Israel launches ground offensive in Gaza City, officials say
Israel has launched a ground offensive in Gaza City, officials have said, after weeks of intense bombardments across the territory’s largest urban centre saw entire apartment blocks reduced to rubble and forced many Palestinian people to flee despite there being nowhere safe to go.
Hundreds of thousands of residents remain in Gaza City, however, where a famine – caused by Israeli restrictions on aid – has already been declared.
Two officials said the ground invasion was in its early stages, according to the New York Times. Israel is justifying its assault by saying Gaza City is one of the last remaining Hamas strongholds.
Key events
Palestine’s foreign ministry has just demanded “urgent international intervention” after Israel’s installation of “additional iron gates” at the “remaining entrances” to Palestinian towns, villages and camps in the occupied West Bank.
In an update on X, the foreign ministry, part of the Palestinian Authority, which is based in the occupied West Bank, wrote:
The latest of these was the installation of an iron gate at the entrance to the towns of Al-Eizariya and Ar-Ram, among others, bringing the number of gates that sever the West Bank to nearly a thousand.
These gates violate the unity of the occupied Palestinian territories and the geographical integrity of the State of Palestine, blatantly infringing on the rights of Palestinian citizens to freedom of movement, access to their livelihoods, healthcare and educational facilities, fulfillment of their needs, and visits to their relatives.
The ministry considers the occupation’s checkpoints, iron gates, and military towers as an extension of settlement activity and outposts, falling within the framework of dividing the occupied West Bank into fragmented, disconnected parts and turning Palestinian communities into veritable closed prisons, where entry or exit is prohibited without permission from the occupation.
The ministry warns the international community and all countries of the repercussions of installing these gates, viewing them as a prelude to imposing further colonial and settlement control over the West Bank. They are part of the crime of gradual, both overt and covert, annexation of the West Bank, in flagrant violation of international law.
In an update on X, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) wrote:
IDF troops have begun expanding ground operations in Gaza City as part of Operation Gideon’s Chariots II In the past day, IDF activity in Gaza City has began according to the operational plan, and is expected to expand in line with the current situational assessment.
Its aim is to achieve the war’s objectives in Gaza and to enhance the achievements made during combat.
Some Israeli military commanders have expressed concern about the expanded assault on Gaza City, warning that it could endanger the remaining hostages held by Hamas, and may be a “death trap” for troops.
Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, at a meeting Benjamin Netanyahu convened on Sunday evening with security chiefs, urged the prime minister to pursue a ceasefire deal, three Israeli officials told AFP.
About 1,200 people were killed and 251 hostages took in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October 2023. Israeli authorities say 20 of the remaining 48 hostages in Gaza are alive.
In response to the genocide conclusion, Amnesty International UK’s crisis response manager, Kristyan Benedict, has also urged the British government to take much stronger action against Israel.
Benedict said:
We welcome the UN commission’s findings that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza – a significant and necessary moment. Now the UK government must change its position and take action without delay.
Its continued reluctance to officially acknowledge even the risk of the ongoing genocide in Gaza is increasingly untenable and stands in stark contrast to overwhelming legal evidence and the mounting consensus among international genocide scholars and human rights organisations.
Amnesty International UK is calling for the UK government to immediately take the following actions to help stop what is increasingly being recognised as a genocide being committed by Israel against Palestinian people in Gaza:
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End all UK arms exports to Israel
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Support the international criminal court and enforce its arrest warrants
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Implement international court of justice rulings in full
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Ban all trade with Israeli settlements
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Adopt targeted sanctions against those Israeli officials most implicated in international crimes
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Demand an end to Israel’s occupation in Palestinian territories
UK will remain complicit in genocide in Gaza unless it halts all arms exports to Israel, charity warns British PM
We have some reaction to the United Nations commission of inquiry saying earlier today that Israel has been committing genocide against Palestinian people in Gaza (you can read more details contained within the report here).
