Israel “cannot” unleash an offensive on southern Gaza on the scale it did in the north, the US said on Tuesday, in its strongest warning yet to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
The stern rhetoric came with the implicit suggestion the US is shifting its position on the Israeli offensive.
It comes as the families of Israeli hostages said their relatives had been moved from house-to-house by Hamas in the southern city of Khan Younis to avoid detection and have been supplied with little food.
Hamas released 12 more hostages last night, 10 Israelis and two Thai nationals. Two of the Israelis are dual Argentinian nationals and another is a dual Austrian national.
The youngest, 17-year-old Mia Leimberg, was released alongside her mother Gabriela, 59, and the family’s dog, a shih tzu named Bella.
The others were named by Israeli media as Ditza Heiman, 84, Tami Metzger, 78, Ada Sagi, 75, Ofelia Roitman, 77, Noralin Babadila Agojo, 60, Rimon Kirsht Buchshtav, 36, Clara Marman, 62, and Meirav Tal, 54.
Hamas ally, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said it had been involved in the release of some of the hostages.
Journalists at the scene of the handover confirmed that members of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s armed wings were present.
In return, 15 Palestinian children and 15 women were released from Israeli jails in the fifth night of exchange. Many of those released had not been convicted of any charges.
Hit back harder
Israel has vowed to renew its offensive once the fragile truce comes to an end.
Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, said its forces intend to hit back harder than before, fighting in the “entire” Gaza Strip with “the same amount of power and more”.
Khan Younis is expected to be a key target of Israel’s next offensive.
Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and one of the alleged architects of the Oct 7 attacks, is among those rumoured to be hiding out in the city, amid speculation the group could make their last stand in the area.
However, the city has also become a refuge for Palestinians driven out of the north by Israeli strikes.
An offensive in Khan Younis, which has seen its population of around 200,000 double in the last few weeks, would involve yet another mass displacement.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have dropped flyers in southern Gaza encouraging civilians to flee to a dedicated “safe zone” – the small coastal spot of al-Mawasi.
Critics have noted it would be impossible for Gaza’s more than two million residents to mass in the area, which is roughly the size of Los Angeles’s LAX airport.
Around 15,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli offensive began, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
International aid groups have also warned a lack of food, power and water has caused dire conditions in the small coastal territory, with disease rampant amid poor sanitary conditions.
No red lines
Washington said it had reinforced its stern warnings to Israel over the next stage of its offensive “from the president on down”.
During a briefing in Washington, a senior US official said: “We cannot have the sort of scale that took place in the north, replicated in the south.
“It will be beyond disruptive. It will be beyond the capacity of any humanitarian support network, however reinforced, however robust, to be able to cope with.”
Israel must operate with far greater precision and avoid “significant further displacement” of civilians, the official said.
The expected campaign must avoid attacks on critical infrastructure and humanitarian sites including hospitals in south and central Gaza, according to Washington and “has now 80 per cent of the population of the Gaza Strip”.
It comes a month after the White House said it had set no “red lines” for Israel’s response to Hamas’ Oct 7 attacks, when they killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and seized around 240 hostages.
Details of the conditions some hostages endured were shared with The Telegraph after their release.
Osnat Meiri said she was shocked to see her aunt, 78-year-old Ruti Munder, and cousin 55-year-old Keren Munder when she met them in a hospital outside Tel Aviv on Friday night.
The pair were released in the first group of hostages alongside Ruti’s grandson, nine-year-old Ohad.
“They were a lot thinner, they were very tired and they were undernourished,” she said. “They were themselves but there was that terror you could see in their eyes.”
While some hostages were kept in Hamas’s sprawling network of tunnels, the Munder family were taken to the city of Khan Younis.
They were shuttled from one house to another without beds to sleep on, with some of the residences clearly commandeered from civilians.
Her aunt told Ms Meiri, one flat they moved to had been so hastily abandoned by its residents the washing machine was still running.
Food allocations were gradually cut as the IDF offensive disrupted supplies.
Meanwhile, the heads of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agencies met Qatar’s prime minister in Doha on Tuesday to discuss a possible deal to extend the truce between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas.
A source briefed on the visit said Bill Burns, the CIA chief and David Barnea, head of Mossad, met prime minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani to “discuss the potential terms of a deal” beyond the two-day truce extension.
