Israeli forces advance in Gaza City as Benjamin Netanyahu resists ceasefire calls

The Israeli army is advancing through the south and east of Gaza City after taking full control of the enclave’s largest hospital as Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, vowed to resist international pressure for a ceasefire in the war with Hamas.

Fighting in the Zeitoun and Jabalia neighbourhoods, east of al-Shifa hospital, picked up over the weekend even as an early winter storm set in. Nine Israeli soldiers were killed, the army said.

Hundreds of people on Saturday left the hospital — a focus of Israel’s three-week ground offensive against Hamas — joining more than 1mn displaced people living either outdoors or in crowded UN shelters in Gaza.

Torrential rain lashed the enclave on Sunday, with temperatures plunging below 15C, heightening the risk of disease as sewage flowed on the streets.

In a press conference late on Sunday, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari defended the army’s actions at al-Shifa, and shared what he called “concrete evidence” that Hamas had hidden hostages in the hospital.

Hagari presented still images from security cameras that he said showed Hamas vehicles entering the hospital complex on October 7, when the Palestinian militant group launched its deadly attack on Israel.

He also played security camera videos that appeared to show Hamas fighters bringing two hostages taken from Israel into the hospital on October 7.

The unnamed hostages were from Thailand and Nepal, Hagari said, and their current whereabouts were unknown.

Hagari also said Hamas had murdered Israeli soldier Noa Marciano, who was among the hostages taken on October 7, in al-Shifa. Hamas has previously said Marciano was killed in an Israeli air strike, according to news agencies.

Speaking on Saturday night, Netanyahu said Israel would allow a limited amount of fuel — no more than two trucks a day — into Gaza to stave off a feared outbreak of disease, a concession he said he made after US pressure.

“This is not a change of policy but a limited, localised response in order to prevent the outbreak of epidemics,” Netanyahu said, adding that the spread of disease would affect Israeli soldiers as well as Gazans.

But he also appeared to reject a call from US President Joe Biden, made in an opinion column in the Washington Post, for the Palestinian Authority, a West Bank-based political rival of Hamas, to play a greater role in Gaza after the war.

Without naming the PA, he said he would not back the presence of any element that “supports terrorism, pays terrorists and their families”.

Netanyahu vowed a “diplomatic Iron Dome” — a reference to Israel’s air defence system — to resist mounting international pressure for a ceasefire, unless it accompanied a release of hostages held by Hamas. “I reject these pressures and say to the world ‘We will continue to fight until victory’,” he said.

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Israel launched its air and land offensive on Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 attack, which according to Israeli officials killed about 1,200 people. The group, which has controlled Gaza since 2007, also seized about 240 hostages.

More than 13,000 Palestinians have been killed, many of them women and children, the Gaza health ministry said, since Israel’s offensive.

Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who has been leading negotiations with Hamas over the release of hostages, said at a press conference in Doha that “there has been good progress in the past few days” and minor obstacles remained between Israel and the Palestinian group on agreeing a deal.

In an incident highlighting the international ripples of the conflict, Israel said on Sunday that Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen had seized a cargo ship in the Red Sea.

Earlier on Sunday the Houthis had warned they would target any ship that flew the Israeli flag or was owned or operated by Israeli companies. Netanyahu’s office said the ship was British-owned and Japanese-operated and had no Israelis on board.

The expanded military operations in Gaza come as Israeli forces scoured al-Shifa hospital for evidence to support its claims that Hamas had built a vast underground command-and-control centre underneath it.

The limited findings of any large-scale Hamas infrastructure, both at al-Shifa and at al-Rantisi hospitals, which Israel has also taken control of, have prompted widespread criticism of the IDF’s decision to attack the overcrowded medical facilities.

At al-Shifa, the army has so far found the entrance to a tunnel, a small cache of weapons, some radios and a laptop, according to videos released by Israeli forces.

The IDF said on Sunday that it had further investigated the tunnel, adding it was found hidden under a booby-trapped pick-up truck loaded with weapons. The 55-metre tunnel led to a blast door and had been fortified in various ways, the IDF added.

At al-Rantisi, Hagari showed TV crews a cache of weapons he said had been discovered there and then pointed to a calendar that began on October 7, a piece of rope on the floor and a curtain over a windowless wall as evidence that a hostage may have been held there.

IDF officials said on Friday that they were frustrated by the pressure to produce more evidence.

The World Health Organization visited al-Shifa on Saturday and said the hospital was a “death zone”, adding that its team had found a mass grave containing 80 bodies.

In recent days, al-Shifa provided shelter to 2,500 people as well as doctors, nurses and at least 600 patients. Fewer than two dozen staff remain after some doctors and patients fled on Saturday.

The UN said on Sunday it had evacuated “31 very sick babies” as well as some health workers and staff family members.

The babies have been transferred to a maternity hospital in Rafah. The remaining patients were at risk of infection from medical and solid waste and a lack of medication, the UN said, adding that further evacuation missions were being planned.

Israel’s western allies have advised caution as the Israeli army expands operations to the south of Gaza, where the IDF had initially told civilians to flee as it invaded from the north.

The US has asked Israel to keep operations in the south “targeted and precise” to avoid civilian casualties and allow people to move to safe areas, a person familiar with the discussions said.

Additional reporting by Heba Saleh in Cairo and Lauren Fedor in Washington