Israel Just Launched Its Expanded Ground Invasion to Permanently “Conquer” Gaza
Massive explosions shook the Gaza Strip in the first hours of Saturday morning as Israeli warplanes launched intensive airstrikes on north, south, and central Gaza, in what the Israeli army called “preparations to expand operations” in the Strip.
Israeli airstrikes hit Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah, several parts of Gaza City, and Jabalia. A resident of the Shati’ refugee camp in Gaza City told Mondoweiss that “the occupation army had issued orders to evacuate Shati’ camp, but they called off the orders — and then they called for an evacuation again, keeping residents in constant anxiety.”
“Then, yesterday night, they began bombing all over Gaza, including Shati’ camp,” the Shati’ resident added. “It lasted all night.”
The airstrikes were accompanied by incursions of remote-controlled Israeli explosive vehicles in north Gaza, with local journalists reporting that the vehicle exploded in the Tal al-Zaatar neighborhood east of Jabalia between inhabited buildings. The pieces of shrapnel reached the Indonesian Hospital in the neighboring town of Beit Lahia, causing damage to the building, local journalists reported. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip have already killed 250 Palestinians in the past two days alone.
The renewed wave of bombings comes a few days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged last week to “enter Gaza with full force” in implementation of a new expanded ground offensive approved by the Israeli war cabinet nearly a month ago, dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots.”
The Israeli assault would see the army “conquer” Gaza and permanently occupy it, according to Israeli officials. Shortly before the invasion commenced on Saturday, the Israeli army dropped leaflets over Gaza, depicting a Biblical scene of the sea parting and engulfing destroyed buildings in the Strip, with a Star of David insignia in the corner below the words “righteous conquest.”
“Is All This Horror for Us?”: North Gaza Residents Flee Bombardment
According to Mahmoud Basal, the Civil Defense spokesperson in Gaza, the Israeli assault has resulted in the deaths of over 100 people in less than 12 hours. “It is a bloody and difficult day for the northern Gaza Strip,” he stated on Telegram. According to the Ministry of Health’s daily report, “153 martyrs and 459 injuries have arrived at hospitals in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours.” The Ministry clarified that the death toll had risen to 53,272 since the beginning of the war.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced families from eastern Gaza City, having evacuated their homes over a month ago due to the Israeli invasion of the Shuja’iyya neighborhood, have crammed into the city’s western areas. They have established new displacement centers in Gaza City’s parks, stadiums, and universities, including the Yarmouk Stadium and the Islamic University.
During the past week, the Israeli army has threatened to evacuate these displacement centers as well, highlighting areas such as the Islamic University and other schools-turned-shelters as slated for evacuation.
On May 16, large numbers of people were displaced from areas in north Gaza, where the escalating ground invasion has intensified, prompting some residents to leave their homes for Gaza City.
Despite the Israeli army’s incursion into several areas in the central Gaza Strip and east of Khan Younis in the al-Qarara area, residents describe the situation in the north as the most dire.
Sulaiman Abu Sultan, 41, originally from Beit Lahia, says that the intensity of the bombardment in north Gaza forced him to leave his home. He tells Mondoweiss that the Israeli army is firing deadly missiles into crowded neighborhoods without warning or evacuation notice. “Deadly missiles are the warning,” Abu Sultan clarifies.
“The time for warnings through messages and phone calls is over. Now, they are killing hundreds to warn those who remain,” he adds. “They are sending deadly missiles that tear our bodies apart.”
Abu Sultan decided to take his family of five to Gaza City to stay with relatives in the Tal al-Hawa area, but he says that the situation there was not any better.
“We couldn’t bear it in Beit Lahia. The sounds were terrifying, and the bombing was random. The rubble was flying over our heads while we were in our destroyed homes,” Abu Sultan explains. “We thought Gaza City would be less terrifying, but we found the same situation: terrifying sounds and planes flying over us.”
“Is all this horror for us?” Abu Sultan muses. “It’s hard to believe that all this firepower in the sky is reserved for civilian families whose only concern is to save their children from bombardment and feed them so they don’t die of hunger.”
Israel Plans to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza With Active U.S. Support
The all-out Israeli assault was preceded by over a week of intensified bombardment of the Strip following Hamas’s release of Israeli-American captive soldier Edan Alexander as a “goodwill gesture” to Donald Trump, who was due to arrive in the Middle East on his planned tour of Arab Gulf countries. The Israeli army heavily bombarded the European Hospital and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis throughout the week, allegedly targeting top Hamas leaders in a “command-and-control” complex underneath the European Hospital, even though Haaretz reported that Israel provided no evidence to back up its claims.
According to a Drop Site News interview with Hamas official Basem Naim, Alexander’s release was part of a deal Hamas struck with U.S. envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, who was supposed to compel Israel to lift the blockade on Gaza and let humanitarian aid into the Strip. Naim also said that Witkoff “personally committed” to ending the blockade and that Trump was supposed to publicly call for a ceasefire.
But according to the senior Hamas leader, the U.S. “threw the deal in the trash.”
Naim told Drop Site that there was “zero” progress in talks for a ceasefire, while Witkoff reportedly told Arab mediators that the U.S. would not be pressuring Israel to end the war on Gaza.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu appears as unmovable as ever, speaking to Israeli daily Maariv last week about how the Israeli army is “destroying more and more houses [in Gaza], and they [the Palestinians] have nowhere to return to,” adding that “the logical result will be the desire of Gaza residents to leave.” Netanyahu also remarked that half of Gazans already want to leave, and that “the difficulty is in finding countries that would accept to receive them.”
As part of Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza indefinitely, Israel intends to handle the distribution of aid to the civilian population in a dystopian new plan that would see the vetting of families eligible for aid with the participation of U.S. military contractors. The plan would reportedly have Gazans corralled in a concentration camp in what remains of Rafah, which has been flattened and cleared by the Israeli army, and Israel would later gradually expel Gaza’s population from the Strip under the rubric of so-called “voluntary migration.” In essence, this would entail the flattening and extermination of the rest of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of its population.
In line with this Israeli plan, NBC reported on Friday that the Trump administration was working on a plan to permanently relocate 1 million Palestinians to Libya in exchange for lifting sanctions imposed on the Arab country over a decade ago. NBC spoke to five unnamed sources “with knowledge of the effort.”
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 1 million children in Gaza are at risk of starvation, including 70,000 facing “serious degrees of malnutrition” due to the blockade. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the UN-affiliated famine monitoring body, 96 percent of Gazans face “high levels of acute food insecurity,” with 22 percent facing “catastrophic levels.”
Moreover, the Health Ministry announced that the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza has exceeded 52,000 dead, in addition to at least 10,000 people missing under the rubble.
Those who survived so far now brace for the next episode of the U.S.-backed Israeli genocidal assault.