Israel presses on with its Gaza offensive after U.S. veto derails Security Council efforts to halt war

DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip —  Israel’s military pushed ahead with its punishing air and ground offensive in Gaza on Saturday, bolstered by a U.S. veto derailing U.N. Security Council efforts to end the war and word that an emergency sale of $106 million worth of tank ammunition had been approved by Washington.

Unable to leave Gaza, a territory 25 miles long by about 7 miles wide, more than 2 million Palestinians faced more bombardment Saturday, including in areas that Israel had described as safe zones.

The sale of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition was announced a day after the U.S. vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, a measure that had wide international support. The U.S. said Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken determined that “an emergency exists” in the national interest requiring the immediate sale, meaning it bypasses congressional review. Such a determination is rare.

Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs — ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told the council before the vote.

The Israeli military said Saturday that its forces fought and killed Hamas militants and found weapons inside a school in Shujaiya, a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City. It said soldiers discovered a tunnel shaft in the same neighborhood where they found an elevator, and in a separate incident, militants shot at troops from a U.N.-run school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun.

A day after Israel confirmed it was rounding up Palestinian men for interrogation, some told the Associated Press they had been badly treated.

Osama Oula said Israeli forces bound him and others with zip ties, beat them for several days and gave them little water to drink.

Another man, Ahmad Nimr Salman, showed his marked and swollen hands from the zip ties. He said his 17-year-old son, Amjad, was still being held. “They used to ask us, ‘Are you with Hamas?’ We say ‘no,’ then they would slap us or kick us,” he said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment when asked about the alleged abuse.

With the war now in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,700, the majority women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory, whose counts do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received the bodies of a total of 133 people from Israeli bombings over the last 24 hours, the Health Ministry said midday Saturday.

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Hours before the event, hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered to call for a cease-fire and for the U.S. to end financial and military aid to Israel.

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Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian casualties, accusing the militant group of using people as human shields, and says it has made considerable efforts with evacuation orders to get civilians out of harm’s way. It says 97 Israeli soldiers have died in the ground offensive after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 raid in Israel in which the militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 hostage.

Hamas said Saturday that it continued its rocket fire into Israel.

In Gaza, residents reported airstrikes and shelling in the north and south, including the southern city of Rafah near the Egyptian border — one area where the Israeli army had ordered civilians to evacuate to. In a colorful classroom there, knee-high children’s tables were strewn with rubble.

“We now live in the Gaza Strip and are governed by the American law of the jungle. America has killed human rights,” said Rafah resident Abu Yasser Khatib. “The Palestinian people will not leave and do not want to leave.”

In northern Gaza, Israel has been trying to secure the military’s hold in the face of heavy resistance from Hamas. Tens of thousands of residents are believed to remain despite evacuation orders, six weeks after troops and tanks rolled in.

More than 2,500 Palestinians have been killed since the Dec. 1 collapse of a week-long truce, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The truce saw hostages and Palestinian prisoners released, but more than 130 hostages are believed to remain in Gaza.

On Saturday, a kibbutz that came under attack on Oct. 7 said 25-year-old hostage Sahar Baruch had died in captivity. His captors said Baruch was killed during a failed rescue mission by Israeli forces Friday. The Israeli military said Hamas killed him.

With no further cease-fire in sight and a trickle of humanitarian aid reaching just a few parts of Gaza, residents reported severe food shortages. Nine of 10 people in northern Gaza reported spending at least one full day and night without food, according to a World Food Program assessment during the truce. Two of three people in the south said the same. The WFP called the situation “alarming.”

“I am very hungry,” said Mustafa Najjar, sheltering in a U.N.-run school in the devastated Jabaliya refugee camp in the north. “We are living on canned food and biscuits and this is not sufficient.”

While adults can cope with hunger, “it’s extremely difficult and painful when you see your young son or daughter crying because they are hungry and you are not able to do anything,” he said.

Israelis who had been taken hostage also saw the food situation deteriorate, the recently freed Adina Moshe told a rally in Tel Aviv seeking the rapid return of all. “We ended up eating only rice,” said Moshe, who was held for 49 days.

The rally speakers accused Israel’s government of not doing enough to bring loved ones home. “How can I sleep at night? How can I protect my daughter?” asked Eli Albag, the father of 18-year-old hostage Liri Albag.

On Saturday, 100 trucks carrying unspecified aid entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, said Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority. That is still well below the daily average before the war.

Despite growing international pressure, the Biden administration remains opposed to an open-ended cease-fire, arguing that it would enable Hamas to continue posing a threat to Israel. Officials have expressed misgivings in recent days about the civilian death toll and dire humanitarian crisis but have not pushed publicly for Israel to wind down the war.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has argued that “a cease-fire is handing a prize to Hamas, dismissing the hostages held in Gaza and signaling terror groups everywhere.”

Blinken continued to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and elsewhere.

“From now on, humanity won’t think the U.S.A. supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech Saturday.

Despite restrictions on demonstrations, protesters at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai called for a cease-fire.

Amid concerns about a wider conflict, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen threatened to prevent any ship heading to Israeli ports from passing through the Red Sea and Arabian Sea until food and medicine can enter Gaza freely. Spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said in a speech that all ships heading to Israel, no matter their nationality, will be a target.

Meanwhile, Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group claimed responsibility for nine attacks on Saturday, saying one targeted an Israeli post near the town of Metula. The Israeli army said one of its fighter jets struck a Hezbollah operational command center in Lebanon. The U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon said the tower of one of its bases along the border with Israel was hit during the skirmishes, with no injuries.

In southern Gaza, thousands were on the run after what residents called a night of heavy gunfire and shelling.

Israel has designated a narrow patch of barren southern coastline, Muwasi, as a safe zone. But Palestinians described desperately overcrowded conditions with scant shelter and no toilets. They faced an overnight temperature of around 52 degrees.

“I am sleeping on the sand. It’s freezing,” said Soad Qarmoot, who described herself as a cancer patient forced to leave her home in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

As she spoke, her children huddled around a fire.

Magdy reported from Cairo and Becatoros from Athens. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Andrew Wilks in Istanbul contributed to this report.