Israel military preparing for ground assault of Gaza, but no decision yet

Palestinians in Gaza spent the night in pitch darkness, surrounded by the ruins of pulverized neighbourhoods, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “crush and destroy” Hamas, with the support of a new war cabinet that includes a longtime opposition critic.

“Every Hamas member is a dead man,” Netanyahu said in a televised address.

International aid groups warned that deaths in Gaza could accelerate as the territory runs out of supplies amid an Israeli blockade. The war, which was ignited by a bloody and wide-ranging Hamas attack into Israel, has already claimed at least 2,400 lives on both sides.

Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters Thursday that forces “are preparing for a ground manoeuvre if decided,” but that the political leadership has not yet ordered one. A ground offensive in Gaza, the first since the 2014 war, would likely bring even higher casualties on both sides in brutal house-to-house fighting.

WATCH | Costs and outcomes for Israel and Hamas: Possible political costs and outcomes for Israel and HamasFeatured VideoNathan Thrall, an author and former director of International Crisis Group’s Arab-Israel project, discusses potential practical and political outcomes of Hamas’s attacks on Israel as well as the Israeli military’s response.

The U.S. has also pledged unwavering support, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday to meet with Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders. He plans to meet Friday in Jordan with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

Netanyahu alleged that the attackers engaged in atrocities, including binding boys and girls and shooting them in the head, burning people alive, raping women and beheading soldiers.

The prime minister’s allegations could not be independently confirmed, and authorities did not immediately offer further details.

The risk of a wider war was evident Wednesday after the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at an Israeli military position and claimed to have killed and wounded troops.

Israel targets Hamas leadership

The Israeli military said overnight strikes targeted Hamas’s elite Nukhba forces, including command centres used by the fighters who attacked Israel on Saturday, and the home of a senior Hamas naval operative that it said was used to store unspecified weapons.

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said Israeli strikes demolished two multi-storey houses on top of residents without warning, killing and wounding “a large number” of people, mainly civilians. Hamas has threatened to kill Israeli hostages if Israel strikes Palestinian civilians without warning.

Militants in Gaza are holding an estimated 150 people taken hostage from Israel — soldiers, men, women, children and older adults — and they have fired thousands of rockets into Israel over the past five days.

WATCH | Non-stop anxiety when family is trapped in Gaza: What it’s like to have family trapped in GazaFeatured VideoThe anxiety is non-stop for Canadians with families trapped in Gaza as Israel mounts an offensive against Hamas. CBC’s Ellen Mauro was with Reem Sultan in London, Ont., when she finally got through to her nephew for an update.

Israel has halted the entry of food, water, fuel and medicine into Gaza. On Tuesday, Gaza’s only power station ran out of fuel and shut down, leaving only lights powered by scattered private generators. Those will shut off as well if fuel is not allowed in.

A senior official with the the International Committee of the Red Cross warned that lack of electricity could cripple hospitals, as he called for Hamas to release hostages.

“As Gaza loses power, hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk. Kidney dialysis stops, and X-rays can’t be taken,” said Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC’s regional director. “Without electricity, hospitals risk turning into morgues.”

Reservists to arrive from around world

In Israel, opposition leader Benny Gantz, a former defence minister and political opponent of Netanyahu, joined a new wartime cabinet at a time when the Israeli military appears increasingly likely to launch a ground offensive into Gaza.

Israel has mobilized 360,000 reservists, massed additional forces near Gaza and evacuated tens of thousands of residents from nearby communities. Israel’s El Al Airlines said it would operate flights this Saturday from New York and Thailand to bring back reservists, the first time in 40 years it would fly on the Jewish Sabbath.

Smoke plumes billow during Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on Thursday. (Ibrahim Hams/AFP/Getty Images)

The Israeli government is under pressure to topple Hamas after its militants stormed through a border fence Saturday and massacred hundreds of Israelis in their homes, on the streets and at an outdoor music festival. At least 1,200 Israelis have been killed.

Israel’s increasingly destructive airstrikes in Gaza have flattened entire city blocks and left unknown numbers of bodies beneath debris. A ground offensive in Gaza, whose 2.3 million residents are densely packed into a strip of land only 40 kilometres long, would likely result in a surge of casualties on both sides.

LISTEN | Voices from Gaza:

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339,000 displaced

The UN said late Wednesday the number of people displaced by the airstrikes had soared 30 per cent within 24 hours, to 339,000, two-thirds of them crowding into UN schools. Others sought shelter in the shrinking number of safe neighbourhoods.

The Egyptian government rejected an American proposal to allow Palestinians fleeing Israel’s bombardment to leave Gaza, a senior Egyptian official said early Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Egypt believes that Palestinians leaving Gaza through its Rafah crossing would harm the Palestinian cause, and its state-run media reported that the Israeli offensive is part of a scheme to empty the enclave.

Health system near collapse, surgeon says

The death toll in Gaza rose to 1,200 early Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, has only enough fuel to keep power on for three days, said Matthias Kannes, a Gaza-based official for Doctors Without Borders. The group said the two hospitals it runs in Gaza were running out of surgical equipment, antibiotics, fuel and other supplies.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a reconstructive surgeon at al-Shifa, said he had 50 patients waiting to go to the operating room.

Palestinian children who fled their homes due to Israeli strikes look through a makeshift tent as they shelter at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Thursday. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

“We’re already beyond the capacity of the system to cope,” he said. The health system “has the rest of the week before it collapses, not just because of the diesel. All supplies are running short.”

The Palestinian Red Crescent said other hospitals’ generators will run out in five days. Residential buildings, unable to store as much diesel, likely will go dark sooner.

Israeli settlers attack West Bank village

In a new tactic, Israel is warning civilians to evacuate whole Gaza neighbourhoods, rather than just individual buildings, then levelling large swaths in waves of airstrikes.

Even with the evacuation warnings, Palestinians say some are unable to escape or have nowhere to go, and that entire families have been crushed under rubble.

Other times, strikes come with no notice, survivors say.

“There was no warning or anything,” said Hashem Abu Manea, 58, who lost his 15-year-old daughter, Joanna, when a strike late Tuesday levelled his home in Gaza City.

The Israeli military said more than 1,200 people, including 189 soldiers, have been killed in Israel, a staggering toll unseen since the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria that lasted weeks.

Israel says roughly 1,500 Hamas militants were killed inside Israel, and that hundreds of the dead inside Gaza are Hamas members.

In the West Bank, Israeli settlers attacked a village south of Nablus, opening fire on Palestinians and killing three, the territory’s health ministry said. More than two dozen Palestinians have died in fighting in the West Bank since the weekend.