Intense fighting, shelling and aerial bombardment has continued across the south and centre of Gaza as the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met top Israeli officials in Tel Aviv on a regional tour aimed at reaching a consensus on the territory’s future and stopping an escalation of the war across the Middle East.
US officials said Blinken told Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, on Tuesday that his forces must avoid inflicting further harm on civilians in Gaza.
Matthew Miller, a state department spokesperson, said Blinken had reaffirmed US support for Israel’s attempts to stop any repeat of the Hamas attack of 7 October but “stressed the importance of avoiding further civilian harm and protecting civilian infrastructure in Gaza”.
However there was no sign of any let up in the violence in Gaza as the two men met, nor across the disputed border between Israel and Lebanon, where there have been intensifying clashes for weeks between Israel and Hezbollah, the militant Islamist organisation.
Hezbollah targeted a key Israeli base on Tuesday, declaring the attack part of its response to recent high-level Israeli assassinations in Lebanon.
The Iran-backed group announced it launched “explosive attack drones” at the Israeli northern military command in Safed, the first time it has targeted the site. An Israeli army spokesperson said a drone had fallen on the base, inflicting no damage or casualties.
Shortly afterwards, Israel killed four more Hezbollah members, including one at the funeral of a senior commander in the group’s elite Radwan force who had been killed the day before.
Israel has traded cross-border fire with Hezbollah for three months and, though analysts say both sides want to avoid an immediate war, a minor miscalculation by either side could trigger a wave of violence across the Middle East.
In Gaza, there were reports of multiple airstrikes overnight in Khan Younis and Rafah, the biggest cities in the south of Gaza, which are both crowded with internally displaced people.
At least 23,210 people, mostly women and children, have been killed during Israel’s offensive in Gaza, according to its health ministry. Swaths of the territory have been devastated, with most of its 2.3 million population displaced and facing an acute humanitarian crisis.
The Israeli army described “expanded ground operations including airstrikes” in Khan Younis and said nine more soldiers had been killed in battle in Gaza, some of the heaviest losses announced since Israel launched its offensive after the Hamas attacks that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
Hamas also took about 250 hostages. Israel says 132 of them remain captive, though at least 25 of these are thought to have been killed, Israeli officials said.
Israel’s military casualties in its offensive have reached 185. Six of those who died on Monday did so in a single explosion when trying to destroy a tunnel dug by Hamas under central Gaza’s al-Bureij refugee camp. The blast may have been caused by a shell fired by an Israel tank, local media reported.
After talks with Israel’s president Isaac Herzog, Blinken underlined “the incredibly challenging times for Israel”, the fate of hostages remaining in Gaza and “the relentless efforts to bring everyone home”.
The top US diplomat also voiced hope that, after the war, Israel could push on with its efforts towards regional integration, after its US-brokered normalisation deals with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and other states.
“The secretary reiterated the need to ensure lasting, sustainable peace for Israel and the region, including by the realisation of a Palestinian state,” said Miller.
The US has offered staunch support to Israel since the outbreak of its war with Hamas three months ago, but Netanyahu has angered Washington by refusing to offer detailed public plans for the governance of Gaza when Israel’s military offensive ends, and by rejecting the US’s preferred option; the creation of unified Palestinian state comprising of the West Bank and Gaza.
US officials said the Biden administration had drawn up detailed plans for how the transition to such a state might work, but that Netanyahu’s government remained opposed to such an outcome and was not engaging in meaningful discussions with US officials on their proposals.
After meeting Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz, Blinken said: “There actually are real opportunities there but we have to get through this very challenging moment.”
Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, said on Tuesday that the 7 October attack “came after an attempt to marginalise the Palestinian cause” and called on Muslim states “to support the resistance with weapons, because this is … not the battle of the Palestinian people alone”. Haniyeh was speaking in Qatar, where he is based.
With only minimal aid entering Gaza, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem charged that “everyone in Gaza is going hungry” as the “direct results of Israel’s declared policy”.
Israeli defence officials and former senior intelligence officers have said they expect fighting in Gaza to continue for at least a year.
In a recent briefing, IDF spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari said the centre and south of Gaza, where military efforts are now focused, was “dense and saturated with terrorists” with “an underground city of branching tunnels”.
Three months would be needed to clear the area and fighting would “continue during the year 2024”, Hagari said.
The Israeli army has claimed to have largely achieved military control over northern Gaza, and said the war is now entering a new phase involving fewer soldiers and airstrikes.
Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, speaking in Cairo, also stressed the need for “less intensive” combat and greater aid flows, while reiterating Berlin’s solid support for Israel.
Her Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, voiced fears about the displacement of Palestinians and said “2 million citizens cannot remain trapped in one spot in the south in this way”.
Baerbock said: “We will not accept displacement … There must not be a flow of refugees into Egypt.”
The US has repeatedly called on Netanyahu to rein in far-right ministers who have called for the mass voluntary emigration of Palestinians from Gaza saying such rhetoric is “inflammatory and unacceptable”. Netanyahu, whose hold on power depends on far-right support, has ignored Washington’s requests.
Violence has also surged in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli police confirmed three people were killed on Monday during a raid on Tulkarm to arrest a “wanted terrorist”.
Israeli army raids and settler attacks in the West Bank have killed at least 333 people since 7 October, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.
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