An Israeli attack killed 31 people and injured 20 in a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp
Rafah, Palestinian Territories:
An Israeli attack killed 31 people in central Gaza on Sunday, the Palestinian territory’s civil defense agency said, during a visit by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan for talks on the conflict.
Israeli troops have advanced on the city of Rafah at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, which the army describes as Hamas’ last stronghold and where the United States says 800,000 civilians have recently been displaced by the fighting.
Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it targeted Israeli forces stationed at the Rafah crossing – a vital channel for humanitarian aid that is now closed – with mortar fire.
Israel has also fought and bombed resurgent Hamas forces in northern and central areas of coastal territory previously considered under army control, prompting U.S. warnings that it could become bogged down in a protracted counterinsurgency campaign.
In the latest aerial bombardment overnight, Gaza’s civil defense agency said an Israeli strike killed 31 people and injured 20 in a house in the central Nuseirat refugee camp.
Israel’s military, which on Sunday reported that its aircraft had “attacked dozens of terrorist targets” in the past 24 hours, said it was verifying the reports.
Witness Yasser Abu Oula told AFP that an entire residential complex “was destroyed” and “there are still bodies under the rubble.”
Jake Sullivan meets Benjamin Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue fighting Hamas in Gaza, following the October 7 attack that triggered the war, until the Iran-backed Islamist group is defeated and all remaining hostages are released.
But he has faced intense opposition and calls to announce a plan for post-war Gaza governance – from key ally Washington, from mass street protests and now also from members of his war cabinet.
Amid the political turmoil, Sullivan met with his Israeli counterpart, Tzachi Hanegbi and Netanyahu, in Jerusalem, for talks on the brutal Gaza conflict and post-war scenarios.
He briefed Netanyahu on the “potential” of a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia after holding talks in the region, the White House said on Sunday.
Sullivan also called on the Israeli prime minister to link the military operation against Hamas in Gaza to a “political strategy” for the future of the Palestinian enclave, he added.
Washington has pushed for a post-war plan for Gaza involving Palestinians and supported by regional powers, as well as a broader diplomatic agreement under which Israel and regional power Saudi Arabia would normalize relations.
Israeli centrist politician Benny Gantz threatened on Saturday to leave the far-right government coalition just over this issue. He called on Netanyahu to approve a post-war “action plan” by June 8.
Gantz demanded measures to defeat Hamas, bring the hostages home and form an “American, European, Arab and Palestinian administration that will manage civil affairs in the Gaza Strip.”
Netanyahu rejected Gantz’s comments, saying they would lead to “a defeat for Israel” and the “establishment of a Palestinian state,” which he vehemently opposes.
‘Day After’ Scenarios
US President Joe Biden on Sunday called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and said he was pushing for a regional peace deal “to get a two-state solution, the only solution.”
The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli figures.
Hamas also took around 250 hostages during the October 7 attack, 124 of whom remain detained in Gaza, including 37 who the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas killed at least 35,456 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-administered territory.
In central Israel on Sunday, mourners gathered for the funeral of 22-year-old German-Israeli Shani Louk, whose body was recovered on Thursday in Gaza by troops who also recovered three other dead hostages.
‘Almost’ no help
Israel has imposed a siege on the long-blockaded Gaza Strip, depriving its 2.4 million inhabitants of normal access to drinking water, food, medicine and fuel, with their suffering alleviated only by sporadic aid shipments by land, air and sea.
The head of the UN agency that helps the Palestinians said that “despite all the calls from the international community not to launch an offensive in Rafah, in reality an offensive began on May 6.”
Since then, “we have had about half the population of Gaza on the road again, forced to flee” in search of safety once again, even though “we continue to say there is absolutely nowhere to go,” said the UNRWA chief, Philippe Lazzarini, to journalists in Amman.
Lazzarini said that because of the fighting, “almost nothing in terms of aid is crossing” into Gaza, raising fears that recent gains made “to avert an imminent famine… could be quickly reversed.”
Truck arrivals decreased after the closure of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, when Israel launched its operation in the city.
After a series of attacks on Gaza-bound trucks in Israel, a group of Israeli activists traveled on Sunday with an aid convoy to protect it, an AFP correspondent said.
Aid has also begun arriving via a temporary floating dock built in the US, where shipments sent from Cyprus are unloaded for distribution.
The UAE said on Sunday that a shipment of 252 tonnes of aid had been unloaded after arriving from the Cypriot port of Larnaca.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned that if dire fuel shortages are not alleviated, the “famine that we have talked about for so long, and which is imminent, will no longer be imminent. It will be present.”
“Our concern… is that the consequences will be very, very difficult,” he told AFP in Qatar. “Difficult, difficult and apocalyptic.”
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