Israel mulls over siege tactics against Hamas; Israeli airstrike kills seven at Gaza school

An Israeli airstrike killed seven people in a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City on Sunday, Palestinian health officials said, with the Israeli military saying it had targeted combatants operating from the compound.

Hezbollah and Israel exchanged heavy fire into Sunday, as the Lebanese group sent rockets deep into northern Israeli territory after facing some of the most intense bombardment in almost a year of conflict.

Netanyahu 'examines siege plan for Hamas in north Gaza'

Israel was examining a plan to use siege tactics against Hamas in northern Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted by several Israeli media outlets as saying on Sunday.

Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The reports cited unnamed sources at a closed parliament committee meeting.

The plan, published by retired military commanders and floated by some parliament members this month, suggests Palestinian civilians would be instructed to evacuate northern Gaza, which would then be declared a closed military zone.

An estimated 5,000 Hamas combatants remaining there would then be put under siege until they surrender. Army Radio reported that Netanyahu told lawmakers at parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee that it was being examined.

Public broadcaster Kan quoted Netanyahu as saying that the blueprint “makes sense” and that “it is one of the plans being considered but there are others as well”.

Israel has faced fierce international criticism for the humanitarian crisis brought on by its nearly year-long offensive against Hamas in Gaza.

Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced. An estimated one million people — half the population — are currently crammed into a designated humanitarian zone that makes up less than 15% of the territory and is lacking essential infrastructure and services, according to the United Nations.

Humanitarian access to northern Gaza, where estimates of the population run between 300,000 and 500,000 people, is especially difficult, according to the United Nations.

The war was sparked when Hamas-led forces burst into Israel on 7 October, killing 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking another 250 hostage into Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive since, according to the Gaza health ministry. Gaza health officials say most are civilians.

Israel, which has lost 346 soldiers in Gaza, says at least a third of the Palestinian fatalities are fighters.

Israeli airstrike kills seven in Gaza school compound

An Israeli airstrike killed seven people in a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City on Sunday, Palestinian health officials said, with the Israeli military saying it had targeted combatants operating from the compound.

The strike hit Kafr Qasem School in Beach camp at around 11am, said the officials. Among those killed was Majed Saleh, the director of the Hamas-run Public Works and Housing ministry, they added.

Israel’s military said the strike targeted Hamas fighters there, and that it had used aerial surveillance and taken other steps to limit the risk to civilians.

Six other Palestinians were killed in separate airstrikes in central and southern parts of Gaza, the medics said. They put the number of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes so far on Sunday at 16.

In Rafah, near Gaza’s border with Egypt, residents said Israeli tanks advanced towards the western parts of the city, where the army has operated since May, and took positions over some hilltops overseeing the coastal road.

Israel’s demands to keep control of the southern border line between Rafah and Egypt have been a major sticking point in international efforts to conclude a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas’s armed wing said fighters had mounted several attacks against Israeli forces in Rafah, firing anti-tank rockets and detonating bombs in houses where Israeli troops had taken positions.

In a statement on Saturday, the Israeli military said forces, operating in Rafah since May, had killed dozens of fighters in recent weeks and dismantled military infrastructure and tunnel shafts.

On Sunday, Gaza’s health ministry warned that all services in all hospitals could halt in 10 days because of the shortages in essential spare parts, and oil needed to operate the fuel-powered generators.

Adding to the turmoil and misery, heavy rain flooded tent encampments overnight.

“Ten minutes of rain were enough to sink the tents. What if it rained all day? Tents are already worn out and can’t stand winter,” said Aya, displaced with her family in the central city of Deir Al-Balah, where about a million people are sheltering.

“We don’t want new tents. We want the war to end. We don’t want temporary solutions in hell,” the 30-year-old told Reuters via a chat app.

Israel and Hezbollah trade heavy fire

Hezbollah and Israel exchanged heavy fire into Sunday, as the Lebanese group sent rockets deep into northern Israeli territory after facing some of the most intense bombardment in almost a year of conflict.

Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem told mourners at the funeral of one of the group’s commanders killed last week in Beirut: “We have entered a new phase, the title of which is the open-ended battle of reckoning”.

The Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said operations would continue until it was safe for evacuated people on his side of the border to return — also setting the stage for a long conflict as Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to fight on until a ceasefire in the parallel Gaza war.

Israel’s Chief of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi, said in a televised statement the military was well-prepared for the next stages of fighting, which were coming in the next few days, but did not say what this would entail.

“We will do whatever it takes to remove threats against Israel,” said Halevi in a televised statement.

The conflict — which has escalated sharply in the past week — has raged since Hezbollah opened a second front against Israel, saying it was acting in support of Palestinians facing an Israeli offensive further south in Gaza.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members exploded. The attack was widely blamed on Israel, which has not confirmed or denied responsibility.

The following day, Israel launched its heaviest bombardment of Lebanon yet.

On Friday, an Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburb targeted senior Hezbollah commanders in an attack that killed 45 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Hezbollah said 16 members of the group were among the dead, including senior leader Ibrahim Aqil and another commander, Ahmed Wahbi.

In a further intense bombardment on Saturday, the Israeli military said it struck around 290 targets, including thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels.

“In recent days we have inflicted a series of blows on Hezbollah that it never imagined,” said Netanyahu in a video statement. “If Hezbollah has not understood the message, I promise you, it will understand the message.”

Speaking at Aqil’s funeral on Sunday, Hezbollah’s Qassem said Israel was seeking to paralyse the group, but would not succeed.

Qassem said Israel’s escalation of the conflict would lead to further displacement of its own citizens.

Israel has closed schools, restricted gatherings in the north and ordered hospitals there to move patients and staff to protected areas — many have secured or underground facilities designed to withstand rocket fire.

Air raid sirens sounded constantly in Israel on Sunday. About 150 rockets, cruise missiles and drones were fired at Israel overnight and into Sunday, most of which were intercepted by air defences, said the military.

Several buildings were struck, including a house badly damaged near the city of Haifa. Rescue teams treated the wounded but there were no reports of deaths. Residents had been instructed to stay near bomb shelters and safe rooms.

Hezbollah said it hit a barracks and another Israeli position with squadrons of attack drones and also launched rockets at military-industrial facilities in an “initial response” to the device attacks last week.

An official in the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a grouping of Iran-backed armed factions, said they launched cruise missile and explosive drone attacks at Israel at dawn on Sunday as part of “a new phase in our support front” with Lebanon.

The UN special coordinator in Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasscharet, said in a post on X that “with the region on the brink of an imminent catastrophe, it cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer”.

Israeli troops order closure of Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau

Israeli forces raided the bureau of media network Al Jazeera in the West Bank city of Ramallah early on Sunday morning, issuing it with a military order to shut down operations, the network and the Israeli military said on Sunday.

The Qatar-headquartered channel aired live footage of Israeli troops entering the office with their weapons drawn and handing a military court order to Ramallah bureau chief Walid al-Omari, forcing the bureau to close for 45 days.

The Israeli military said the channel’s offices had been sealed and its equipment confiscated.

The military added that the order was signed after an intelligence assessment determined that the offices were being used “to incite terror, to support terrorist activities”.

“The channel’s broadcasts endanger the security and public order in both the area and the State of Israel as a whole.”

Al Jazeera called the raid “a criminal act” and held the government of Netanyahu responsible for the safety of its journalists, it said.

The network added that it would take legal action to protect its rights and promised to continue its coverage.

Iran arrests 12 people for ‘collaborating with Israel’

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday that 12 people had been arrested for being operatives collaborating with Israel and planning acts against Iran’s security.

“As the Zionist regime [Israel] and their Western backers, most notably the United States, have not succeeded in their sinister goals against the people of Gaza and Lebanon, they are now seeking to spread the crisis to Iran with a series of actions planned against our country’s security,” the Guards said.

They said members of the network of 12 operatives were arrested in six Iranian provinces, but did not say when. DM

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