Israel's military on Sunday ordered more areas in and around Gaza's second-largest city of Khan Younis to evacuate, as it shifted its offensive to the southern half of the territory.
Heavy bombardments were reported overnight and into Sunday in the area of Khan Younis and the southern city of Rafah, as well as parts of the north that had been the focus of Israel's blistering air and ground campaign.
More than 700 people have been killed in the last 24 hours, according to Gaza's health ministry, despite US assurances that it had urged Israel to show "restraint" as it resumed its war on the Palestinian enclave.
Many of the territory’s 2.3 million people are crammed in the south after Israeli forces ordered civilians to leave the north in the early days of the 2-month-old war.
With the resumption of fighting, hopes receded that another temporary truce could be negotiated as Israel ordered its negotiators home from Qatar.
"We will continue the war until we achieve all its goals, and it’s impossible to achieve those goals without the ground operation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address Saturday night.
On Sunday, the Israeli military widened evacuation orders in and around Khan Younis, warning residents of at least five more areas and neighbourhoods to leave or face the consequences.
Residents said the Israeli military dropped leaflets ordering residents to move south to Rafah or to a coastal area in the southwest. "Khan Younis city is a dangerous combat zone," the leaflets read. Palestinians and rights groups fear Israel is rolling out the same gameplan as it did in the north, using airstrikes and bombardment to push civilians even more to the south.
UN monitors said in a report issued before the latest evacuation orders that the areas residents were told to leave make up about one-quarter of the territory of Gaza. The report said that these areas were home to nearly 800,000 people before the war.
Ahead of a resumption of fighting, the US, Israel’s closest ally, had warned Israel to avoid significant new mass displacement, but these appeals seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
Despite Israel's focus on the south, the north is still under heavy assault.
Bombardments on Saturday destroyed a block of about 50 residential buildings in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City and a six-story building in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya on the northern edge of the city, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
More than 60 people were killed in the Shijaiyah strikes and more than 300 buried under the rubble, the monitors said, citing the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Palestinian Leader Calls on ICC to Speed Up Israeli War Crimes Trial – Reports
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held a meeting with International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan, during which he urged Khan to expedite the trial of Israeli soldiers, who reportedly committed war crimes against Palestinians, Palestinian news agency reported on Saturday.
Abbas informed Khan of the recent developments in Palestine, as well as the acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing carried out by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank, the news agency reported.
He briefed the Prosecutor on Israel's violation of the sanctity of hospitals and shelters, the demolition of homes with civilians inside, the crimes of settler-colonial expansion, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and various other violations of international law and international humanitarian law.
In 2014, the Palestinian Authority (PA) handed over files to the ICC on multiple Israeli crimes during the war on Gaza.
A year later, the Court opened a preliminary investigation, and in 2021, it approved an inquiry into the commission of "Israeli war crimes" in the Palestinian territories.
Palestine presented three cases at the ICC, including the aggression against Gaza in 2014, during which Israel used excessive force, prohibited weapons, and ordered massacres and killing of civilians.
Another case concerns the Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli prisons and includes ill-treatment of captives and their families and medical neglect that led to the death of some of them.
For years, the Palestinians have been documenting Israeli crimes in the Palestinian territories.
Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said during his meeting with Khan on Saturday that delaying justice is an absence of justice itself.
Shtayyeh added that the ICC should be for sentencing and deterrence, asserting that for 75 years now, Israel has been acting like it is above the law.
He explained that the responsibility of the Criminal Court is not a moral issue but a legal one.
The Authority wants the Criminal Court to investigate the ongoing war in Gaza and previous wars and inspect all other violations in the West Bank.
The Authority considers that the Israeli war on the Palestinians is comprehensive and not only in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli displacement policy targets Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as part of an attempt to liquidate the Palestinian issue.
Since Oct. 7, the West Bank witnessed an escalation in Israeli aggression, which included shutting down the West Bank governorates, deploying more military barriers, and launching massive incursions, whether during the day or the night, into most areas.
Israel began using drones to target Palestinians. It also killed and arrested dozens of them, demolished infrastructure, and attacked civilians in their homes.
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