Middle East: Israel announces new ground operation in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Sunday night that Israel will allow some food aid to enter the besieged Gaza Strip.

The announcement comes hours after the Israeli military said it had launched a new ground operation in the Palestinian enclave.

"Israel will allow a basic amount of food for the population to ensure that a hunger crisis does not develop in the Gaza Strip," Netanyahu's office said.

International pressure has been mounting on Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, which Israel has totally blockaded since early March after a ceasefire collapsed.

Last week US President Donald Trump, who visited the Middle East but did not make a stop in Israel, had acknowledged that "a lot of people are starving" in Gaza as he pledged to "get that taken care of."

The ongoing intensified fighting in the northern Gaza Strip has forced the last functioning public hospital to close, the health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave said on Sunday.

Patients, medical staff and essential supplies were no longer able to get to the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia amid the violence, the ministry said.

It said all public hospitals in northern Gaza were now no longer operational. 

This comes as hospitals and medics in Gaza reported that Israeli airstrikes in a new offensive had killed at least 130 people, including children, overnight and into Sunday.

Those deaths come in addition to the 464 Palestinians reported by the Health Ministry to have been killed in Israeli military strikes on Gaza in the past week.

Israel launched the offensive on Saturday with the declared aims of achieving "operational control in the areas of Gaza."

The offensive is the largest since Israel broke a ceasefire with Hamas in March.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel was open to striking a deal with Hamas that included "ending the fighting" in Gaza as teams of negotiators met in the Qatari capital, Doha.

The office said: "Even at this very moment, the negotiation team in Doha is working to exhaust every possibility for a deal — whether according to the Witkoff framework or as part of ending the fighting," referring to US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been involved in previous discussions.

It said the latest talks included discussions on a truce and hostage deal, as well as an Israeli proposal to end the war in return for "the exile of Hamas terrorists, and the disarmament of the Gaza Strip," according to the statement.

The latter terms are ones that Hamas has previously rejected.

 A senior Israeli official said there had been no progress in the talks so far.

The Israeli military said Sunday that it had begun "extensive ground operations" throughout northern and southern Gaza as part of a new campaign dubbed "Operation Gideon's Chariots."

In a statement, the military said it had killed dozens of Hamas fighters and struck more than 670 targets in preliminary strikes over the past week.

Health workers in Gaza have said hundreds of people, including many women and children, have been killed in the past week, with nearly a hundred bodies arriving at hospitals on Sunday.

The Israeli military said the campaign involved both active-duty soldiers and reservists.

"The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will continue to operate against the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip as required, in order to defend Israeli civilians," the statement read.

Israel says the new plan is meant to increase pressure on the militant Hamas group to release Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Hamas has said it wants any new ceasefire deal to include provisions for Israeli forces to completely pull out of Gaza along with a road map to ending the fighting.  

The Israeli military said on Sunday it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels claiming to have launched two missiles at Israel's main airport.

"A missile that was launched from Yemen was intercepted," the Israeli military said in a statement, adding that air raid sirens had sounded in several areas of the country.

The Houthis later said they had fired "two ballistic missiles" towards Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, near Tel Aviv. Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesman, said the group would continue targeting Israel until the "siege is lifted" on Gaza.

Earlier this month, a Houthi missile struck the area of the Tel Aviv airport, causing a hole near its main terminal building and wounding several people in a rare penetration of Israeli air defenses.

On Friday, Israel bombed the Houthi-held Red Sea ports of Hodeida and Salif following three missile attacks in as many days. It threatened to target the Houthi leadership if the attacks continued.

European Council President António Costa called for Israel to lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

"Shocked by the daily news coming from Gaza: civilians starving, hospitals hit again by strikes. Violence must stop!" he said in a post on the platform X.

"The Israeli government must lift the blockade now and ensure the safe, swift, and unimpeded access of humanitarian aid," Costa said.

Israel imposed a total aid blockade on the Palestinian territory on March 2.

Costa described the situation in Gaza as a "humanitarian tragedy."

"A whole people is being subjected to crushing, disproportionate military force. International law is systematically violated," he said.

He called for a "sustained ceasefire" and the "immediate and unconditional release" of all hostages still held in the Gaza Strip.

Around 58 hostages are though to still be held in Gaza. On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that only 21 of them had been confirmed as alive.

Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which has intensified this week, has also cast a shadow over the Eurovision Song Contest that took place in the Swiss city of Basel on Saturday night.

One of the contestants at the event was Israeli singer Yuval Raphael, whose participation triggered pro-Palestinian protests in Basel earlier on Saturday. Pro-Israel counter rallies were also held.

