By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Lili Bayer
CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -The Israeli military maintained its pressure on Gaza City with heavy bombardments overnight, residents said, ahead of a Thursday meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers on plans to seize the enclave’s largest city.
The military a day earlier called up 60,000 reservists in a sign that the government was pressing ahead with the plan, despite international condemnation. However, one military official said that most reservists would not serve in combat and that the strategy to take Gaza City had not yet been finalised.
Calling up tens of thousands of reservists is also likely to take weeks, giving time for mediators to attempt to bridge gaps over a new temporary ceasefire proposal that Hamas has accepted, but the Israeli government is yet to officially respond to.
The proposal calls for a 60-day ceasefire and the release of 10 living hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas militants and of 18 bodies. In turn, Israel would release about 200 long-serving Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The Israeli government has restated that all of the remaining 50 hostages held by militants in Gaza must be released at once. Israeli officials believe that around 20 of them are still alive.
In a sign of growing despair at conditions in Gaza, residents staged a rare show of protest against the war on Thursday.
Carrying banners reading “Save Gaza, enough” and “Gaza is dying by the killing, hunger and oppression,” hundreds of people rallied in Gaza City in a march organised by several civil unions.
“This is for a clear message: words are finished, and the time has come for action to stop the military operations, to stop the genocide against our people and to stop the massacres taking place daily,” said Palestinian journalist Tawfik Abu Jarad during the protest.
The Gaza health ministry said at least 70 people had been killed in Israeli fire in the enclave in the past 24 hours, including eight people in a house in Sabra suburb in Gaza City.
A statement from the Palestinian Fatah movement said one of those killed in Sabra was a Fatah leader and former militant, along with seven members of his family. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
GAZA CITY SEIZURE
The plan to seize Gaza City was approved this month by the security cabinet, which Netanyahu chairs, even though many of Israel’s closest allies have urged the government to reconsider.
Netanyahu will hold a meeting on Thursday to approve operational plans, according to a source close to the prime minister.
He intends to launch the operation as soon as possible, which would include issuing warnings to residents to leave Gaza City, the source said.
Even as the military begins its preparations to launch the assault on Gaza City, Israeli officials have indicated that there is time for a ceasefire to be reached.
Netanyahu is under pressure from some far-right members of his coalition to reject a temporary ceasefire and instead to continue the war and pursue the annexation of the territory.
In Gaza City, thousands of Palestinians have left their homes as Israeli forces have escalated shelling on the Sabra and Tuffah neighbourhoods. Some families have left for shelters along the coast, while others have moved to central and southern parts of the enclave, according to residents there.
“We are facing a bitter-bitter situation, to die at home or leave and die somewhere else, as long as this war continues, survival is uncertain,” said Rabah Abu Elias, 67, a father of seven.
“In the news, they speak about a possible truce, on the ground, we only hear explosions and see deaths. To leave Gaza City or not isn’t an easy decision to make,” he told Reuters by phone.
Israeli tanks have been edging closer to densely populated Gaza City over the past 10 days.
On Thursday, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on X that the military had started making what he said were initial warning calls to medical and international organisations operating in Gaza’s north, telling them that Gaza City residents should start to prepare to move out of the city and towards the south.
Adraee shared a recording of what he said was an Israeli officer telling a Gazan health ministry official that hospitals in southern Gaza should also prepare to receive patients from medical facilities in the north, who will be forced to evacuate.
A Gaza health ministry official confirmed the phone call had taken place. The official said health authorities had no intention to evacuate Gaza City hospitals, saying that would risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
Two more people have died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the ministry said on Thursday. The new deaths raised the number of Palestinians who have died from such causes to 271, including 112 children, since the war began.
Israel disputes malnutrition and starvation figures posted by the Gaza health ministry.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Lili Bayer in Jerusalem. Additional reporting by Ebrahim Hajjaj in Gaza; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Ros Russell)
