• Tel Aviv allows use of Ashdod port for aid shipments
• ‘People are dying of hunger’ in Gaza, says eyewitness

GAZA STRIP: Israel ratcheted up its attacks in the south of Gaza Strip on Saturday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden discussed differences over a post-war future for Palestinians that have suggested a rift between the two allies.

Witnesses said the Israeli bombardment was again focused overnight on Khan Yunis, the largest city in Gaza’s south, although Palestinian media also reported intense fire around Jabalia, in the north, early on Saturday.

Biden and Netanyahu held their first call on Friday since Dec 23, after the Israeli leader reiterated his rejection of a two-state solution, deepening divisions with Israel’s key backer over the matter.

President Biden said after Friday’s call with Netanyahu, with whom he has had a complicated relationship over 40 years, it was possible the Israeli leader might still come around.

“There are a number of types of two-state solutions. There are a number of countries that are members of the UN that... don’t have their own militaries,” Biden told reporters after an event at the White House.

“And so, I think there are ways in which this could work.” Netanyahu had said on Thursday Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River”, which “contradicts the idea of (Palestinian) sovereignty”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had said in Davos a day earlier that Israel could not achieve “genuine security” without a “pathway to a Palestinian state”.

While the two leaders spoke of what might come next, the reality was all too clear in Khan Yunis and elsewhere in Gaza Strip.

Leaflets dropped

Israeli planes dropped leaflets on the southern area of Rafah urging Palestinians seeking refuge there to help locate prisoners held by Hamas, residents said.

Palestinian fighters battled tanks trying to push back into the eastern suburbs of the Jabalia area in northern Gaza, where Israel had started pulling out troops and shifting to smaller-scale operations.

The Israeli military said aircraft struck “militant squads trying to plant explosives” near troops and fire missiles at tanks in northern Gaza, adding that it was striking targets throughout Gaza.

In the southern city of Khan Yunis, where Israel says it has expanded its operations against Hamas, witnesses said tanks shelled areas around Nasser Hospital on Friday night, describing the bombardment as the most intense in many days.

Nasser is now Gaza’s largest functioning hospital.

‘Dying of hunger’

Metawei Nabil, recently released by Israeli forces and bearing scars on his arms, said he fled Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, only “to face death” in the devastated southern city of Rafah, near the Egyptian border.

Some residents who fled the initial stages of the bombing in the north have begun returning to what remains of their homes.

In Gaza City’s Rimal district, “everything is destroyed and the people are dying of hunger”, said Ibrahim Saada, who has lost his whole family.

Groups of isolated fighters still confront Israeli troops in northern Gaza despite the Israeli military saying this month that Hamas’s “combat structures in the north have been dismantled”.

In northern Gaza, Israeli troops raided a weapons site, and the military said it had confiscated enough chemical materials and gear to manufacture 800 rockets.

With nightfall, residents said Israeli planes and tanks intensified their bombardment in Jabalia, on the northern edge of Gaza, and in Khan Yunis and Rafah, in the south.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2024