Hannah Bond, co-CEO of ActionAid UK, said:
Today’s damning verdict by the UN commission of inquiry is unequivocal: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Our message to the prime minister is just as clear: unless you halt all arms exports to the Israeli government immediately, the UK remains complicit.
Our government has dithered for long enough. If this won’t spur it into action, what will? For the sake of Palestinians in Gaza and our collective humanity, we cannot let today’s finding fall on deaf ears, and as the Israeli army ramps up its operation to raze Gaza City to the ground, there is no more time to waste.
The UK must take decisive action now to bring about an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and it must ensure that there is full accountability for all war crimes, crimes against humanity and atrocities that have taken place throughout this long and devastating war.
Jason Burke
Jason Burke is our international security correspondent
UN officials have told the Guardian that they have recorded 142,387 people crossing from the north of Gaza to the south between 14 August and 14 September, with about half coming in the last four days of that period.
This contrasts with Israeli officials who yesterday told reporters that about 320,000 people had moved from northern Gaza to areas designated by the Israeli military in the centre and the south of Gaza.
Rosalie Bollen, from Unicef, said more than 800,000 people remained in Gaza City including 450,000 children.
Some – the elderly, very sick, very young, injured or handicapped – simply cannot move while many are reluctant to move to areas that they believe are unsafe, overcrowded and have little in the way of any services.
Unicef’s staff in Gaza City described a “very difficult night” with an “ever increasing pace of bombardment” but said Israeli tanks remained on the outskirts and had not advanced yet.
My colleague William Christou explains in this analysis piece why the Israeli attack in Doha has shattered Qatar’s faith in US protection from such action. Here is an extract:
Qatar has been useful. It has facilitated peace talks between Israel and Hamas, did the same with the Taliban and the US during the war in Afghanistan, and hosts the Al Udeid air base, the largest American military base in the Middle East.
For decades the arrangement has held. The US supplied arms, parked its aircraft carrier in the Gulf and provided political cover internationally. The support has helped spare Gulf nations from the unrest that has consumed much of the Middle East, despite the rivalry with Iran.
That changed when the US failed to stop the strike on Qatar this week, despite Israel being one of its closest allies. Donald Trump said he tried to give warning, but Qatar said it was only notified after the strike.
Doha strongly condemned the strike, with al-Thani calling it “state terror” in an interview with CNN.
Rubio arrives in Qatar to try to limit the damage to US relations in the Gulf caused by Israeli strike on Doha
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is visiting Qatar today to lobby the Gulf state to continue its mediation between Israel and Hamas after the Israeli attack on Doha targeting the Hamas leadership last week seriously strained relations between the US and Qatar.
Hamas said six people were killed in the attack but that its leaders survived. Despite pressure to rebuke Israel, Rubio offered the US’s unwavering support to Benjamin Netanyahu when he met the Israeli prime minister in Jerusalem yesterday.
He told reporters as he left Israel: “We think we have a very short window of time in which a deal can happen. We don’t have months anymore, and we probably have days and maybe a few weeks to go.”
Rubio said a diplomatic solution in which Hamas demilitarises remained the US preference, although he added: “Sometimes when you’re dealing with a group of savages like Hamas, that’s not possible, but we hope it can happen.”
Now visiting Doha just as Israel launched its ground offensive into Gaza City, Rubio was pessimistic about a ceasefire deal but said Qatar was in a unique position to help.
Here are some of the latest images being sent to us over the newswires from Gaza City:
Israel military official says troops have advanced towards the centre of Gaza City
Julian Borger
The military spokesperson pointed out that the IDF has been on the outskirts of Gaza City for several weeks, but the overnight operations involved a significant advance towards the centre.
“Last night we began deepening our operations deeper into Gaza City. It’s a gradual thing. It is not a black or white thing. But yesterday was a big step forward in deployment and also in operations on the ground,” the spokesperson said.
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