Dec. 26 (UPI) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli troops in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, vowing amid growing calls for a cease-fire that their war with Hamas “will continue until the end, until we finish it.”
Netanyahu entered northern Gaza on Monday where he was briefed on the military’s fight in the region, according to a release from his office that said he was told about “the quantity of enemy war material that had been found in almost every home and the soldiers’ determination to continue with full force.”
The prime minister told his troops that he was “extraordinarily impressed” and that Israel is “proud” of them.
He said he was there to tell them that Israel will ensure their safety and that the war they are fighting will continue, despite the growing international calls for a cease-fire.
“We are not stopping,” he said, according to the release. “Whoever talks about stopping — there is no such thing. We are not stopping.”
His visit follows one of the deadliest single days of the 80-day conflict, with Gaza health officials stating 250 Palestinians were killed on Sunday. At least 70 people were killed in an Israeli strike late Sunday on the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza. The death toll in the conflict has risen above 20,000 Palestinians, with most of the dead being children and women.
As Netanyahu was in northern Gaza, staff of the World Health Organization was visiting Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza that was treating patients wounded in the strike that hit the nearby refugee camp.
Al-Aqsa Hospital staff reported to the WHO that it had received around 100 causalities.
“The hospital is taking in far more patients than its bed capacity and staff can handle,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Many will not survive the wait. It is currently running five operating theatres in the hospital and two more are being supported by [Doctors Without Borders], but it is still not enough.”
Sean Casey, emergency medical teams coordinator at the WHO, posted a video of himself in the hospital, in which he said he had just left the resuscitation room where medical staff tried to save a 9-year-old boy named Ahmed. He said Ahmed had suffered head injuries after being hit by shrapnel and rubble from a building that was struck while he was crossing the street in front of the shelter in which he and his family were staying.
“His brain matter was exposed. He was taken to a hospital … but there’s nothing anybody can do for him,” he said, adding that Ahmed was being “treated with sedation to ease his suffering as he died.”
“We’re seeing kids like Ahmed dying unnecessarily because of bombing and fighting and because the health system doesn’t have the capacity to even come close to managing these kinds of complex cases among the hundreds and the thousands of cases that come through these doors in front of me every day,” he said.
“This is an unacceptable situation.”
The WHO said the strike on the camp and the lack of capacity of hospitals to deal with the casualties is more reason why a cease-fire is needed.
The U.N.’s World Food Program also called for a cease-fire Monday, stating that nine out of 10 Gazans are eating less than one meal a day.
Arif Husain, chief economist at the WFP, said in a video posted to X that there is still time to avoid a famine in Gaza, but a cease-fire is needed.
“We need to make sure that people have food, people have water, they have shelter, they have sanitation. And for all those things to happen we need border crossings open, and that is only possible if there is a humanitarian cease-fire,” he said.
