Israel’s attacks have persisted throughout the Gaza Strip, especially in the vicinity of hospitals and in the southern part of the besieged enclave, where ground operations are stepping up, Al Jazeera reported.
According to the latest casualty figures 18,894 Palestinians have been martyred in Gaza and the West Bank, including at least 7,794 children.
Additionally, at least 53,959 Palestinians have been injured, Al Jazeera reported.
Meanwhile, 1,147 people have been killed in Israel since October 7 while 8,730 have been injured, according to Al Jazeera citing the Israeli army.
Officials on November 10 revised the death toll from 1,405 to “around 1,200”.
US President Joe Biden and top national security adviser Jake Sullivan have discussed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scaling back Israel’s high-intensity operations in Gaza, a senior US official said on Thursday.
The focus on a “shift” in strategy is the latest in a weeks-long pressure campaign from Washington to do more to protect Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
Sullivan told Israel’s Channel 12 television that he had “constructive” talks with Netanyahu about Israel shifting to a more precise and targeted phase of the operations, but declined to give details or a timeline for the change.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the US was pushing for a shift to occur by the end of the year.
Asked about that time frame, Biden replied: “I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives, not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful.”
White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at a regular media briefing that Sullivan discussed a possible transition to lower-intensity operations in “the near future,” but declined to provide a specific timetable.
“Last thing we want to do is telegraph to Hamas what they’re likely to face in coming weeks and months,” he said.
The change could include “a shift in emphasis from high-tempo clearance operations, high-intensity clearance operations” to a lower-intensity focus on high-value targets, with more intelligence-driven raids and more “narrow, surgical military objectives,” a US official told reporters later Thursday.
Such a shift would mark a major inflexion point to a longer-term effort, the official said, adding that discussions were underway with Israel, the Palestinian Authority and other countries in the region about how to govern Gaza in the future.
Biden on Thursday urged Israel to “be more careful” in its attacks on Gaza and focus on saving civilian lives, a day after he warned Israel was starting to lose support over its “indiscriminate” bombing of the Palestinian enclave.
Sullivan this week told a Wall Street Journal event that he would discuss ways to scale back the conflict during his visit to Israel as well as Israel’s timetable for the war.
Israel pounded the length of the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing families in their homes even as Washington sent an envoy to encourage its ally to guard better against civilian casualties in its war against Hamas militants.
The more than two-month-old war is now raging across the entire Palestinian enclave, causing a humanitarian catastrophe, with little end in sight.
In Rafah, jammed with people in makeshift tents on Gaza’s southern edge, people wept at a morgue near bodies wrapped in bloodied shrouds.
Residents picked forlornly through the rubble of the adjacent homes of the Abu Dhbaa and Ashour families where Gaza health authorities said 26 people had been killed.
Up to 45% of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions that Israel has dropped on Gaza since October 7 have been unguided “dumb bombs” according to a US intelligence assessment reported by CNN.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been forced from their homes, many several times.
Israel has extended its ground campaign from the north to the south this month.
There has also been an intensification of clashes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Palestinian health ministry and international charities said at least 12 Palestinians, including a youth shot at a hospital, had been killed in a raid in the city of Jenin since Tuesday.
