Published: 7 November 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
IDF reported planning to enter Gaza City within 48 hours; Blinken pushes back against Arab calls for a ceasefire; Israeli officials admit that limiting aid to pressure Hamas didn’t work.
Gaza was rocked by a series of huge explosions on Sunday evening and communications with the coastal strip were cut, as violence also escalated on Israel’s northern boundary with Lebanon.
The strikes on Gaza came as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) indicated that Israeli troops were planning to enter Gaza City in force perhaps within the next 48 hours, according to reports in Israeli media.
Journalists inside Gaza and watching from the Israeli border described intense Israeli strikes on the coastal strip, and video showed towering explosions in the night sky. Reports from Gaza said the strikes were coming from the air, sea and land, including from the north of the strip where Israeli troops now have a presence.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued to push back against calls for a ceasefire, saying an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza would allow Hamas to regroup and carry out further attacks. Mr Blinken made the comments on Saturday in Jordan after holding talks with Arab leaders, who want an immediate halt to the fighting, as the US continued to support Israel's right to defend itself.
"We don't accept that it is a self-defence," Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said at a news conference with Mr Blinken following the talks, which also involved Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
The Biden administration has also made it clear that it opposes the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza to neighbouring Egypt, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas when he met with him in Ramallah on Sunday.
Israel is struggling to lay out a clear exit strategy in the Gaza Strip and has not decided whether it wants to kill Hamas' leadership or accept a deal to exile its members, according to a political source.
