Only 1 hospital able to accept new patients in northern Gaza | Qassam offers to release 70 prisoners, says spokesperson | Resistance fighters push back Israeli military trying to reach west

Only one hospital remains operational in the northern Gaza Strip, the UN reported on Tuesday. It is one of just 14 hospitals still operating across Gaza. 

With the Qassam Brigades continuing to push back the Occupation’s invasion, another member of the Israeli military was reportedly killed, bringing the total to at least 40 since the ground invasion was launched at the end of October.

More than two million people who live in the strip — hundreds of thousands of whom are now displaced from their homes and tens of thousands are wounded — continue to confront constant danger, amid a rapidly collapsing healthcare system in the total absence of fuel, extreme food and water scarcity, and the ongoing and relentless Israeli bombardment and westward ground invasion, sources said.

Meanwhile a few more Palestinian nationals entered Egypt for urgent medical care on Tuesday, in addition to the few dozens who had been allowed in since the border permitted the wounded to cross out of Gaza, as well as at least 400 Egyptian and foreign citizens, not including the hundreds who had previously exited via Rafah.

The Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza City is now the only health facility in northern Gaza able to accept new patients, said a United Nations report on Tuesday. The World Health Organization said that only 14 of the strip’s 36 hospitals are still working as fuel supplies run out.

A “complete siege,” as ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the beginning of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza in October, has prevented all fuel from reaching the strip, and has limited the delivery of food, water, and medical aid to the south of Gaza. Egypt, which manages the border crossing at Rafah where meager aid supplies are allowed into Gaza, has criticized Israel’s obstructive security measures for slowing down deliveries, while Arab and Islamic countries participating in a summit on November 11 called for the Rafah border crossing to be opened.

But with the existing conditions, those in the strip still able to speak to the media describe the horror of dwindling food supplies and a collapsed health system confronted with tens of thousands of wounded people.

It is not clear how many of the wounded are being allowed out of Gaza. Reports in the domestic press on Tuesday said that at least 4 Palestinians crossed via the Rafah border into Egypt, of whom two were taken to Arish General Hospital for treatment. Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said last week that 172 of Gaza’s wounded had entered Egypt thus far.

At the same time, a group of 400 Egyptians and foreign passport holders were also allowed to leave the strip through Egypt on Tuesday, including 99 Russians. This is in addition to at least 700 foreign nationals who had exited since authorities at Rafah began allowing people out on November 1 following laborious negotiations.

Meanwhile in ongoing clashes in Gaza, fighters for the Palestinian resistance continued to push back Occupation forces trying to move westward into Gaza, sources in the north and south of the strip told Mada Masr on Monday.

Israel’s military has failed to advance westward on southern areas of the strip, including Khan Younis, Bureiji and Maghazi, as well as in Shujaiya, Jabalia, and Beit Hanoun in the north, as fighters for the Qassam Brigades and other groups in the Palestinian resistance targeted their vehicles, causing major damage to their ranks, the sources said. 

The Qassam Brigades announced on Monday that they had destroyed Occupation personnel carriers to the west of Gaza City using Yassin 105 missiles, confirming that they were left “completely burned.” The group also destroyed four tanks in the same area, another tank south of that location and four vehicles in the north of it, they said.

Qassam also bombarded the invading forces with heavy caliber mortar shells in the south of the Gaza Strip, they said, while the Quds Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, focused its offensive on the Israeli military sites of Kissufim and Mars, which they targeted with “concentrated missile barrages.”

In addition to at least 39 Israeli military deaths since the Occupation launched its ground invasion on October 28, two more soldiers were killed in Gaza, the IDF said on Monday, including a major in the Maglan commando unit.

Negotiations over prisoner releases continue as the battle rages on, with Qassam Brigades spokesperson Abu Obaida saying on Monday that Israel was stalling a Qatari-mediated deal to release dozens of prisoners taken by Hamas in its October 7 operation.

Abu Obaida said the deal would entail a five-day truce to secure the release of up to 70 Israeli women and children held by Hamas in exchange for the release of 200 Palestinian children and 75 women detained in Israeli prisons.

"The enemy is not only throwing away the lives of Palestinian civilians, but also doesn't even care about killing its captives," Abu Obaida said in a voice recording.

Israel has continued to reject a ceasefire unless all 239 of the prisoners it says were taken by Hamas are released.

"The truce should include a complete ceasefire and allow aid and humanitarian relief everywhere in the Gaza Strip," said Abu Obeida on Monday.

Abu Obaida warned, however, that the non-stop Israeli bombing on the Gaza Strip is putting the lives of Israeli captives at risk, including an Israeli soldier who was killed by an airstrike days earlier.

No progress has emerged on the prisoner exchange deal, but Israeli officials continued over recent days to float ideas for their endgame in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed in a presser on Saturday that he would not accept any Palestinian civilian authority ruling the strip, and plans for Israel to maintain “security control” over it. 

“There will also not be a civil authority that educates its children to hate Israel, to kill Israelis, to eliminate the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

A scenario in which Israel would control the strip has been rejected by Egypt as well as other regional parties, and even by the United States, which has said that the enclave should be ruled by the Palestinian Authority and not reoccupied by Israel.

But two Israeli lawmakers pushed for Palestinians to be expelled from Gaza entirely in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal on Monday, calling on western nations to take in the population of Gaza and on the international community to provide financial support for their resettlement. A Tuesday statement from Israel’s far-right finance minister supported the proposal, saying the “voluntary emigration” of Gazans is “the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the entire region.”

“The State of Israel will no longer be able to accept the existence of an independent entity in Gaza,” he said.

Israel reportedly floated scenarios for mass displacement from Gaza at the outset of its assault on the strip, with some outlets saying that Egypt was pressured to accept thousands of Palestinians in Sinai. Egypt has pushed back definitively against this outcome.

However, Israel continues to push for Palestinians to evacuate the northern part of the strip. Displaced Gazans, of whom there are an estimated 1.5 million, continued on Monday to journey from the north of the strip to areas south of the Gaza Valley. 

Israel has claimed that the journey would be safe, and that it would ensure there are “safe corridors” for people to pass southward. Yet many have described their fellow travelers being killed or injured en route by Israeli fire. On Monday, UNRWA said that nearly one third its 101 workers who died in Gaza since the start of the war were killed in southern or middle areas.

Fidaa Abu Maryam, one of those displaced, told Mada Masr she was first displaced from the north to her relatives’ house at al-Shati camp, west of Gaza City, where she witnessed a massacre, before leaving again toward a shelter for refugees in the south.

She added that, like other displaced Palestinians, she suffers extremely harsh conditions due to the scarcity of food and water and the spread of infectious diseases. She explained to Mada Masr that she witnessed a large crowd of displaced people in the shelters near her relatives’ place in al-Shati camp, and that “UNRWA has abandoned its responsibility toward civilians to provide food, water, and even lighting.”

UNRWA said that its fuel supplies, as well as telecommunications across Gaza, will grind to a halt on Thursday.