[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Israeli forces have pushed further into Gaza and engaged Hamas fighters near the Shifa Hospital, is have been reported.
The IDF claims the hospital sits on top of the terror group's headquarters, and accuses Hamas's leaders of using it as a civilian shield against Israeli strikes.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said the country's forces were 'deepening the pressure' on Gaza City, with anticipation for a full ground offensive into the city's narrow streets now building.
IDF troops were reportedly near the enclave's Shifa Hospital - Gaza's main and largest medical facility - which sits about 800 yards from the coast.
The advance comes after Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel will take control of the 'overall security' of the Gaza Strip after his country's war with Hamas . Resisting calls for a ceasefire, the PM said there would be no letup in the war to destroy the terror group, whose attack one month ago today left 1,400 dead in Israel.
As he spoke, it is understood that IDF troops have been preparing to enter Gaza City, a mass of narrow streets and densely packed neighbourhoods. Residents escaping the north of Gaza said they passed tanks in position to possibly storming it.
Israel says its forces have surrounded Gaza City, home to a third of the enclave's 2.3 million people,
| ...a third of 2.3 million is about 760,000, for those who want the math... |
and are poised to storm it soon in their campaign to annihilate the Hamas terrorists who attacked Israeli towns exactly a month ago.
Rear Daniel Hagari said the IDF killed several Hamas field commanders in airstrikes and operations overnight which aimed to 'significantly harms Hamas's ability to carry out counterattacks' - signalling the assault is drawing nearer. He also said Israeli combat engineers were working to demolish each and ever tunnel they came across using 'different and diverse devices.'
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, meanwhile, praised the efforts of the IDF's operations in the coastal strip in the past 24 hours as being 'very impressive.'
'The combination between the air force and ground forces shakes the Gaza Strip,' Gallant said in a video statement. On the Hamas field commanders killed in air strikes, he added: 'some of them were the ones we eliminated a day or two ago and they were replaced by others, and they were also eliminated.'
With international criticism of Israel's conduct of the war mounting, the Hamas-run health ministry says the death toll from Israel's bombardment of the territory - launched in response to the October 7 attack - surged past 10,000 people yesterday.
More than 1.5 million people in densely packed Gaza have fled their homes for other parts of the territory in a desperate search for cover,
| ...65% of the Gaza Strip’s population, as warned by Israeli leaflets and phone calls to the cell phones of residents... |
with critical aid only trickling in.
Last night, Netanyahu told ABC News the war would continue until Israel had restored 'overall security' control of Gaza, adding that Gaza should be governed by 'those who don't want to continue the way of Hamas'.
'Israel will, for an indefinite period, have the overall security responsibility,' he said. 'When we don't have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn't imagine.'
While key Israeli ally the United States is seeking a humanitarian 'pause' in the fighting, several countries and UN agencies have repeatedly called for a ceasefire. But Netanyahu has resisted the calls so far, and in his comments said he had no intention of changing his approach.
'There will be no ceasefire - general ceasefire - in Gaza, without the release of our hostages,' Netanyahu said.
'As far as tactical, little pauses - an hour here, an hour there - we've had them before. I suppose we'll check the circumstances in order to enable goods - humanitarian goods - to come in or our hostages, individual hostages, to leave,' he added.
'But I don't think there's going to be a general ceasefire. It will hamper the war effort, it will hamper our effort to get our hostages out, because the only thing that works on these criminals in Hamas is the military pressure we're exerting.'
In its October 7 attack, Hamas gunmen took more than 240 people hostage, including children and elderly people, into Gaza. The attack that prompted Israel's massive bombardment of Gaza and an intensifying ground offensive.
| Such an anodyne description of deliberately brutal murder and rapine, the details of which drove hardened reporters to speechless tears. |
Asked if there would be a pause if Hamas agrees to release the hostages, Netanyahu said 'there would be a ceasefire for that purpose, and we're waiting for that to happen. It hasn't happened so far.'
Asked if Israel knows where the hostages are inside Gaza, the PM said while the country has some intelligence, 'I'm not sure its wise to share it here with Hamas.'
Around 30 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the offensive,
That means slow is fast. the latest on Monday, according to a report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), citing Israeli sources.
Israel has air-dropped leaflets and sent text messages ordering Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza to head south. A US official said Saturday at least 350,000 civilians remained in the worst-hit areas.
| Hamas got an estimated 15% of the population (or perhaps 30% of the population of the northern half of Gaza) to remain as human shields, whether because of patriotic sentimentality or by force. |
The Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt reopened Monday to allow the evacuation of foreigners and dual nationals, the Hamas government said, ending a two-day closure prompted by a dispute over the passage of ambulances.
On Monday, 93 aid trucks carrying food, medicine and water crossed from Egypt into Gaza, the United Nations said, but the needs are overwhelming.
| Especially when the warehouses are raided by the strong before the supplies can be handed out to the most needy. |
A convoy including four ambulances arrived in Egypt via the Rafah crossing on Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
| Full of injured Hamasniks, one imagines. Or not injured but important Hamasniks. Which is why they were not let through. |
'I have lost my home and have nothing left. I came here with nothing but the clothes I'm wearing,' said Dana Okal, a Swedish passport holder.
| Just like the Israelis and international workers and visitors who fled the Gaza border areas. But the Israelis made sure they quickly were given a place to stay, supplies, and medical care, unlike either the Hamas government or Palestinian civilians, whose culture does not drive them to self-organize to give aid to needy strangers. |
Israel withdrew its troops from the Gaza Strip in 2005. A year later, Hamas won elections in Gaza, and subsequently seized control of the territory in 2007.
| There was a short, sharp civil war, upon which the Palestinian Authority (Fatah in fancy uniforms) folded like a wet paper napkin. |
The Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, only exercises limited autonomy in parts of the West Bank.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested last week that the Palestinian Authority should retake control of Gaza after the war,
| ...an amusing thought. They could try, one supposes... |
and visited the West Bank to meet Abbas on Sunday. He has advocated for a two-state solution.
But Hamas said they would never accept a puppet government in Gaza and that 'no force on Earth could annihilate' it, said senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan.
| Challenge clearly accepted. |
Hamas militants fired 16 rockets from Lebanon towards northern Israel on Monday, while Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels claimed they had launched a fresh drone attack against Israel. Such attacks have raised fears of a wide conflict. 
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