Troops battle Hamas in Gaza City — ‘largest terrorist base ever built’

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant described Gaza as ‘the largest terrorist base ever built’.

A Palestinian man carries a young victim of the Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas ground into its second month on Wednesday as its forces battled the Palestinian militants in Gaza City, despite mounting calls for a ceasefire.

Underlining Israel’s determination to destroy Hamas, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant described Gaza as “the largest terrorist base ever built”. “We are in the heart of Gaza City,” he said on Tuesday night.

Israel launched a massive campaign in the Gaza Strip after Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack on October 7 that killed more than 1400 people, most of them civilians. According to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, Israel’s bombardment has killed more than 10,300 people, many of them children.

Calls for a halt in the fighting have gone unheard, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting there would be no pause until the more than 240 hostages seized by Hamas are freed.

View of Gaza Strip from Sderot along the border on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

UN rights chief Volker Turk said the past month was one marked by “carnage, of incessant suffering, bloodshed, destruction, outrage and despair”.

In Jerusalem on Tuesday night, sobs pierced memorial ceremonies and crowds lit candles while mourning the 1400 dead, including families slain in their homes and young people killed at a music festival, in the worst attack in Israel’s history.

“There’s not one person not impacted by these horrible attacks,” said 52-year-old Sharon Balaban, one of thousands of Israelis attending the vigils. “Everyone knows somebody who was hurt, killed, murdered or impacted.”

In densely packed Gaza – where more than 1.5 million people have fled their homes in a desperate search for safety – the suffering is immense. Entire city blocks have been levelled and bodies in white shrouds are piling up outside hospitals, where surgeons operate on bloodied floors by the light of phones.

The World Health Organisation said an average of 160 children were killed every day in Gaza by the war. “The level of death and suffering is hard to fathom,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said. Hamas’s media office said on Telegram that several cemeteries in Gaza had “no more space for burials”, while the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said most of the territory’s sewage pumping stations were shut.

A woman holds a photo of hostages during the moment of silence in Tel Aviv to mark the month since the October 7 Hamas attacks. Picture: Getty Images

Israel accuses Hamas of building military tunnels underneath hospitals, schools and mosques – charges the militant group denies.

OCHA says Israel has ordered all 13 hospitals still operational in northern Gaza to evacuate patients. Mr Netanyahu has said no fuel will be delivered to Gaza, but “tactical pauses” may be allowed to free hostages and deliver aid.

But Israel appeared to row back on Mr Netanyahu’s comments his country would assume “overall security” in Gaza after the war ends, after Washington said it opposed a long-term occupation of Gaza.

“Our viewpoint is that Palestinians must be at the forefront of these decisions and Gaza is Palestinian land and it will remain Palestinian land,” US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said. “Generally speaking, we do not support the reoccupation of Gaza and neither does Israel.”

Ron Dermer, Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs and part of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, told the BBC that Israeli forces would not reoccupy Gaza, but carry out security operations against anything they saw as a threat. Israel withdrew its troops from the territory in 2005.

An Israeli artillery crew prepares shells near the border with the Gaza Strip. Picture: AFP

In the disputed West Bank on Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas should retake control.

The PA exercises limited autonomy in only parts of the West Bank, and Mr Abbas said it could only potentially return to power in Gaza if a “comprehensive political solution” was found for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad dismissed the suggestion, telling Al-Jazeera Arabic the militants were “part of the national Palestinian fabric”.

Mr Blinken, following a Middle East tour of crisis diplomacy, is in Japan for a meeting of G7 foreign ministers to seek a common line on Gaza. The ministers are expected to call in a joint statement for “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza, while stopping short of urging a ceasefire – in line with US policy on the war.

A man walks in a destroyed house in Kibbutz Beeri in southern Israel. Picture: AFP

Military analysts warned of weeks of gruelling house-to-house fighting ahead in Gaza, with about 30 Israeli soldiers already killed. The operation is complicated because of the hostages, including young children and elderly people, who are believed to be held inside a vast tunnel network.

In a televised statement, Mr Netanyahu issued a stark warning to Hezbollah in Lebanon which, like Hamas, is backed by Iran.

“If Hezbollah makes the choice of joining the war it will be making the mistake of its life,” he said.

AFP