Israel has vowed to keep fighting in Gaza until it crushes Hamas after one of the deadliest single battles of the war for its soldiers, even as it faces mounting international calls for a ceasefire and unease on the part of its closest ally, the US.
The ambush, which killed at least nine soldiers, was a fresh reminder that Hamas is still able to fight after six weeks of devastating warfare aimed at crushing its military capabilities.
Israel has imposed a total siege and flattened much of northern Gaza with a massive air and ground campaign, driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
Hamas’s resilience has called into question whether Israel can defeat the militant group without wiping out Gaza.
Support for Hamas has surged among Palestinians, in part because of its stiff resistance to a far more powerful foe, while Israel’s most important ally, the US, has expressed growing discomfort over civilian deaths in what is already one of the 21st century’s most devastating military campaigns.
“We are continuing until the end, there is no question,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Wednesday. “I say this even given the great pain and the international pressure. Nothing will stop us.”
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan was visiting Israel on Thursday. The US has pressed Israel to take greater measures to spare civilians, and President Joe Biden said earlier this week that Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing”.
The ambush took place on Tuesday in the dense Gaza City neighbourhood of Shijaiyah, which was also the scene of a major battle during the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas. The dead included two high-ranking officers.
A total of 116 soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive.
Heavy fighting has raged for days in Shijaiyah and other areas in and around eastern Gaza City that were encircled earlier in the war.
Tens of thousands of people remain in the north despite repeated evacuation orders, saying they do not feel safe anywhere in Gaza or fear they may never return to their homes if they leave them.
The military released footage on Thursday from northern Gaza showing dozens of men with their hands above their heads walking in a straight line out of a damaged building.
Four of the men could be seen carrying assault rifles over their heads and setting them down in the street, along with what appeared to be several ammunition magazines.
The military said the men had exited the Kamal Adwan Hospital after troops battled militants in a nearby building. It described all of them as suspected militants, without providing evidence.
Israel says it is rounding up men in northern Gaza as it searches for Hamas fighters, and recent videos have shown dozens of detained men stripped to their underwear, bound and blindfolded in the streets. Some released detainees have said they were beaten and denied food and water.
In the video released by the military on Thursday, all the men appeared fully clothed except the four carrying weapons, who were shirtless.
Israel’s air and ground assault, launched in response to Hamas’s unprecedented attack into southern Israel on October 7, has killed more than 18,600 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Its latest count did not specify how many were women and children, but they have consistently made up around two thirds of the dead in previous tallies. Thousands more are missing and feared dead beneath the rubble.
Nearly 1.9 million Palestinians have been driven from their homes, with most seeking refuge in the south, even as Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets in all parts of the territory, often killing women and children.
Residents reported Israeli air strikes overnight in Rafah, the southern-most town along the Egyptian border. An Associated Press reporter saw 27 bodies brought into a local hospital early Thursday.
New evacuation orders issued as troops pushed into the southern city of Khan Younis earlier this month have pushed UN-run shelters to the breaking point and forced people to set up tent camps in even less hospitable areas.
Heavy rain and cold temperatures in recent days have compounded their misery, swamping tent camps and forcing families to crowd around fires to keep warm.
Israel has sealed Gaza off to all but a trickle of humanitarian aid, and UN agencies have struggled to distribute it since the offensive expanded to the south because of fighting and road closures. Almost no aid has reached the north since the start of the war.
Israel might have hoped that the war and its hardships would turn Palestinians against Hamas, hastening its demise, but as with previous rounds of violence, it seems to be having the opposite effect.
A poll conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research found 44% of respondents in the occupied West Bank said they supported Hamas, up from just 12% in September. In Gaza, the militants enjoyed 42% support, up from 38% three months ago.
That is still a minority in both territories. But even many Palestinians who do not share Hamas’s commitment to destroying Israel and oppose its attacks on civilians see it as resisting Israel’s decades-old occupation of lands they want for a future state.