Israel presses ground op as new agency approved for ‘voluntary departure’

GAZA STRIP

Israel's military pressed ground operations across the Gaza Strip on March 23, urging Palestinians to flee an offensive in Rafah city nearly a week into a renewed assault on the Hamas-ruled territory.

Military Spokesman Avichay Adraee said the army "launched an offensive to strike the terrorist organizations" in a district of the southern city of Rafah, already the target of a major Israeli offensive about a year ago.

Adraee called on Palestinians there to leave the "dangerous combat zone" and move further north.

Leaflets bearing the same message were dropped over Tal al-Sultan by drone.

Earlier, an Israeli strike on a tent encampment in Al-Mawasi, in southern Gaza's Khan Younis area, killed senior Hamas official Salah al-Bardawil and his wife.

Bardawil, a well-known Hamas figure, was a member of the movement's political bureau and the Palestinian Legislative Council, the Palestinian Authority's parliament which has not met since 2007.

Bardawil is the third member of Hamas's political bureau killed in Israeli strikes since last week.

Three municipal workers were also killed on March 23 in an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip, authorities said.

The three lost their lives in the strike that targeted their vehicle in the southern city of Khan Younis, the Abasan al-Kabira Municipality said in a statement.

Gaza's civil defence agency said on March 23 that Israeli air force jets struck a hospital in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Palestinian territory.

"The occupation's [Israel's] aircraft targeted with an air strike the emergency department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip," the agency said in a statement, without providing immediate details on casualties.

The Israeli military also announced on March 23 that it was conducting operations in Beit Hanun, in the north of the Gaza Strip.

Death toll tops 50,000

The Health Ministry in Gaza said at least 41 people have been confirmed killed and 61 wounded by Israeli attacks in the last 24 hours.

These casualties brought the total number of Palestinians killed since the war began 17 months ago to 50,021, with 113,274 wounded, said the ministry.

Numerous victims are still trapped under the wreckage where rescuers cannot reach them, it added.

The Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service said Israeli forces were preventing its ambulances from responding to strikes in Rafah and that several of its medics had been wounded.

"We are in the month of Ramadan, which is a blessed month, and people... find themselves obliged to come here," 19-year-old Iman al-Bardawil said, lamenting "the suffering" she saw around her.

The electricity supplied by Israel had fed Gaza's main water desalination plant, and the decision to cut power has aggravated already dire conditions for Gaza's 2.4 million people.

According to the Gaza health ministry, at least 637 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli assault since Tuesday.

The escalation in Gaza has coincided with waves of Israeli air strikes on Lebanon.

Israel's military on March 23 said it had "attacked and eliminated" a Hezbollah member "in the area of Aita al-Shaab," southern Lebanon.

The strike came a day after the most intense escalation since a November ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war. Lebanon's health ministry said seven people were killed on March 22.

Israel said it attacked in response to rocket fire, which Iran-backed Hezbollah — an ally of Hamas — denied responsibility for.

'Water as weapon'

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel on March 23 of using water as a “weapon of war” to displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

“The [Israeli] occupation used another weapon to increase suffering, displacement, and indeed the slow death of our people, by halting all basic services, especially water, and preventing access to humanitarian aid in flagrant contravention of international human rights conventions and international resolutions,” Abbas said in a speech marking World Water Day.

Abbas called on the international community to take "practical and radical steps” to find just solutions regarding the exacerbating water crisis in Gaza, the official news agency Wafa reported.

"The world must realize that there is no more important cause than the cause of Palestinian children in Gaza, who line up for hours to get a liter of water, drink contaminated water, are deprived of food and medicine, die of dehydration and thirst, and are denied the right to live in safety like the rest of the world's children," he said.

He said Israel’s use of water as a weapon of war “is an extension of a decades-long systematic policy of plundering and controlling all surface and groundwater resources to control the lives of Palestinians, uproot them from their land, and implement its political agenda of illegal settlement expansion and undermining the two-state solution."

‘Voluntary departure’ body

In the meantime, Israel’s security cabinet has approved the formation of a directorate to encourage what it called the “voluntary departure” of Palestinians from the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

The new directorate will work to “prepare for and enable safe and controlled passage of Gaza residents for their voluntary departure to third countries,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement late on March 22.

Katz’s office said the new administration will be responsible for establishing movement routes, checking pedestrians at designated crossings in Gaza and coordinating the provision of infrastructure that will enable passage by land, se, and air to the destination countries.

He claimed that the departure of Gazans would be subject “to Israeli and international law and in accordance with the vision of U.S. President Donald Trump.”

“We are working with all means to implement the U.S. president’s vision, and we will allow any Gaza resident who wants to move to a third state to do so,” Katz said.

According to the statement, the head of the new directorate will be selected by the defense minister soon.

Trump has repeatedly called to “take over” Gaza and resettle its population to develop it into a tourist destination.