Newly released images show entire neighbourhoods reduced to rubble after strikes from Israel in the war against Hamas
Newly released satellite images reveal how cities and towns in Gaza have been destroyed by almost three weeks of Israeli bombardments on the besieged enclave.
Apartment buildings are crumpled and entire neighbourhoods lie in ruins, in pictures taken before and after Israeli airstrikes and provided by Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs.
Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas, which rules Gaza, in retaliation for the 7 October attacks in which they killed 1,400 people and took more than 200 people hostage.
Since then, Israel has continuously struck Gaza from the air, imposed a siege and is preparing a ground invasion. The Hamas-run health ministry says more than 7,000 people – many of them civilians – have been killed in the Israeli bombardment.
In the city of Beit Hanoun, which lies close to the northern border with Israel, four- and five-storey buildings are in various states of collapse. Huge chunks are missing from some, others are broken in half and two large complexes lie in piles of rubble.
Beit Hanoun lies close to one of the main crossings through which Hamas militants launched their murderous rampage through southern Israel and has been a focus of much of the Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) firepower.
Just days into the current conflict, the Israeli air force announced that Beit Hanoun had been struck “120 times”, saying that the area served as a hub for Hamas. The results of the heavy bombardment are clear in images that show entire neighbourhoods reduced to grey wastelands.
With airstrikes continuing almost around the clock, the full extent of the damage remains unknown. Images of the Al Karameh neighbourhood north of Gaza City show the rubble of a number of residential buildings.
The UN has said that 42% of all housing units have been rendered uninhabitable in the past three weeks, with thousands more subject to moderate damage.
The destruction has increased the number of displaced people in Gaza, with the UN and Palestinian Red Crescent estimating that between 400,000 and a million Palestinians are now homeless.
Israel said to offer two-month pause in Gaza fighting for staged release of hostages
Report says proposal does not heed demand by Hamas to end war but appears to go further than past Israeli offers, including significant reduction in IDF ops once fighting resumes
Israel has reportedly submitted a proposal through Qatari and Egyptian mediators that would see it agree to pause its military offensive against Hamas for as long as two months, in exchange for a phased release of the remaining 136 hostages in Gaza.
The proposal does not heed the Hamas demand for Israel to end the war completely, but does appear to go further than Israel has gone in previous offers, according to the Axios news site, which cited two Israeli officials.
The offer was publicized as White House Middle East czar Brett McGurk was in the region for meetings with Egyptian and Qatari counterparts aimed at advancing a hostage deal, a US official told The Times of Israel.
Israel is now waiting for Hamas’s response to the new proposal and is cautiously optimistic about the chance for progress in the coming days, the Israeli officials said to Axios.
The Israeli proposal reported by the news site would see the remaining children, women, men over the age of 60 and critically ill hostages released during the first stage. Subsequent stages would see female soldiers and men under the age of 60 who are not soldiers, followed by male soldiers and the bodies of hostages.
The Israeli offer states that Israel and Hamas would agree in advance as to how many security prisoners would be released by Jerusalem in each stage, before holding separate negotiations on the names of these convicts.
The offer would also include a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the main population centers in the Gaza Strip and the gradual return of Palestinians to the enclave’s north, from which they were ordered to evacuate.
The offer stipulates that Israel will not agree to end the war completely, nor release all 6,000 Palestinian security prisoners, but Israeli officials told Axios that they were willing to release a significant number.
If implemented, IDF operations in Gaza would be significantly smaller in scope after the pause concludes, Axios reported.
The offer is relatively similar to ones that have reportedly been pressed since the seven-day truce ended nearly two months ago. Hamas has insisted that it will not agree to release any hostages unless the fighting in Gaza ceases completely — a non-starter for Israel, as it would leave those who orchestrated the October 7 massacre in power, and with parts of the Hamas war machine intact.
The report followed a meeting Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held with the families of hostages. He told them that “contrary to what has been said, there is no real Hamas proposal,” according to a statement released by his office.
“I tell you this as clearly as I can, because there are so many untrue [claims] that must be torturing you,” the statement quoted Netanyahu as saying.
“On the other hand, we have an [Israel] initiative, and I will not elaborate,” Netanyahu added.
Channel 12 later published a recording from the meeting, in which Netanyahu could be heard saying: “There is a proposal of mine, which I also passed in the war cabinet. We conveyed it and now there is, as they say, a tug of war.
“I can’t elaborate here, but our proposal is something we have passed on to the mediators.”
More at https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-to-offer-two-month-pause-in-gaza-fighting-for-staged-release-of-hostages/