CAIRO: Israeli forces pushed deep into the ruins of Gaza’s northern edge on Monday to recapture an area where they had claimed to have defeated Hamas months ago, while at the opposite end of the enclave tanks and troops pushed across a highway into Rafah.

With some of the most intense fighting for weeks now taking place on both the northern and southern edges of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have again taken flight, and aid groups warn that a humanitarian crisis could sharply worsen.

Israel described its latest return to the north, where it pulled out most of its troops five months ago, as part of a “mop-up” stage of the war to prevent fighters from returning, and said such operations had always been part of its plan. Palestinians say the need to keep fighting amid the ruins of previous battles is proof Israel’s military objectives are unattainable.

In sprawling Jabalia, the biggest of Gaza’s eight camps built 75 years ago to house Palestinian refugees from what is now Israel, tanks pushed toward the heart of the district. Residents said tank shells were landing at the center of the camp and air strikes had destroyed clusters of houses.

Thick clouds of black smoke from explosions could be seen rising over northern Gaza from the Israeli border on Sunday.

Israeli troops are seeking to wipe out Hamas, which has said it is committed to Israel’s destruction. The militant group burst into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.

The Palestinian death toll in the war has now surpassed 35,000, according to Gaza health officials who fear many more bodies are lost under the rubble. The fighting has laid waste to the coastal enclave and caused a deep humanitarian crisis, with the Gaza health ministry warning in a statement on Monday that the medical system is on the verge of collapse due to a shortage of fuel to power generators and ambulances.

Palestinian health officials on Monday said they had so far recovered 20 bodies of Palestinians killed in the overnight air strikes on Jabalia, while dozens were injured.

At the opposite end of Gaza in Rafah, against the border fence with Egypt, Israel stepped up aerial and ground bombardments on the eastern areas of the city, killing people in an air strike on a house in the Brazil neighborhood.

Israel ordered residents out of the east of the city last week, and extended that order to central areas in recent days, sending hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom are already displaced, fleeing for new shelters.

Residents said Israeli air and ground bombardments were intensifying and tanks had cut off the main north-south Salahuddin Road that divides the eastern part of the city from the central area.

“The tanks cut the Saladuddin road east of the city, the forces are now in the southeast side, building up near the built-up area, the situation is dreadful and the sounds of explosions never stopped,” said Bassam, 57, from the Shaboura neighborhood in Rafah.

“People continue to leave Rafah, even far away near the western areas as no place looks safe now and also because people do not want to escape at the last minute should tanks make sudden incursions and moving out becomes too late,” he told Reuters via a chat app.

UNRWA, the main United Nations aid agency in Gaza, estimated that about 360,000 people had fled the southern city since the Israeli military gave its first evacuation order a week ago.

BOMB SHIPMENT ON HOLD

The assault on Rafah has caused one of the biggest splits in generations between Israel and its main ally the United States, which put some deliveries of weapons on hold for the first time since the war began. Washington has said Israel must not assault Rafah without a plan in place to protect civilians there, which it has yet to see.

Jack Lew, the US ambassador to Israel, signalled on Sunday that the Rafah incursion was still on a scale that Washington considers acceptable.

“The president was clear in the interview he gave the other evening that what Israel has done so far hasn’t crossed over into the area where our disagreements lie,” Lew told Israel’s Channel 12 TV, without elaborating on what that area entails.

“I’m hoping we don’t end up with real disagreement.”

DUBAI: If Arab countries really cared about Gaza, they would throw open their borders to Palestinian refugees. That is a claim made repeatedly by Israel since the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7 last year sparked the conflict in the Gaza Strip.

According to Ambassador Hossam Zaki, assistant secretary-general to the Arab League, this argument is deeply flawed — ignoring the fact that Arab nations already host millions of Palestinian refugees.

Furthermore, Zaki believes this argument ignores the stark reality that once the people of Gaza are displaced, the Israeli government is unlikely to permit their return — opting instead to seize the land for the state of Israel.

“If we really want the truth, the Israeli wish is to see that the Palestinian population would disappear from the Occupied Territories,” Zaki told Katie Jensen, host of the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking.”

He added: “From the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, they would love for the Palestinians just to vanish. We all know that, because we know that they want the land. They want to grab the territory. They want to annex the territory to their state.”

In a wide-ranging interview, in which he discussed the forthcoming Arab League summit in Bahrain on May 16, efforts to halt Israel’s assault on Rafah, and the diminishing prospects for a two-state solution, Zaki said previous mass displacements would not be repeated.

“The Palestinians have learned from the mistakes of the past — from the 1948 war and 1967 war — that once they move out of their territory, the territory is confiscated by Israel, taken under control by Israel. And it seems to be such an uphill battle to get it back,” he said.

“The hope of getting back territory is ever so pale. So, what we are doing is, we are assisting the Palestinians to hold on to their territory, to hold on to their land, and not to move out of the land, because they know the consequences of moving out.”

Zaki was equally vehement in his rejection of the Israeli suggestion that the Arab states had failed to offer sanctuary to Palestinian refugees.

“They (the Israelis) can criticize us all they want,” he said. “We have Palestinians living in all Arab countries, some in refugee camps — very, very few — but most living like the normal citizens of these countries.

“In Egypt and in the Gulf countries, in Jordan, in North Africa, all Arab countries, you have Palestinians living.

“Normally, that is a criticism that we are willing to take, because we know that whatever is said in this regard means only to evacuate the territory for the benefit of the Israelis who want to grab it.”

