CAIRO/NEW YORK: Israel and Hamas traded theats on Wednesday as the Palestinian death toll from eight days of renewed airstrikes and military action in Gaza rose to 830.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would seize swaths of the enclave if Hamas did not release hostages, while the militant group warned they would return “in coffins” if Israel did not stop the bombing.
Just over a week since the new onslaught began, Israel said two projectiles were fired from Gaza, with one intercepted and the other landing near the border. The rocket fire came a day after hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza staged a rare protest against Hamas, chanting slogans against the group and calling for an end to the war.
Netanyahu told the Knesset: “The more Hamas persists in its refusal to release our hostages, the stronger the pressure we will exert. This includes the seizure of territory.” Hamas said it was trying to keep the hostages alive, but Israel’s military action endangered their lives. “Every time the occupation attempts to retrieve its captives by force, it ends up bringing them back in coffins,” the group said.
Of the 251 hostages seized by Hamas when they attacked Israel in October 2023, 58 are still being held, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead. The Palestinian death toll from Israel's retaliatory war on Gaza is at least 50,183, mostly civilians.
Meanwhile video footage emerged on Wednesday of hundreds of Palestinian protesters marching in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza to demand an end to war, chanting “Out, out, out, Hamas get out.”
“It was a spontaneous rally against the war because people are tired and they have no place to go,” one witness said. “Many chanted slogans against Hamas, not all people, but many ... people are exhausted and no one should blame them.”
Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said people had the right to protest but denounced what he said were “suspicious political agendas” exploiting the suffering caused by the war.
The displaced
“In just one week, 142,000 people have been displaced,” the spokesman for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, pointing out that about 90 percent of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once between the start of the war on October 7, 2023 and January of this year.
The space available for families is “shrinking,” he said, adding that displacement orders currently cover some 17 percent of Gaza.
With each wave of displacement, thousands of people “lose not just their shelter, but also access to essentials such as food, drinking water and health care,” said the spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
The “relentless bombardments and daily displacement orders” coupled with blocks on aid “are having a devastating impact on the entire population of more than two million people,” he said.
“Our humanitarian partners are warning that as a result, medical stocks, cooking gas and fuel needed to power bakeries and ambulances are running dangerously low.”
