GAZA: Heavy fighting raged Monday in and around Gaza’s largest hospital complex where the Zionist army said it was battling Hamas fighters and told Palestinian civilians to flee the “dangerous combat zone”. While the army launched the predawn raid at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the Zionist government deployed Mossad chief David Barnea to Qatar for renewed talks toward a ceasefire and captive release deal.

Qatari and Egyptian mediators hope to pause or end the war that has devastated Gaza since Oct 7 attack — even as Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doubled down on his vow to destroy Hamas. Gaza’s soaring civilian death toll, the large-scale devastation and the looming threat of famine for its 2.4 million people have hardened opposition to the Zionist entity’s military campaign and siege.

A UN-backed food security assessment warned that half of Gazans are experiencing “catastrophic” hunger, and that “all evidence points towards a major acceleration of deaths and malnutrition”. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the Zionist entity’s military campaign had turned Gaza from the world’s “greatest open-air prison” into its biggest “open-air graveyard” and that the Zionist entity was using famine as a “weapon of war”.

“Gaza was before the war the greatest open-air prison. Today it’s the greatest open-air graveyard,” Borrell said at a meeting of EU ministers in Brussels. “It’s a graveyard for tens of thousands of people and also a graveyard for many of the most important principles of humanitarian law.” Borrell also reiterated his accusation that the Zionist entity was using famine as a “weapon of war” by not allowing aid trucks into Gaza.

In the latest heavy battle, the Zionist entity’s army raided Al-Shifa, with witnesses reporting air strikes and tanks near the complex reportedly crowded with thousands of Palestinian patients and displaced people. The health ministry of Gaza Strip said nearby residents had reported dozens of casualties who could not be helped “due to the intensity of gunfire and artillery shelling”. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “we are terribly worried” about the fighting which was “endangering health workers, patients and civilians”.

The Zionist military told Gazans to evacuate the area amid the raid that it said was based on intelligence “indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas (fighters)”. The Zionist military dropped Arabic-language leaflets warning residents that “You are in a dangerous combat zone!” and urging them to flee the area. The Hamas government media office condemned as a “war crime” the “storming of the Al-Shifa medical complex with tanks, drones and weapons and shooting inside”.

The army previously raided Al-Shifa in November, sparking an international outcry. The Zionist entity has carried out a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive that Gaza’s health ministry says has killed at least 31,726 people, most of them women and children. As the fighting flared around Al-Shifa, the Zionist army announced that the number of its soldiers killed in the Gaza ground invasion launched in late October had risen to 250.

Global concern has focused on Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians now live in crowded shelters and tent cities near the Egyptian border. Netanyahu’s repeated warnings of a looming ground invasion have raised fears the civilians would be in the line of fire, and the Zionist entity’s top ally the United States has stressed the Zionist entity must ensure civilians are “out of harm’s way”. The Zionist premier on Sunday reiterated that civilians would be evacuated from Rafah before any ground attack, without detailing where to.

Efforts toward a truce and hostage release deal — which have involved US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators — were expected to resume in Qatar, following a week-long ceasefire in November. Hamas had so far called for a complete withdrawal of Zionist forces, a demand which Netanyahu has rejected as “delusional”.

A new Hamas proposal calls for a Zionist withdrawal from “all cities and populated areas” in Gaza during a six-week truce, and for vastly more aid, according to an official from the group. It proposes a 42-day truce during which it would release about 42 captives — each in exchange for between 20 and 50 Palestinian prisoners to be released from Zionist custody.

The exchange could include women, children, elderly and ill hostages, whereas male soldiers and the bodies of dead hostages would be returned during a later, comprehensive exchange to coincide with a full ceasefire. Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that Hamas’s new proposal was “unrealistic” but that the government would send a delegation to Doha for another round of talks.