Since the war in Gaza began seven months ago, the Arab League has been actively involved in trying to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, to arrange for sufficient aid to enter the enclave, and to keep the goal of Palestinian statehood on the agenda.

Zaki said the Arab League and its “heavyweight members” — including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Jordan — had continued to promote the Arab Peace Initiative, first unveiled 20 years ago, and were working to stop the “killing madness” continuing.

“But nothing has been successful so far,” he said. “Even the only resolution that the UN Security Council was able to adopt in order to stop the war, to cease the fire, was not implemented. It’s been adopted since, what, one month now? Nothing. As if there is nothing.”

Zaki believes Israel has been allowed to act with impunity owing to the protection and largesse of the US.

“Israel is basically a country that is pampered by the US, pampered by many of its allies, accomplices, so-called friends in the West,” he said.

“They condone what it is doing and they cannot stop it. They cannot stop this madness. Unfortunately, they gave it a carte blanche since the beginning and this is where we are.

“Seven months in this war — this criminal war — and nothing is happening. They are not capable of reigning in this country, this government of extremists.”

Asked whether the Arab League itself shares part of the blame for failing to bring an end to the conflict, Zaki laid responsibility entirely on Washington.

“Why would we — how could we — blame the Arab League?” he said. “The Arab League is not an accomplice in this. The Arab League is not giving bombs to Israel. The Arab League is not giving ammunition to Israel. The Arab League is not funding the Israeli aggression.

“The Arab League is a regional organization, a respectable regional organization, that is seeking peace, that is talking politics. It’s a diplomatic organization. We are willing to engage with whomever is seeking peace as well on the other side.

“Why do we say the US and the West? Because it is the US that’s funding Israel. It keeps transferring money to Israel, aid to Israel, munitions, bombs, weapons, whatever — you name it.”

Israel’s months-long bombardment and strangulation of aid flows has devastated Gaza’s infrastructure. Zaki believes Israel has deliberately sought to make Gaza inhospitable to compel the Palestinian population to abandon their land and accept refugee status abroad.

“The Israelis, in the nasty, very nasty, war against the Palestinians in Gaza, what they’re trying to do is not only to kill Palestinians … they did something which is much more nasty, actually: They have destroyed the infrastructure of the Gaza Strip,” he said.

“They’ve destroyed the health infrastructure, the education infrastructure, the water infrastructure, the electricity infrastructure. This is mean and malignant, and they want to make it a point for the Palestinians who remain in the Gaza Strip — most of the inhabitants — to find this place uninhabitable.

“When the war ends, all the Palestinians would look around and see that this has become totally uninhabitable, so they would want to leave. But surprise to them, I would tell you from now — and mark my words — that is not going to happen.

“They’re going to reconstruct their state, their country. They’re going to reconstruct Gaza, and the Arabs are going to help them. You bet on that. And the international community has enough decent people, enough peace-loving people, who believe in Palestinian rights and who will help them rebuild their country after all the crimes that Israel has committed there.”

Furthermore, Israel has threatened to take over the Philadelphi Corridor — a narrow strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border, established under the Philadelphi Accord in 2005 and which authorized Egypt to deploy 750 border guards to police its side of the border.

If Israel were to seize control of the Philadelphi Corridor, it could undermine the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, in which Israel agreed to withdraw from the Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt and created the current border that bisects Rafah.

“They are playing with fire, and I think they know that,” said Zaki, himself an Egyptian diplomat.

“Those who are taking decisions on the Israeli side are taking a big risk. I do not think that, in their right mind, they would want to see an undermining of the main pillar of peace in the region, which is the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979.”

Preparations are underway for the 33rd Arab League summit, during which the leaders of the 22 member states will discuss common challenges facing the region.

With multiple conflicts blighting the Middle East and North Africa, Zaki said there would be “a hefty agenda” this year. “Obviously the issue of the war on Gaza is going to be left, right and center in all of this,” he said.

“Sudan is a big issue for us. The war on Sudan has not receded. It’s been going on for more than a year. It’s unfortunate. We need to address that. The situation in Libya. The situation with Yemen is still a problem. Syria is still an issue for us.

“And, we have a set of other socioeconomic resolutions that are prepared for the leaders to adopt in their meetings. So we do have quite a hefty agenda for our summit this year.”

High on that agenda will no doubt be the prospects of reviving the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“There is no alternative to that solution,” said Zaki. “The Palestinians should have their own state. They should have their own independent contiguous state. Nothing should stand in their way and nothing, really, should justify assisting Israel in diluting this solution.”

But, given the destruction in Gaza, the ongoing spread of settlements in the West Bank, and the deep hostility felt on both sides, some might argue the region is moving further away from the two-state solution.

“No, we’re not moving further away,” said Zaki. “I think the world — which has pretty much paid lip service to this two-state solution for a couple of decades now — is now realizing that, well, lip service is not useful anymore, and we should really engage in active steps, like many European leaders have been saying, active steps.

“Even US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that several months ago. We should all engage in active steps to make true the Palestinian state — to make it come about and to make it a reality.

“This is going to happen in the UN; one step closer, one step closer to Palestinian statehood. And things are going to move in this direction.

“The Israelis will have to resist that as they want to, and as they refuse to engage in peace talks, and they refuse to agree on Palestinian statehood. But it’s not up to them.

“We are trying to convince the rest of the world, especially the Western world, that Palestinian statehood should not be subject to an Israeli veto. Because if we do give the Israelis the veto over this, I think they will never agree on it. And a Palestinian state will never see the light of day.”