GAZA/BEIRUT: Zionist military strikes killed at least 47 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as Zionist forces deepened their incursion into Beit Hanoun town in the north, forcing most remaining residents to leave. Residents said Zionist forces besieged shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, which some estimated at a few thousand, ordering them to head south through a checkpoint separating two towns and a refugee camp in the north from Gaza City.

Men were held for questioning, while women and children were allowed to continue towards Gaza City, residents and Palestinian medics said. The Zionist campaign in the north of Gaza, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area, has fueled claims from Palestinians that it is clearing the area for use as a buffer zone and potentially for a return of Jewish settlers. The US said Tuesday the Zionist entity was not violating US law on the

level of aid entering Gaza even as aid agencies said it was still not enough. The Zionist entity had announced the opening of an additional aid crossing into Gaza, just hours before the deadline set by outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration to improve the humanitarian conditions in Gaza or risk a cut to military assistance. Last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin sent a letter to the Zionist entity setting a deadline of Nov 13 to comply with US law on permitting humanitarian assistance.

Asked if the Zionist entity had met the demands, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said: “We have not made an assessment that they are in violation of US law. The overall humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to be unsatisfactory. But in the context of the letter, it’s not about whether we find something satisfactory or not; it’s what are the actions that we’re seeing. These actions that we have seen, we think that these are steps in the right direction.”.

The US finding comes despite the Zionist entity not meeting a series of metrics set explicitly in the letter, including allowing a minimum of 350 trucks per day into Gaza. Patel said the administration was “constantly assessing and evaluating” even after the deadline.

Speaking on Wednesday, Blinken said the Zionist entity “has accomplished the goals that it set for itself” by taking out Hamas’ leadership and ensuring the group is unable to launch another massive attack. “This should be a time to end the war,” he said. “We also need to make sure we have a plan for what follows,” he said, “so that if (the Zionist entity) decides to end the war and we find a way to get the hostages out, we also have a clear plan so that (the Zionist entity) can get out of Gaza and we make sure that Hamas is not going back in.”

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Blinken’s comments showed: “We are facing one enemy and that the US enmity against the Palestinian people is no less than that of the occupation.” Hamas condemned Washington’s “claims” that the Zionist entity is “taking measures to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza” and said in a statement that it was a “a confirmation of the full partnership of President Biden’s administration in the brutal war of genocide against our people”.

On Tuesday, the United States stressed at the United Nations that “there must be no forcible displacement, nor policy of starvation in Gaza” by the Zionist entity, warning such policies would have grave implications under US and international law.

Meanwhile, Zionist airstrikes pounded Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs for a second consecutive day on Wednesday, as Lebanon waited to hear Washington’s latest ceasefire proposals after a US official expressed hope a truce could be reached. Midmorning airstrikes levelled half a dozen buildings in the Beirut suburb known as Dahiyeh and killed eight people in Dawhit Aramoun, a village south of the capital. The dead included three women and three children, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

“They used to hit Dahiyeh at night, now they are doing it in daytime. Things are intensifying day after day,” said Hassan Moussa, 40, speaking in Beirut, adding that Zionist airstrikes had also widened to areas such as Aramoun. Hezbollah said it used drones to attack Tel Aviv’s Hakirya military base for the first time. The Zionist military said a heavy barrage of rockets was fired from Lebanon at the Zionist entity, where sirens sounded in the central areas.

Medics said five people were killed in a Zionist strike that hit a group of people outside Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahia, while five others were killed in two separate strikes in Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip where the army began a limited raid two days ago. In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, one man was killed and several others were wounded in a Zionist airstrike, while three Palestinians were killed in two separate Zionist airstrikes in Shujaia suburb of Gaza City, medics added. Later on Wednesday, a Zionist strike on a house in western Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip killed eight people, medics said.

“The scenes of the 1948 catastrophe are being repeated. (The Zionist entity) is repeating its massacres, displacement and destruction,” said Saed, 48, a resident of Beit Lahia, who arrived in Gaza City on Wednesday. “North Gaza is being turned into a large buffer zone, (the Zionist entity) is carrying out ethnic cleansing under the sight and hearing of the impotent world,” he told Reuters. Saed was referring to the 1948 Middle East Arab-Zionist war which gave birth to the Zionist entity and saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their hometowns and villages in what is now the Zionist entity. – Agencies