Israeli air strikes and gunfire have killed at least 30 people in and around Gaza City, local health authorities said, as reports said that Binyamin Netanyahu’s government was considering annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank as a possible response to France and other countries recognising a Palestinian state.
Authorities said the toll from Israeli tank and gunfire over the weekend included 13 people who died trying to get food near a distribution site in the Gaza Strip, two in a house in Gaza City and 15, including five children, in a strike on a residential building on Saturday.
Residents of Sheikh Radwan, one of Gaza City’s largest neighbourhoods, told reporters the area had been under Israeli tank shelling and air strikes throughout Saturday, overnight and on Sunday morning, forcing many families to flee.
Witnesses said Israeli troops opened fire on crowds in the Netzarim corridor, an Israeli military zone bisecting Gaza. “We were trying to get food but were met with the occupation’s bullets,” said Ragheb Abu Lebda, from Nuseirat. “It’s a death trap.”
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Rezik Salah, a father of two from Sheikh Radwan, told Reuters that Israeli troops were now “crawling into the heart of the city … from the east, north and south, while bombing those areas from the air and ground to scare people to leave”.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, confirmed on Sunday that Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, had been killed in a joint operation with the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service in Gaza.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas. However, the group did confirm the death of Mohammed Sinwar, its presumed leader in Gaza, more than three months after Israel said it had identified his body in a tunnel in central Gaza.
In Jerusalem, Israeli officials said Mr Netanyahu’s security cabinet met on Sunday to discuss the next stages of the planned offensive to seize Gaza City, although a full-scale offensive is not expected to start for weeks.
Israel has said it aims to evacuate the civilian population before moving more ground forces in. Mirjana Spoljaric of the Red Cross said such a move would provoke a massive population displacement that no other part of the Gaza Strip would be able to absorb.
About half of Gaza’s more than two million residents are sheltering in Gaza City, local sources estimate, although thousands are believed to have left or to be trying to leave, to seek refuge in more central and southern areas of the territory.
Large crowds in Tel Aviv demonstrated against the war on Saturday night and the families of hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza protested outside the homes of Israeli cabinet ministers on Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, Reuters news agency reported that Israel is considering annexation in the occupied West Bank as a possible response to France and other countries recognising a Palestinian state.
Extension of Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank – de facto annexation of land captured in the 1967 Middle East war – was also reportedly on the agenda for the security cabinet meeting late on Sunday that is expected to focus on the Gaza war, a member of the small circle of ministers said.
It is unclear where precisely any such measure would be applied and when, whether only in Israeli settlements or some of them, or in specific areas of the West Bank such as the Jordan Valley, and whether any concrete steps, which would likely entail a lengthy legislative process, would follow discussions.
Any step toward annexation in the West Bank would likely draw widespread condemnation from the Palestinians, who seek the territory for a future state, as well as from Arab and western countries.
A past pledge by Mr Netanyahu to annex Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley was scrapped in 2020 in favour of normalising ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in the so-called Abraham Accords brokered by Donald Trump during his first term in office.
Israel, which is facing mounting international criticism over the war in Gaza, is angered by pledges by France, Britain, Australia and Canada to formally recognise a Palestinian state at a summit during the UN General Assembly in September.
The United Nations’ highest court in 2024 said that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, and its settlements there are illegal and should be withdrawn as soon as possible.
Israel argues the territories are not occupied in legal terms because they are on disputed lands, but the United Nations and most of the international community regard them as occupied territory.
