A Palestinian flag flies from a truck carrying people and children with their belongings as people evacuate southbound from Gaza City on September 2, 2025. Photo: AFP
JERUSALEM:
Israel intensified its military build-up on Tuesday as reservists began responding to call-up orders ahead of a planned offensive to capture Gaza City, nearly two years into a devastating war.
Despite mounting pressure at home and abroad to end its campaign in the Palestinian territory, Israel is gearing up to seize Gaza’s largest city — intensifying bombardments and operating in the outskirts in recent days.
The United Nations estimates that nearly a million people live in Gaza City and its surroundings, where a famine has been declared.
In a statement, the military said it had been preparing in recent days “ahead of expanded combat operations and the large-scale mobilisation of reservists”.
Speaking at an event in Jerusalem, Defence Minister Israel Katz said: “Tens of thousands of reservists have left their homes, families and jobs to once again answer the national call — the return of all hostages and the neutralisation of Hamas.” Approving the military’s plans for the conquest of Gaza City in late August, Katz said he had authorised the call-up of about 60,000 reservists.
Israeli media reported that some 40,000 reservists were being called up in the first mobilisation wave.
On the ground in Gaza City, weary Palestinians told AFP they felt helpless and desperate ahead of the looming offensive.
“There is no place for us to go, and no means to get there. We are exhausted physically and mentally from displacement and from the war,” 60-year-old Amal Abdel-Aal, who lives in a tent in western Gaza City, told AFP by telephone.
“We have come to wish for death.”
In a post on X on Tuesday, the military’s Arabic-language spokesman warned Gazans of the upcoming “expansion of combat operations towards Gaza City”.
“We wish to remind you that in Al-Mawasi enhanced services will be provided, with an emphasis on access to medical care, water and food,” Avichay Adraee said, referring to an area in the south which Israel designated a humanitarian zone in the early months of the war but which has been hit by repeated strikes.
In mid-August, UN human rights office spokesman Thameen al-Kheetan said Palestinians in Al-Mawasi had “little or no access to essential services and supplies, including food, water, electricity and tents”.
Khalil al-Madhoun, 37, who lives in a partially destroyed apartment in western Gaza City said he had travelled twice to the south looking for somewhere to pitch a tent but found no space.
“The centre and the south are completely overcrowded,” he told AFP by telephone.