The Israeli military ordered Palestinians to evacuate areas in northern Gaza on Sunday ahead of intensified fighting against Hamas, as US President Donald Trump called for Israel to “make the deal in Gaza” amid renewed efforts to broker a ceasefire and end the war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to hold talks later in the day on the progress of Israel’s offensive. A senior security official said the military will tell him the campaign is close to reaching its objectives, and warn that expanding fighting to new areas in Gaza may endanger the remaining Israeli hostages.
But in a statement posted on X and text messages sent to many residents, the military reissued a wide evacuation warning for Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip.
The area had already been ordered to evacuate on May 29 and has been part of a no-go zone since.
Civilians on Sunday were instructed to head for the Mawasi area on the coast in Gaza’s south.
“The IDF is operating with extreme force in these areas, and these military operations will escalate, intensify, and extend westward to the city center to destroy the capabilities of the terrorist organizations,” said the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson Col. Avichay Adraee in a post on X.
“Hamas is bringing a disaster upon you. Returning to dangerous combat zones poses a danger to your lives,” he added.
The evacuation order covered the Jabalia area and most Gaza City districts. Medics and residents said the Israeli army’s bombardments escalated in the early hours in Jabalia, destroying several houses and killing at least six people.
In Khan Younis in the south, five people were killed in an airstrike on a tent encampment near Mawasi, medics said.
As international criticism mounted over civilian deaths at Israeli-backed food distribution centers in the Palestinian enclave, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said late Saturday that his country “stands ready, Europe as well, to contribute to the safety of food distribution” in Gaza.
Such an initiative, he added, would also deal with Israeli concerns that armed groups such as Hamas were intercepting the aid.
Barrot did not provide any details on how France could help secure aid distribution to Gaza’s civilians.
The intensified fighting comes as Arab mediators, Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, begin a new ceasefire effort to halt the 20-month-old conflict and secure the release of hostages being held by Hamas.
Interest in resolving the Gaza conflict has heightened in the wake of US and Israeli bombings of Iran’s nuclear facilities, with Trump pushing Israel to return to the negotiating table in recent days.
Trump posted on Truth Social in the early hours of Sunday morning that Israel should “MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!! DJT,” appearing to press Netanyahu to clinch the ceasefire agreement, which Trump had earlier predicted would be inked within a week.
The post came hours after Trump called for a second time for Israeli prosecutors to close their corruption case against Netanyahu, saying “he is right now in the process of negotiating a Deal with Hamas, which will include getting the Hostages back.”
A Hamas official told Reuters the group had informed the mediators it was ready to resume ceasefire talks, but reaffirmed the group’s outstanding demands that any deal must end the war and secure an Israeli withdrawal from the coastal territory.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 50 hostages, including 49 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 56,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.