GAZA: Zionist troops fought Hamas fighters in multiple battles across the Gaza Strip, forcing new waves of Palestinian mass displacement on Tuesday. Clashes have rocked the densely crowded far-southern city of Rafah but also flared again in northern and central Gaza, months after troops and tanks first entered those areas.

The United States has urged Hamas to accept a Gaza truce plan and called on the Zionist entity to devise “a strategic endgame” and post-war plan, said White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. This would help the Zionist entity avoid “getting mired in a counterinsurgency campaign that never ends and ultimately saps (the Zionist entity’s) strength and vitality,” Sullivan said on Monday.

Sullivan said the US does not believe that genocide is occurring in Gaza but the Zionist entity must do more to protect Palestinian civilians. “We believe (the Zionist entity) can and must do more to ensure the protection and wellbeing of innocent civilians. We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide,” Sullivan told a briefing. The US was “using the internationally accepted term for genocide, which includes a focus on intent” to reach this assessment, Sullivan added. Biden wanted to see Hamas defeated but realized that Palestinian civilians were in “hell”, Sullivan said.

The Zionist entity last week defied a chorus of warnings — including from top ally Washington which paused a shipment of bombs — and sent tanks and troops into the east of Rafah to pursue militants. At the same time, fighting has flared in north Gaza four months after the army said Hamas’ command structure there had been dismantled, and six months after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Hamas had “lost control” of Gaza.

Recent battles and heavy Zionist bombardments have been reported around Rafah as well as in Gaza City and Jabalia refugee camp in the north and Nuseirat camp in the center. More than seven months into the war, Zionist strikes and ground combat claimed another 82 lives in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said. That is the highest daily toll reported by the ministry in more than two weeks.

Nearly 450,000 Palestinians have been newly displaced from Rafah in recent days, and around 100,000 from northern Gaza, UN agencies said. That means around a quarter of Gaza’s population of 2.4 million people have been freshly displaced in the past week. Palestinian mother Hadeel Radwan, 32, who is displaced in western Rafah, told AFP the constant shelling left her terrified while enduring shortages including of drinking water. Many people had fled her Tal al-Sultan district, but she said joining them would be hard because, “I had a C-section and moving quickly, under threat, would be difficult for me”.

The Zionist entity’s offensive that has killed at least 35,173 people, mostly civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry. The Zionist military says 272 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza campaign since ground operations began on Oct 27. Talks toward a truce and hostage release deal have stalled after months of efforts involving US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that “unfortunately things didn’t move in the right direction and right now we are on a status of almost a stalemate”. “Of course, what happened with Rafah has set us backward,” he added of the Zionist entity’s insistence on launching a ground attack in the city. “There is no clarity how to stop the war from the (Zionist) side. I don’t think that they are considering this as an option... even when we are talking about the deal and leading to a potential ceasefire,” Sheikh Mohammed said.

Since Zionist troops moved into eastern Rafah, the aid crossing point from Egypt remains closed and nearby Kerem Shalom crossing lacks “safe and logistically viable access,” a UN report said late on Monday. It said fuel shortages threaten health services, and acute child malnutrition is rising.

A convoy of trucks delivering humanitarian aid from Jordan was attacked and vandalized by Zionist far-right activists on Monday, its cargo spilt onto a road near a crossing with the occupied West Bank. The United Nations said an Indian member of its security services was killed and another wounded when their UN vehicle was struck on the way to a hospital in Rafah. The UN said it had informed Zionist authorities of the movements of the vehicle. Human Rights Watch said it had identified at least eight occasions since the war began when the Zionist entity had targeted known aid worker locations in Gaza, after their coordinates were shared to ensure their protection.

Palestinians remember the Zionist entity’s establishment as the “Nakba”, or catastrophe, the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands, an event they commemorate on Wednesday. The International Court of Justice in The Hague said it would hold hearings Thursday and Friday over South Africa’s request to impose emergency orders on the Zionist entity to halt its Rafah offensive. – AFP