Israel extends Gaza operation, kills new Hamas PM

Israeli troops have pressed further into Gaza, laying the groundwork for expanding Israel’s security buffer along the border.

A fire burns at the emergency department of the Nasser hospital after it was hit in an Israeli air strike, in Khan Yunis. Picture: AFP.

Israel’s military is expanding its ground operations across the Gaza Strip as talks to stop the fighting and release more hostages have stalled and the death toll in the enclave surpasses 50,000.

Israeli troops pressed into the northern Gaza border town of Beit Hanoun on Saturday to lay the groundwork for expanding Israel’s security buffer, a several-hundred-metre-wide zone the military has carved out within Gaza that spans its border with Israel.

The military said it is now operating in patches to expand its footprint and uproot Hamas infrastructure across Gaza, from Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in the north to the Netzarim corridor bisecting the enclave’s middle and Rafah on the Egyptian border in the south. Fresh evacuation orders were issued Sunday for Palestinians to flee expanding operations in Rafah, as Israel said its forces had completed encircling the city’s Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood.

The Defense Ministry said it killed Hamas’s new prime minister, Ismail Barhoum, in a “precise strike” on where here was operating within Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital on Sunday. Barhoum took up the post only days ago, after Israel killed his predecessor. Airstrikes across Gaza overnight killed Salah al-Bardawil, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, the US-designated terrorist organisation said.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 600 Palestinians since fighting resumed with an intense air campaign on March 18, according to Palestinian health authorities, whose figures don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. The war has now killed more than 50,000 Palestinians since it began more than 17 months ago. It was sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities. A two-month reprieve in the fighting ended this month after Israel and Hamas were unable to come to terms to extend their January ceasefire.

Israel’s current moves are part of the government’s strategy to press Hamas to accept a deal to free the nearly 60 remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip, 24 of whom are believed to be alive. Israel’s government is under intense public pressure to secure their release, and tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets in the days since fighting resumed to urge their leaders to seek a deal.

Many on the right wing of Israeli politics have also called for the country to hold Palestinian territory and support Palestinians who want to leave the Gaza Strip, arguing that such pressure tactics are necessary to squeeze Hamas. Arab countries have pushed back on a plan by President Trump to displace Gazans to neighbouring countries while the enclave is rebuilt.

Israel’s security cabinet approved the creation of a new administration to facilitate voluntary emigration from Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday, after saying over the weekend that he had directed the Israeli military to capture additional territory in Gaza and expand its buffer zone.

“As long as Hamas continues in its refusal to release hostages it will lose more and more territory that will be attached to Israel,” Katz said on Friday.

The hardened stance comes as Israel’s government is taking action to remove senior bureaucrats who have tried to restrain many of its past ambitions. On Sunday, Israel’s government took its first step toward removing the country’s attorney general, who has routinely and publicly pushed back against many of the government’s policies. Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miari tried to delay the government’s decision last week to fire Ronen Bar, who heads the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency.

The government expressed its lack of confidence in Baharav-Miari “in light of her inappropriate conduct, and in light of the existence of substantial and prolonged differences of opinion between the government and the attorney general, which creates a situation that prevents effective co-operation,” read the document submitted ahead of Sunday’s government meeting. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t present during the meeting because of continuing concerns about conflicts of interest in the backdrop of his ongoing criminal cases, confirmed a government aide.

Dow Jones