Israel prepares to move Palestinians to southern Gaza as Israelis urge mass protest over war

Los Angeles Times

a day ago

NAHARIYA, Israel — Israel announced Saturday that it is preparing to move Palestinians from combat zones to southern Gaza as plans move ahead for a military offensive in some of the territory's most populated areas.
The Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, COGAT, said the supply of tents and other shelter equipment to the territory would resume on Sunday ahead of the mass movement of Palestinians to the south. The military said it had no comment on when that movement would begin.
Meanwhile, anxious families of Israeli hostages called for a 'nationwide day of stoppage' in Israel planned Sunday to express growing frustration over 22 months of war.
Families of hostages fear the coming offensive further endangers the 50 hostages remaining in Gaza, just 20 of them thought to still be alive. They and other Israelis were horrified by the recent release of videos showing emaciated hostages speaking under duress and pleading for help and food.
The families and supporters have pressed the government for a deal to stop the war — a call that some former Israeli army and intelligence chiefs have also made in recent weeks.
A group representing the families has urged Israelis into the streets on Sunday. 'Across the country, hundreds of citizen-led initiatives will pause daily life and join the most just and moral struggle: the struggle to bring all 50 hostages home,' the group said in a statement.
'I want to believe that there is hope, and it will not come from above, it will come only from us,' said Dana Silberman Sitton, sister of Shiri Bibas and aunt of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who were killed in captivity. She spoke at a weekly rally Saturday in Tel Aviv.
An Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed a toddler and her parents Saturday, Nasser Hospital officials and witnesses said. Motasem al-Batta, his wife and their daughter were killed in their tent in the crowded Muwasi area.
'Two and a half months [old]. What has she done?' neighbor Fathi Shubeir asked, sweating as temperatures in the shattered territory soared above 90 degrees. 'They are civilians in an area designated safe.'
Israel's military said it couldn't comment on the strike without more details. It said it is dismantling Hamas' military capabilities and takes precautions not to harm civilians.
Muwasi is one of the heavily populated areas in Gaza where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel plans to widen the coming military offensive. The mobilization of forces is expected to take weeks, and Israel may be using the threat to pressure Hamas into releasing more hostages taken in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war.
Elsewhere, an official at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said it received the bodies of six people who were killed in the Zikim area of northern Gaza, as well as four people killed in shelling.
Eleven more malnutrition-related deaths were reported in the Gaza Strip over the previoius 24 hours, the territory's Health Ministry said Saturday, with one child among them. That brings malnutrition-related deaths during the war to 251.
The United Nations is warning that levels of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza are at their highest since the war began. Palestinians are drinking contaminated water as diseases spread, while some Israeli leaders continue to talk openly about the mass relocation of people from Gaza.
A 20-year-old Palestinian woman described as being in a 'state of severe physical deterioration' died Friday after being transferred from Gaza to Italy for treatment, the hospital said Saturday.
The United Nations and partners say getting food and other aid into the territory of more than 2 million people, and then on to distribution points, remains highly challenging with Israeli restrictions and pressure from crowds of hungry Palestinians.
The U.N. human rights office says at least 1,760 people were killed while seeking aid between May 27 and Wednesday. It says 766 were killed along routes of supply convoys and 994 in the vicinity of 'non-U.N. militarized sites,' a reference to the Israeli- and U.S.-supported Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which since May has been the primary distributor of aid in Gaza.
The Hamas-led attack in 2023 killed around 1,200 people in Israel. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed 61,897 people in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, which does not specify how many were fighters or civilians but says around half were women and children.
The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The U.N. and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on casualties. Israel disputes its figures but has not provided its own.
Melzer writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.