Egypt has said it will help to evacuate approximately 7,000 foreigners and dual-national Palestinians from Gaza amid a call by Joe Biden for a “pause” in fighting to extricate hostages.
Egypt was preparing to receive “about 7,000” people representing more than 60 nationalities through the Rafah crossing that borders Gaza, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday, without specifying a timeline.
Officials on both sides of the border expected about 400 people to cross on Thursday, with ambulances lined up in expectation of ferrying dozens of casualties to Egyptian hospitals, AFP reported.
A total of 361 foreigners and dual nationals left Gaza on Wednesday after Rafah opened for the first time after more than three weeks of brutal conflict. The evacuees included 31 Austrians, four Italians, five French nationals and several Germans, their governments said.
A trickle of aid has flowed into Gaza from Rafah since the conflict began but until this week no one was allowed to leave the territory. Foreign governments say there are passport holders from 44 countries, as well as 28 agencies, including UN bodies, in Gaza. The United Arab Emirates said it planned to treat 1,000 children but did not specify how they would travel to the Gulf state.
The latest planned limited evacuation came after another night of intense fighting, with Israeli troops pushing towards Gaza City in the north of the strip. “We are at the gates of Gaza City,” Brig Gen Itzik Cohen said.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) killed dozens of Hamas militants overnight and fought off an attempted ambush by Hamas units that emerged from tunnels and fired missiles and threw grenades, Israeli Army Radio reported. The IDF said it had lost a total of 17 soldiers since ground forces entered Gaza on 27 October.
Unicef described “horrific and appalling” scenes of carnage after two rounds of Israeli airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee camp on Tuesday and Wednesday. “People’s homes have been leveled, hundreds apparently injured and killed, with many children reportedly among the casualties.”
The Hamas-run health ministry called the strikes a “heinous massacre” that killed 195 people, including seven hostages. Israeli officials said the bombing had killed senior Hamas commanders who sought to shield behind civilians. Israel’s targeting sought to minimise civilian casualties, said Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesperson. “We try to build a picture, we try to understand,” he said. “This is how we do it. It’s war.”
The current conflict began on 7 October when Hamas launched an onslaught on southern Israel that killed more than 1,400 people and swept up hundreds more as hostages. The current Israeli estimate of the number of hostages is 242.
Israeli bombardments have killed at least 8,796 people in Gaza, including 3,648 children, according to the Hamas-run ministry, and left the densely packed population of 2.3 million trapped in a humanitarian disaster with insufficient food, water and medicine.
Joe Biden called for a temporary halt in fighting to facilitate the extraction of hostages. The US president was speaking at a campaign fundraiser in Minneapolis on Wednesday when a woman shouted: “Mr President, if you care about Jewish people, as a rabbi, I need you to call for a ceasefire.” Biden replied: “I think we need a pause. A pause means give time to get the prisoners out.”
The White House has previously called for “humanitarian pauses” to facilitate aid and evacuations but opposed a ceasefire as benefiting Hamas. The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was to hold talks in Israel on Friday and visit nearby countries to seek “urgent mechanisms” to reduce regional tensions, his office said.
Germany has said it will ban activities linked to Hamas, already a designated terrorist organisation in the country, as well as those of the pro-Palestinian group Samidoun, which was accused of handing out baked goods in Berlin to celebrate the 7 October attack.
Some Israeli commentators and analysts said that behind the government’s continued rhetoric of vanquishing Hamas and total victory there was a rethink, prompted in part by the prospect of mounting IDF casualties and waning international support for Israel amid carnage in Gaza.
“Defeating Hamas has evolved from an immediate tactical objective into a long-term Israeli strategy, one that will include establishing a security zone, mining the border with Gaza and applying ongoing pressure,” Nadav Eyal wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth. “I’m sorry to say, but to me that sounds like another southern Lebanon.”
