US warns Israel over next phase of military operation into southern Gaza

The Biden administration is issuing urgent warnings to Israel over the next phase of its military operation in Gaza, saying a campaign in the south of the strip must not be carried out to the same level of destruction as took place in the north of the territory. 

The administration is proposing that Israel agrees to “areas of deconfliction,” which is to include United Nations facilities and shelters that would not be subject to active military fighting, a senior administration official said in a call with reporters Monday night. 

“You cannot have the sort of scale of displacement that took place in the north, replicated in the south,” the official said, as part of a call discussing efforts to scale up humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. 

The majority of the population of Gaza, more than 2 million people, are now concentrated in the center and south of the strip. The entire enclave is a mere 141 square miles. 

They were displaced by Israel’s assault against Hamas in the north — by air and a ground incursion — carried out in response to the group’s unprecedented attack against Israel on Oct. 7.

Pause in fighting has allowed in humanitarian aid

Hamas’s agreement last week to release hostages it kidnapped from Israel in exchange in part for a temporary cease-fire has allowed humanitarian groups to scale up assistance to address dire shortages of food, water and fuel.

Aid groups say that more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza are displaced from their homes, and that massive overcrowding in temporary shelters risk spreading communicable diseases. 

Some estimate as many as 14,000 of people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war against Hamas, but those numbers have yet to be independently verified.

President Biden has rejected calls to pressure Israel to halt its military operation against Hamas despite intense opposition from the international community and divisions within his own party.

“To reiterate what you’ve already heard from the president, from other senior officials of the government, we want the objectives of this campaign, the elimination of Hamas as a governing, as a threatening force in Gaza and the threat to Israel, ended,” the official said. 

“But how the campaign is conducted, particularly in the south, is exceedingly important, because of the fragile situation with this very significant internal displacement already occurred on the ground.”

Israeli government says it will finish campaign to annihilate Hamas

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Hamas is eliminated, saying that the U.S.-designated terrorist group is still intent on launching attacks against Israel like it did Oct. 7, when militants killed an estimated 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, and took more than 240 people hostage.

But world leaders, the United Nations, U.S. lawmakers, aid groups and advocates are alarmed that civilians caught in the crossfire are facing an even more daunting humanitarian catastrophe.

“It is extremely important … that the conduct of the Israeli campaign when it moves to the south must be done, in a way, that is to a maximum extent, not designed to produce significant further displacement of persons,” the official said. 

“It will be beyond disruptive, it will be beyond the capacity of any humanitarian support network, however reinforced, however robust to be able to cope with. It can’t happen.”

The administration is therefore pushing Israel to agree to areas of deconfliction, which it says are distinct from the “safe zones” that Israel encouraged Palestinian civilians to flee to while it carried out its military operation in the north. 

“What we are discussing is not the safe zone, the humanitarian zone, that almost a month ago was proposed by the government of Israel,” the official said. “What we are talking about are practical arrangements on the ground, multiple arrangements, what you might call areas of deconfliction.”

Continuing damage in northern Gaza complicated by conflicting claims

The administration’s guidance is unclear at the moment.

Israel accuses Hamas of conducting military operations out of civilian areas, hospitals and United Nations facilities such as schools and medical centers.

These facilities have in turn become targets of Israel’s military campaign, inflaming anger toward Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Hamas has denied using those areas as conflict centers.

Israel has surrounded Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, and the Israeli military said it has exposed tunnel entrances surrounding the hospital that Hamas uses for military activities, that the hospital was used as a place to hide hostages and that the bodies of hostages were found in the area.

Those allegations have not been independently vetted.

Still, Israel has claimed that rockets fired from the Gaza Strip by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist group in the strip, have misfired and fallen back on Palestinian civilian sites.

Human Rights Watch on Sunday published a report saying a misfired rocket from the Gaza Strip was likely behind the Oct. 17 explosion at al-Ahli hospital, which supports earlier assessments by Israeli and U.S. intelligence.

The senior administration official Monday said that it is pressing Israel to carry out its campaign in Gaza’s south extremely carefully, and prioritizing protection of civilian sites, such as electricity and water stations, humanitarian sites, hospitals and “other facilities including the many U.N.-supported shelters located throughout south and central Gaza.” 

The “areas of deconfliction,” the official said, would be areas “where based on the best judgment of people there, or people who may wish to come there, would not be subject to kinetic activity.”