinations. Some were in tears.
“Death is better,” an older woman said on Thursday in video footage from the Reuters news agency. “We’re fed up. We’ve already died. We’re dead.”
The Israeli military has said its 10-month war in Gaza — which has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gazan Health Ministry, and has destroyed large swathes of the territory — is aimed at destroying Hamas after the Palestinian armed group led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The Israeli military said it had launched an offensive on parts of Khan Younis as Hamas tried to regroup, and it again ordered an evacuation on Thursday as it began its offensive.
Israel has already carried out multiple ground invasions into Khan Younis, leaving large parts of the city — once a lush area where many residents lived off the fruits and vegetables they grew — unrecognizable to its residents.
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Much of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million have been on the run throughout the war, chased from neighborhood to neighborhood and city to city by Israel’s ever-changing military offensives. With the borders closed, most Gazans can’t leave the enclave.
“This is the 14th time we are displaced since the beginning of the war,” Rami Zaki Al-Qara, 42, and a father of four, told The Times by voice message.
Mr. Al-Qara said that packing up his extended family of 40 people over and over to find safety was exhausting and draining him of hope.
“During each displacement, we wish for death at every moment because there is no life in constantly having to take the tent and move it from place to place,” he said.
Mr. Al-Qara and his family have had to leave behind more belongings with each displacement. Finding transportation has become more difficult as the war drags on, so they often leave with only the things they can carry. Sometimes they’ve had to flee under Israeli bombardment, forcing them to abandon items like clothing and pots and pans.
Mr. Al-Qara says he knows that this displacement most likely won’t be the last.
“Based on what we have witnessed, the Israeli are liars,” he said, noting that even the places designated as safe by Israel often come under attack.
The United Nations and other rights organizations have criticized Israel for attacking areas that its own military has designated as safe. Israel argues that Hamas hides among civilians in the territory, using them as shields in populated areas.
Mr. Al-Qara sees only the thousands of people without homes who are forced to wander from one destroyed area to another.
“They cause hundreds of thousands of people to be displaced,” he said of Israel. “And, still, now we see the rocket as it falls and wish it would fall on us.”
— Raja Abdulrahim and Ameera Harouda reporting from Jerusalem and Doha, Qatar
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The United States, Egypt and Qatar have mounted a high-stakes effort to renew negotiations for a truce in Gaza next week, as fears rise of an escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran. But substantive disagreements persist that could torpedo a deal.
For days, Israel has tensely awaited retaliation for the assassination of top leaders from Hamas and Hezbollah, both groups backed by Iran. As fears grow of a regional conflict’s erupting, President Biden and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar called Thursday for more talks between Israel and Hamas to end the war in Gaza, saying they would be willing to present a “final bridging proposal” to both sides.
There is “no further time to waste,” the leaders said in a joint statement, a sign of the growing impatience over the stalled peace talks. Hours later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he would send negotiators to talks next Thursday, while Hamas has yet to respond to the offer.
There are risks to such a high-profile ultimatum. While the renewed urgency presented the opportunity for a breakthrough, substantial issues remained to be worked out, an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said.
And if the cease-fire talks falter at such a tense moment, that could substantially raise the chance of escalation, said Danny Citrinowicz, a retired Israeli intelligence officer and fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
Mr. Citrinowicz said the United States and its allies were probably seeking to limit the attack by Iran and Hezbollah by dangling the carrot of a potential truce in Gaza. After the retaliatory strikes, the Biden administration would then pressure Israel not to respond with overwhelming force, he said.
“They could then turn the page on this event and focus on the Aug. 15 meeting with the hope of putting something on the table that could bring all sides to an agreement,” he said. “That’s the hope — but will it work? There are a lot of variables.”
“If you build up hype around this event and it fails, the path to regional war becomes much shorter,” he added.
Iran might be interested in a path to de-escalation, but the killing of Fuad Shukr — one of Hezbollah’s most senior figures — has infuriated the Lebanese armed group, meaning its leaders would probably feel the need to launch an aggressive assault, Mr. Citrinowicz said.
The United States was moving military firepower into the Middle East, one senior Biden administration official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity to comply with protocol. A major attack on Israel would seriously jeopardize a potential cease-fire deal in Gaza and lead to serious consequences for Iran, he added.
At the same time, Mr. Netanyahu faces a difficult political calculation. His government relies on far-right political leaders who hope to rule Gaza indefinitely and build Israeli settlements there. They have generally ruled out a permanent truce with Hamas and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s hard-line finance minister, called the proposed cease-fire “surrender terms” on Friday, adding that it would mean that “all the blood we shed in this most just of wars was in vain.” He called on Mr. Netanyahu “not to fall into this trap.”
Israel and Hamas have been negotiating on and off for months on the basis of a three-stage cease-fire proposal backed by the Biden administration and the United Nations Security Council. Over the next week, officials will hold preparatory conversations in an attempt to minimize the gaps in advance of the summit, according to the Israeli official and the senior Biden administration official.
Sticking points between the two sides include the future control of the Gazan side of its border with Egypt and the identities and numbers of Palestinian prisoners to be freed in exchange for the remaining 115 hostages held in Gaza. Hamas and Israel have also been at an impasse over how Israeli forces will withdraw from key parts of Gaza and the transition from a short-term truce to a permanent cease-fire.