The protesters calling for Israel to be removed from the contest tried to move across Basel but were confronted by police, who used tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Inside the St. Jakobshalle arena, Raphael, who survived the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks, performed her song "New Day Will Rise," which was met with a mixture of cheers and boos.

Pro-Palestinian protesters attempted to disrupt Raphael's performance.

A crew member was reportedly hit with paint by the protesters, organizers said, according to Swiss broadcaster SRG SSR.

A spokesperson for the Swiss channel said "a man and a woman tried to get over a barrier on to the stage" before one of them "threw paint and a crew member was hit."

Nobody was injured in the incident, the spokesperson said, adding that the two "agitators" were removed from the venue and handed over to police.

Swiss police confirmed that the two protesters had since been released. 

The Israeli military said that it intercepted a missile that was launched from Yemen toward Israel.

"Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in several areas in Israel, a missile that was launched from Yemen was intercepted," the Israeli army said in a Telegram post.

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis have continued to fire missiles at Israel, which they say is in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, though they agreed to stop attacking US ships.

In response, Israel has carried out strikes, including one on May 6 that damaged Yemen's main airport in Sanaa and killed several people.

Israel is ramping up its military offensive in Gaza as its aid blockade to the Strip approaches 11 weeks.

Rosalia Bollen, UNICEF's spokesperson for Gaza, told DW what families in the war zone are forced to suffer.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Rome on Saturday, the US State Department said in a statement.

"Secretary Rubio spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tonight from Rome," spokesperson Tammy Bruce said. "They discussed the situation in Gaza and their joint efforts to secure the release of all remaining hostages."

The situation in Gaza has dominated a summit of the Arab League in Baghdad, Iraq.

Speaking to delegates UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres insisted that the United Nations will not participate in any aid operations that do not adhere to international law.

"Nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people," Guterres said, calling for a permanent ceasefire.

Germany's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that the Israeli army's intensified offensive in the Gaza Strip raised concerns both with regard to Israel's strategic goals and the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave.

"Israel has, like every other state, the right to defend itself within the framework of international law," it said in a statement.

"But the current course of action could cost the lives of the remaining hostages, including of the German hostages who are still having to fear for their chances of survival after almost 600 days in Hamas' dungeons," the statement continued.

The ministry said the offensive also risked worsening the "catastrophic" humanitarian situation of Gaza residents and the plight of the hostages and made the prospects of a long-term ceasefire even more remote.

According to the statement, new German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul held a phone call with his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, on Saturday to discuss the situation and remains in close contact with other partners in the region.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has urged Israel to stop its military offensive in Gaza, saying Palestinian civilians must no longer pay the price of war.

"We have to tell the Israeli government: 'That's enough,'" Tajani said in a statement. "We no longer want to see the Palestinian population suffer. Stop the attacks, let's secure a ceasefire, free the hostages, but leave in peace a people who are victims of Hamas."

His remarks came after Israel's military said it was mobilizing to expand operations in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian health authorities meanwhile said at least 146 people had been killed in the past 24 hours in continuing Israeli airstrikes.

Tajani is due to meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Rome on Saturday. The Italian government has been one of Israel's most vocal supporters within Europe, but calls for a ceasefire have been growing amid the devastation being wrought on Gaza.

A new round of indirect negotiations with Israel has begun in Doha "without any preconditions," a senior Hamas official has said, adding that the talks were aimed at ending the war in Gaza.

"This round of negotiations began without any preconditions from either side, and the negotiations are open to discussing all issues," senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu said.

"Hamas will present its viewpoint on all issues, especially ending the war, [Israel's] withdrawal and prisoner exchange."

A two-month ceasefire in Gaza fell apart when Israel resumed its operations in the enclave on March 18, severely intensifying its blockade. Other attempts to stop the war, even temporarily, failed to materialize.

UN agencies have warned that Israel's total aid blockade on the territory has created critical shortages of food, clean water, fuel and medicines, with warnings of famine on the rise.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz argued that the intensified campaign was what brought Hamas back to the negotiating table.

"With the opening of Operation 'Gideon's Chariots' in Gaza, which is being led by the IDF command with great force, the Hamas delegation in Doha announced a return to negotiations on a hostage deal, in contrast to the recalcitrant position they had taken up until that moment," he claimed.

Previous negotiations to end the war had often failed, as Hamas remains adamant that any deal must involve a permanent end to the war and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Negotiations for the release of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza have been ongoing. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that he had instructed a negotiating team to head to the Qatari capital.