The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday ordered another evacuation in central Gaza ahead of an offensive in the area, even as Israel and Hamas appeared to inch closer to a hostage-ceasefire deal in the 14-month war.
“This is an advance warning ahead of an offensive,” IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on X, asking the residents to move to a “humanitarian zone” in the Muwasi area.
The order included four residential block areas in Gaza’s central Bureij, where Adraee said that Palestinian operatives had fired rockets at Israeli troops.
The order came after sources with knowledge of the Gaza talks told Reuters on Tuesday that CIA Director Bill Burns was set to meet Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Doha on Wednesday to try to bridge the remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas on a hostage-ceasefire deal.
Three US, Israeli, and Arab officials have told The Times of Israel that a renewed push to close an agreement before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office has made progress, though major obstacles remain, despite various reports touting breakthroughs in the negotiations.
President Isaac Herzog was set to meet Wednesday with Trump’s Mideast envoy, Adam Boehler, in Jerusalem. Boehler, a former aide to Jared Kushner, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week.
Hostage family members and supporters protest outside the Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv, December 17, 2024. (Photo by Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
The deal on the table includes a six-week pause in fighting during which Hamas would release 30 hostages, including three of the four who are dual Israeli-US citizens, in exchange for Israel releasing hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Tuesday that “cautious optimism is a fair way to characterize it, though very much tempered by realism.”
Meanwhile, the Hamas-run civil defense agency in Gaza said on Wednesday that IDF strikes across the Strip had killed at least 12 people, the majority of them displaced Palestinians taking shelter in a house in the north.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 10 Palestinians were killed when an Israeli strike at dawn hit a house in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia.
There was no immediate comment from the IDF on the strikes.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Palestinians stand in wait for a food portion at a distribution center south of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on December 17, 2024 (BASHAR TALEB / AFP)
Later on Wednesday, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia said that “gunfire and tank shells” caused a fire in the intensive care unit, with some patients suffering burns.
Hospital director Hossam Abu Safia told AFP that staff had to quickly move all patients out of the intensive care unit.
The IDF said it was looking into that incident.
Elsewhere in northern Gaza, Bassal said a child was killed and several others wounded in a strike that hit a house in Jabalia, where Israeli forces have focused their operations in recent months.
Overnight, a tent in an Israeli-designated safe zone in the southern Gaza Strip was hit, killing one Palestinian, according to the civil defense spokesman.
IDF troops are seen operating in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, in a handout photo issued on December 17, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Vowing to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, Israel launched a wide-scale military operation in Gaza that the terror group says has killed over 45,000 people in the Strip, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 388. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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