The Japan Times - 'How much worse could it get?' Gazans fear full occupation

Rumours that the Israeli government might decide on a full occupation of the Palestinian territory spread from Israel to war-torn Gaza before any official announcement, sowing fear and despair.

Like nearly all Gazans, Hamada has been displaced several times by the war, and ended up in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, where the Israeli military carried out operations last month for the first time in the war.

"We've lived through many wars before, but nothing like this one. This war is long and exhausting, from one displacement to another. We are worn out," the woman told AFP.

Like her, Ahmad Salem, 45, wonders how things can get worse in a territory that already faces chronic food shortages, mass displacement and daily air strikes.

"We already live each day in anxiety and fear of the unknown. Talk of an expansion of Israeli ground operations means more destruction and more death," Salem told AFP.

"There is no safe space in Gaza. If Israel expands its ground operations again, we'll be the first victims," he said from a camp west of Gaza City where he had found shelter.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to chair a meeting of his security cabinet later on Thursday to seek approval to expand military operations in Gaza, including in densely populated areas.

- 'Just animals' -

“We read and hear everything in the news... and none of it is in our favour," said 40-year-old Sanaa Abdullah from Gaza City.

"Israel doesn't want to stop. The bombardment continues, the number of martyrs and wounded keeps rising, famine and malnutrition are getting worse, and people are dying of hunger", she said.

"What more could possibly happen to us?"

Precisely 22 months into the devastating war sparked by Hamas's October 2023 attack, Gaza is on the verge of "generalised famine", the United Nations has said.

Its 2.4 million residents are fully dependent on humanitarian aid, and live under the daily threat of air strikes.

The Israeli army announced in mid-July that it controlled 75 percent of Gaza, including a broad strip the whole length of the Israeli border and three main military corridors that cut across the territory from east to west.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that more than 87 percent of the Gaza Strip is under unrevoked evacuation orders or designated as an Israeli military zone.

The remaining areas are the most densely populated. The city of Khan Yunis in the south, Gaza City in the north, and Deir el-Balah and its adjacent refugee camps in the centre.

"Now they speak of plans to expand their operations as if we are not even human, just animals or numbers," Abdullah laments.

"A new ground invasion means new displacement, new fear and we won’t even find a place to hide", she told AFP.

"What will happen if they start another ground operation? Only God is with us."

A widening of the war "would risk catastrophic consequences for millions of Palestinians and could further endanger the lives of the remaining hostages in Gaza", senior UN official Miroslav Jenca told the Security Council on Tuesday.

The October 2023 attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 61,258 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

K.Hashimoto--JT