New Israeli operation in Gaza’s Jabalia sparks heavy fighting

This is the third time Israeli forces have gone into Jabalia and its refugee camp over the past year, with the last operation in May displacing tens of thousands of people, killing hundreds and causing widespread destruction.

On Monday, Jabalia resident Asmaa Tayeh told the BBC that she and her family had had to leave their home for the fourth time in a year.

They have returned to her grandparents’ house in the al-Nasr district of Gaza City and, like many civilians in the north, are reluctant to move south, fearing that if they do they will not ever make it home.

Despite Israeli assurances, Palestinians fear the military is planning to implement a plan, proposed by the former head of Israel’s national security council, to completely empty northern Gaza of the 300,000 to 500,000 civilians believed to be living there.

According to Giora Eiland’s plan, the north would then be declared a “closed military zone” and the estimated 5,000 Hamas fighters there would be put under siege in order to force the group to release the remaining Israeli hostages.

“The situation is getting so dangerous that we don’t have so much hope that we’ll go back,” Asmaa said.

The Israeli military also ordered civilians in parts of the southern city of Khan Younis to evacuate after Hamas fired rockets towards Israel from there on Monday, lightly wounding two women in Kfar Chabad in central Israel.

In central Gaza, the civil defence agency said 17 people, including children, were killed when a three-storey home in Bureij refugee camp was hit in an Israeli strike overnight.

Medics at a hospital in nearby Nuseirat refugee camp confirmed the death toll, according to AFP news agency.

The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas operatives in the camp and that it “conducted a precise strike on a structure from which a terrorist cell planned terror activities”.