Gaza under fire as Israel intensifies military offensive

Israel was issuing orders to call up tens of thousands of reservists ahead of an expanded offensive in Gaza, Israeli media reported Saturday, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked truce mediator Qatar.

Several news outlets reported the military had begun sending the orders for reservists to replace conscripts and active-duty soldiers in Israel and the occupied West Bank so they can be redeployed to Gaza.

A military spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied the reports, but relatives of AFP journalists were among those who received mobilisation orders.

According to Israel’s public broadcaster, the security cabinet is scheduled to meet on Sunday to approve the expansion of the military offensive in Gaza.

Israel resumed major operations across Gaza on March 18 amid deadlock over how to proceed with a two-month ceasefire that had largely halted the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack.

Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s political office, brokered the truce alongside the US and Egypt that came into effect in January. Efforts to secure a new deal however have appeared to stall in recent weeks.

Netanyahu accused the gas-rich Gulf state of “playing both sides with its double talk”. Posting on X, he said Qatar had to “decide if it’s on the side of civilization or if it’s on the side of Hamas barbarism”.

The Israeli prime minister, under pressure from his far-right supporters, without whom he would lose his governing coalition, has been increasingly vocal in his calls to continue the war since the restart of the Gaza offensive.

“Israel will win this just war with just means,” he added.

Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari rejected the “inflammatory” comments, charging that they “fall far short of the most basic standards of political and moral responsibility” in a statement on X.

Israel has also blocked all aid deliveries to Gaza since March 2, prompting warnings from UN agencies of impending humanitarian disaster.

– Hostage video –

Hamas on Saturday released footage of an apparently wounded Israeli-Russian hostage held in Gaza as 11 Palestinians, including three infants, were killed in a strike on the territory, its civil defence agency said.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 2,396 people had been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll from the war to 52,495.

Hamas still hold 58 hostages, 34 of whom the army says are dead. Hamas is also holding the remains of an Israeli soldier killed in a previous war in Gaza in 2014.

The group’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, released a video on Saturday showing a hostage AFP and Israeli media identified as Russian-Israeli Maxim Herkin.

In the undated four-minute video, Herkin, who turns 37 this month, was shown wearing bandages on his head and left arm.

Speaking in Hebrew in the video, which his family urged media to disseminate, he implied he had been wounded in a recent Israeli bombardment.

AFP was unable to determine the health of Herkin, who gave a similar message to other hostages shown in videos released by Hamas, urging pressure on the Israeli government to free the remaining captives.