Israeli troops are back trying to stop something they KNOW is NOT gonna go away…..
Hamas fighters….
Israel ordered people in part of eastern Gaza City to evacuate on Thursday as Palestinian officials and residents reported heavy strikes and multiple casualties. People in the area described a frantic effort to get out as explosions sounded around them.
The Israeli military said that it could not immediately comment on the strikes, which Palestinian officials said hit the Shajaiye neighborhood, an already heavily damaged area that was the focus of intense fighting early in the war. Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, reported that the military was conducting a ground operation to root out Hamas based on intelligence that the armed group had begun to restore control in the neighborhood.
A witness with a human rights organization said that there were Israeli tanks on the outskirts of the neighborhood.
The operation, if confirmed, would be the latest instance of Israeli forces returning to parts of Gaza that they had previously left, especially in the north of the enclave, as Hamas regroups amid the anarchy that the nine-month war has unleashed. The fighting has dragged on even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will soon move to a less intense phase, and as frustration grows within Israel and globally over what critics say is Mr. Netanyahu’s failure to advance a plan for how Gaza should be governed after Hamas.
Gazan health authorities said on Thursday that 15 people had been killed and dozens injured in Shajaiye. Civil Defense, the Palestinian emergency service, said that five homes had been struck in Shajaiye and another neighborhood, and that a search was underway for missing people. The toll could not be independently verified, and Gazan authorities do not distinguish between civilians and combatants when reporting casualty figures….
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ILL children of Gaza…..
Israel and Egypt agreed to allow at least 19 sick children, most of them cancer patients, to leave Gaza for medical treatment on Thursday, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, in the first major evacuation of critically ill Gazans since the Rafah border crossing shut down in early May.
The Israeli military said the operation had been carried out in coordination with the United States, Egypt and the international community. In total, 68 people — sick and injured patients and their escorts — were allowed to leave, the military said.
Over 10,000 sick and wounded people in Gaza require urgent care that is available only outside the enclave, the World Health Organization said this week. They include those wounded in airstrikes, as well as cancer patients, children with life-threatening illnesses and older people who need open-heart surgery.
Even before the war, many Gazans were forced to travel abroad for lifesaving treatments, like chemotherapy, which were almost nonexistent in the Gaza Strip. The enclave’s health sector has struggled for over 15 years under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade intended to contain Hamas.
But the main conduit through which Gazans could leave — the Rafah crossing with Egypt — shut down after Israeli forces captured the border in May during a military offensive. Egypt shuttered its side of the gateway in protest, and the Gazan part was later destroyed in a fire, according to the Israeli military, seemingly dashing hopes that it would be reopened in the near future.
At least two sick Gazans who were slated to leave in early May have died, their family members said….