![Heavy fighting in Gaza City; The US says Palestinians should rule Gaza after the war](https://i-invdn-com.investing.com/trkd-images/LYNXMPEJA801U_L.jpg)
©Reuters. An Israeli soldier operates amid the ongoing ground invasion against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip, November 8, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
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By Humeyra Pamuk, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maytaal Angel
WASHINGTON/GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Street fighting raged in Gaza City, with Hamas fighters using tunnels to ambush Israeli forces, while the United States said Palestinians should rule Gaza after the war, going against the Israeli comments that it would control security indefinitely.
The Israeli army said its forces had entered the heart of Gaza City, Hamas’s main bastion and the largest city in the coastal enclave, while the Islamist group said its fighters had inflicted heavy casualties.
Hamas’ armed wing released a video on Wednesday that appears to show intense street fighting next to bombed buildings in Gaza City.
Israeli tanks have encountered heavy resistance from Hamas fighters who used underground tunnels to set up ambushes, according to sources with the Iran-backed Hamas and the separate militant Islamic Jihad group.
Israel attacked Gaza in response to a cross-border Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, in which gunmen killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
Palestinian officials said 10,569 people were killed on Wednesday, 40% of them children. Israel says 33 of its soldiers have been killed.
PALESTINIAN-LED GOVERNANCE
As the war between Israel and Hamas enters its second month, Washington has begun talks with Israeli and Arab leaders about a future for the Gaza Strip without Hamas rule.
While a plan has yet to be put in place, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined Washington’s expectations for the beleaguered coastal region.
“No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction of Gaza’s territory,” Blinken said at a news conference in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Blinken said there may be a need for “some transition period” at the end of the conflict, but post-crisis governance “must include a Palestinian-led administration and Gaza united with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News that Israel will assume security responsibility for the enclave “indefinitely” after the war.
Israeli officials have since tried to make clear that they have no intention of occupying Gaza after the war, but have yet to articulate how to ensure security without maintaining a military presence. Israel withdrew its troops from Gaza in 2005.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, says Gaza, where Hamas has ruled since 2007, is an integral part of what it envisions for a future Palestinian state.
Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the Hamas leadership, told the New York Times that the group’s attack on Israel was intended to break the status quo and open a new chapter in the fight against Israel.
“We have managed to put the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region experiences peace,” he said on Wednesday, according to the newspaper.
Saleh al-Arouri, an exiled Hamas commander, told Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV on Wednesday that his fighters are determined to inflict losses on Israeli forces in ground fighting in Gaza. “The more (Israel) spreads and expands on the ground, the greater the losses will become,” he said.
A clip from the Hamas video released Wednesday showed fighters in Gaza running past piles of rubble and stopping to fire shoulder-fired rockets at Israeli tanks. Another showed them firing guns from perches behind buildings and dumpsters. Reuters could not verify the images.
ISRAEL BOMBING TUNNELS
Israel’s chief spokesman, Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, said on Wednesday that “Hamas has lost control in the north” of Gaza.
Israeli combat engineers used explosives to destroy Hamas’ tunnel network, which extends hundreds of kilometers under Gaza, he said. The army says it has destroyed 130 tunnel shafts so far.
Israel has blamed Hamas for civilian deaths in Gaza, saying it is using Gaza residents as human shields and hiding weapons and operations centers in residential areas.
Israeli forces took foreign reporters to the edges of Gaza City on Wednesday. Journalists saw a devastated landscape with every building in sight scarred by battle.
Walls were blown away, bullet holes and shrapnel scattered across the facades and palm trees were shredded and broken.
Lt. Col. Ido, deputy commander of the 401st Brigade, who did not give his surname, said that by the time soldiers reached these buildings, all the families had left.
“So we know that everyone here is our enemy. We didn’t see any civilians here. Only Hamas,” he said, standing in a badly damaged children’s room painted pink.
Soldiers on the press tour said that beneath the family apartment were two floors of workshops making weapons, including drones discovered in five wooden boxes. It was not possible to verify the claim.
50,000 PALESTINIANS MOVE SOUTH
About 50,000 Palestinian civilians left the north on Wednesday, Hagari said, during a four-hour window of opportunity announced by Israel.
The Israeli army has repeatedly ordered residents to evacuate the north or risk being drawn into the violence. At least 19 people were killed Wednesday in an Israeli airstrike on a house near a hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, the enclave’s interior ministry said.
There was no immediate Israeli comment or details on the reported attack, which if confirmed would be the third attack on Gaza’s largest refugee camp in a week.
UN officials and G7 world powers have stepped up calls for a humanitarian pause in the war to help civilians in Gaza, where necessities such as food, medicine and fuel are running low.
Negotiations brokered by Qatar, where several Hamas political leaders are based, are seeking to secure the release of 10 to 15 hostages in exchange for a one- to two-day humanitarian break in Gaza, a source briefed on the talks said on Wednesday.