GAZA: Heavy battles and bombardment hit Gaza City’s Shujaiya district for a fourth day on Sunday, months after the Zionist entity declared Hamas’ command structure dismantled in the northern area. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the devastated neighborhood, where the army said it has fought Palestinian militants both “above and below ground” in tunnels.

Months of on-and-off talks towards a Gaza truce and hostage release deal have meanwhile made little progress, with Hamas saying Saturday there was “nothing new” in a revised plan presented by US mediators. The Zionist military reported clashes in central Gaza and the southern Rafah area, a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the “intense phase” of the war raging since Oct 7 was nearing an end.

Speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu repeated his stance that there is no substitute for victory in the war against Hamas. Hours after Netanyahu’s comments, the armed wing of Hamas released a video showing weapons-making, in a show of defiance. The video showed fighters preparing anti-tank rocket warheads. In the background a large TV screen showed recent news events to indicate the video was recent. “Our preparation is continuing,” said writing at the end of the short film.

The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that “60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced” from Shujaiya since new fighting broke out there on Thursday and the army issued evacuation orders. For those who remain, “our lives have become hell”, said 50-year-old Shujaiya resident Siham Al-Shawa. She told AFP people were trapped as strikes could happen “anywhere” and “it is difficult to get out of the neighborhood under fire”. “We do not know where to go to protect ourselves.”

The Zionist offensive has killed at least 37,877 people, mostly women and children, according to data from the health ministry in Gaza. In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, Zionist tanks pushed deeper into several districts in the east, west and center of the city on Sunday, and medics said six people had been killed in a Zionist strike at dawn on a house in Shaboura, in the heart of the city. The six bodies from the Zurub family were transferred to Nasser Hospital in the nearby city of Khan Younis.

On Sunday, dozens of relatives paid their respects before the bodies, which were wrapped in white shrouds, and then carried them in their arms to prepared graves. Residents said the Zionist army had torched the Al-Awda mosque in the center of Rafah, one of the city’s best-known. Artillery shelling also rocked parts of the city, witnesses said. The Zionist military launched a ground operation in Rafah in early May, leading to the closure of a key aid crossing.

United Nations and other relief agencies have voiced alarm over the dire humanitarian crisis and threat of starvation the war and Zionist siege have brought for Gaza’s 2.4 million people. “Everything is rubble,” said Louise Wateridge from UNRWA, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, speaking Friday from the city of Khan Yunis. “There’s no water there, there’s no sanitation, there’s no food. And now, people are living back in these buildings that are empty shells.”

About a month after US President Joe Biden outlined a truce plan, Washington last week presented “new language” for parts of the proposed deal, according to US news site Axios. A Hamas official in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, confirmed that the Islamist movement had received the latest proposal but said it presented “no real progress in the negotiations”.

Hamdan labeled the proposals “a waste of time” that aimed to give the Zionist entity “additional time... to practice genocide”. Hamas has called for a permanent ceasefire and full Zionist withdrawal from Gaza, demands repeatedly rejected by the Zionist entity.

The Gaza conflict has also led to soaring tensions on the Zionist entity’s northern border with Lebanon, where the army has traded cross-border fire with the Hezbollah movement, an Iran-backed Hamas ally. Threats of a full-blown war have escalated this month. Hezbollah on Sunday claimed several attacks on Zionist military positions, and Lebanese official media reported Zionist strikes in the border area. The movement announced three deaths among its ranks. – Agencies