Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again rejected calls for an end to the war in Gaza, at the start of the regular Israeli cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday.
“If we end the war now, before our goals have been achieved, this will mean that Israel has lost the war,” Netanyahu said. He added that he would not permit this for as long as Israel’s objectives remained unmet.
Israel would not submit to international pressure on the issue, Netanyahu said, making clear that he was sticking to plans for the Israeli military to enter Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip to eliminate Hamas units sheltering there.
“To our friends in the international community, I say: Is your memory so short? Have you forgotten October 7 so quickly, the worst massacre of Jews since the Shoah (Holocaust)?”
Netanyahu called on the international community rather to exert pressure on the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and its chief backer, Iran. “They are the ones that pose a threat to the region and the entire world,” he said.
The Israeli military said on Sunday that it had killed more than a dozen Palestinian fighters in the Gaza strip in the last 24 hours.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that “approximately 18 terrorists were killed by sniper, shell and aerial fire” over the past 24 hours during military operations in central Gaza.
Gaza’s health authority announced that 92 bodies had been brought to hospitals within 24 hours and 130 other people had been injured. The authority, which is controlled by Hamas, accused Israel of having committed “nine massacres of families.”
This brings the number of people killed in the Palestinian territory to 31,645 since the beginning of the Gaza war more than five months ago, according to the health authority. Around 73,680 others had suffered injuries.
Numerous dead and injured are still believed to be under the rubble, Palestinian officials said. Rescue workers are not always able to reach them due to the fierce fighting.
Dpa is unable to independently confirm figures from either the Hamas-controlled health authority or the IDF.
Israel has come under growing international criticism for the conduct of its military operations, given the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the large numbers of civilian casualties.
According to the IDF, it is still operating in the centre of the Gaza Strip and in the city of Khan Younis in the south.
The IDF said that several “terrorists have been eliminated” and weapons caches were found there. The Israeli air force struck a compound from which an anti-tank missile had been fired at troops, the IDF said.
Airdrops of aid supplies on Gaza continued, with the German Air Force announcing on Sunday that German C-130 Hercules aircraft flying out of Jordan had dropped 4.4 tons of material by parachute on four pallets. Several other countries also deployed transport aircraft as part of the mission.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas led unprecedented and brutal attacks on Israel on October 7, which included massacres of civilians that left more than 1,200 people dead.
Palestinian militants also abducted about 250 people from Israel as hostages held in Gaza. The Israeli military believes about 100 of the hostages may still be alive in captivity there.
Israeli leaders have said that the goal of the military operations is to destroy Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since seizing power there in 2007.