JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s defense minister said Tuesday that “Gaza is burning” after heavy strikes overnight targeted Gaza City, with America’s top diplomat signaling an intensive operation targeting the Gaza Strip’s biggest city may be underway.
The comments by Defense Minister Israel Katz came as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio prepared to travel to Qatar, where he planned to meet with officials there still incensed over Israel’s strike last week that killed five Hamas members and a local security official.
While Arab and Muslim nations denounced the strike at a summit Monday, they stopped short of any major action targeting Israel, highlighting the challenge of diplomatically pressuring any change in Israel’s conduct in the grinding Israel-Hamas war.
Rubio, speaking to journalists while leaving Israel for Qatar, suggested the offensive had begun.
“Well, as you saw the Israelis have begun to take operations there. So we think we have a very short window of time in which a deal can happen,” Rubio said. “We don’t have months anymore, and we probably have days and maybe a few weeks so it’s a key moment — an important moment.”
“Our preference, our No. 1 choice, is that this ends through a negotiated settlement,” he added, while acknowledging the dangers an intensifed military campaign posed to Gaza.
“The only thing worse than a war is a protracted one that goes on forever and ever,” Rubio said. “At some point, this has to end. At some point, Hamas has to be defanged, and we hope it can happen through a negotiation. But I think time, unfortunately, is running out.”
Palestinian residents reported heavy strikes across Gaza City on Tuesday morning.
The Shifa Hospital in Gaza City received the bodies of 12 people killed in a strike that hit multiple houses in the western part of the city, with another 90 wounded arriving at the facility in recent hours, said Dr. Rami Mhanna, hospital managing director.
“It was a heavy night,” said Radwan Hayder, a Gaza City resident sheltering near the Shifa Hospital.
The Israeli military has not responded to questions for hours over whether the offensive had begun. However, Katz seemed to signal it was underway in a post on the social platform X.
“Gaza is burning,” he wrote. “The (Israel military) is striking with an iron fist at the terrorist infrastructure and (Israeli) soldiers are fighting heroically to create the conditions for the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas. We will not relent and we will not go back — until the completion of the mission.”
Both Netanyahu and Rubio said Monday the only way to end the conflict in Gaza is through the elimination of Hamas and the release of the remaining 48 hostages — around 20 of them believed to be alive — setting aside calls for an interim ceasefire in favor of an immediate end to the conflict.
Hamas has said it will only free the remaining hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Most of the hostages have since been released in ceasefires brokered in part by Qatar or other deals.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,871 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t say how many were civilians or combatants. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, says women and children make up around half the dead.
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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Samy Magdy in Cairo and Matthew Lee in Munich, Germany, contributed to this report.
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