Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the military would have to retain open-ended security control over the Gaza Strip long after the war against Hamas ends.

The remarks came as Israel’s military said its troops had entered Gaza’s second-largest city in its its pursuit to wipe out the territory’s Hamas rulers.

The war has already killed more than 15,000 Palestinians and displaced over three-quarters of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, who are running out of safe places to go.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll in the territory since October 7 has surpassed 15,890, with more than 41,000 wounded.

The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths, but said 70% of the dead were women and children.

Israel says it targets Hamas operatives and blames civilian casualties on the militants, accusing them of operating in residential neighbourhoods.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt, which mediated an earlier ceasefire, say they are working on a longer truce.

Hamas said talks on releasing more of the scores of hostages seized by militants on October 7 must be tied to a permanent ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Israel has intensified its bombardment of Gaza’s second largest city, Khan Younis, with dozens of injured people rushed to hospital as a new phase of the war continues.

Under US pressure to prevent further mass casualties, Israel said it is being more precise as it widens its offensive into southern Gaza after obliterating much of the north.

At the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, ambulances brought dozens of injured people in throughout the night. At one point, a car pulled up and man emerged carrying a young boy in a bloody shirt whose hand had been blown off.

Satellite photos taken on Sunday showed tanks and troops massing outside Khan Younis, the latest target of the offensive, which was home to more than 400,000 people before the war.

Israel has ordered people out of nearly two dozen areas instead of the entire region, as it did in the north.

But with most of Gaza’s population already packed into the south, cramming UN shelters and family homes, there are few places left to go. Israel has barred people who fled the north earlier in the war from returning.

Palestinians say that as Israel continues to strike across the besieged territory, there are no areas where they feel safe, and many fear that if they leave their homes they will never be allowed to return.

Israel has said it must dismantle Hamas’ extensive military infrastructure and remove it from power in order to prevent a repeat of the October 7 attack that ignited the war.

The surprise assault through the border fence saw Hamas and other Palestinian militants kill about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capture some 240 men, women and children.

The Israeli military has said it makes every effort to spare civilians and accuses Hamas of using them as human shields as it fights in dense residential areas, where it has a labyrinth of tunnels, bunkers, rocket launchers and sniper nests.

But the militant group is deeply rooted in Palestinian society, and its determination to end decades of open-ended Israeli military rule is shared by most Palestinians, even those opposed to its ideology and its attacks on Israeli civilians.

That will complicate any effort to eliminate Hamas without causing massive casualties and displacement.

Even after weeks of unrelenting bombardment, Hamas’ leaders in Gaza were able to conduct complex ceasefire negotiations and orchestrate the release of more than 100 Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners last week. Palestinian militants have also kept up their rocket fire into Israel, both before and after the truce.

The fighting has brought unprecedented death and destruction to the coastal strip.

The health ministry in Gaza said the death toll in the territory since October 7 has surpassed 15,890 people – 70% of them women and children – with more than 42,000 wounded. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. It says hundreds have been killed or injured since the ceasefire’s end, and many still are trapped under rubble.

An Israeli army official provided a similar figure for the death toll in Gaza on Monday, after weeks in which Israeli officials had cast doubt on the ministry’s count.

The official said at least 15,000 people have been killed, including 5,000 militants, without saying how the military arrived at its figures. The military says 84 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza offensive.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday that it was too soon to pass judgment on Israeli operations, but that it was unusual for a modern military to identify precise areas of expected ground manoeuvres and ask people to move out, as Israel has done in Khan Younis.

“These are the kinds of steps that we have asked them to undertake.” he said. “These are the conversations we’re having day in, day out.”

The US has pledged unwavering support to Israel since the October 7 attack, including rushing weapons and other aid to the country.

A teenager has died and at least 18 others have been hurt after two explosions near bus stops in Jerusalem, in what police said were suspected attacks by Palestinians.

The first blast occurred near a bus stop on the edge of the city, where many commuters gather during rush hour. The second detonation took place in Ramot, a neighbourhood in the city’s north.

The victim was identified as 15-year-old Aryeh Shechopek, who was heading to a Jewish seminary when the blast went off, according to a notice announcing his death.

The apparent attacks came as Israeli-Palestinian tensions are high, following months of Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank prompted by a spate of deadly attacks against Israelis that killed 19 people. There has been a surge in Palestinian attacks in recent weeks.

The violence also comes as former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds coalition talks after national elections and is likely to form what is expected to be Israel’s most right-wing government.

Police said their initial findings showed that explosive devices were placed at the two sites. The twin blasts occurred amid the buzz of rush hour traffic and police closed part of a main highway leading out of the city, where the first explosion went off.

Video from shortly after the first blast showed debris strewn along the pavement as the wail of ambulances blared.

Yosef Haim Gabay, a medic who was at the scene when the first blast occurred, told Israeli Army Radio:

“It was a crazy explosion. There is damage everywhere here.

“I saw people with wounds bleeding all over the place.”

While Palestinians have carried out stabbings, car rammings and shootings in recent years, bombings have become very rare since the end of a Palestinian uprising nearly two decades ago.

The Islamic militant Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and once carried out suicide bombings against Israelis, praised the perpetrators of the attacks, calling it a heroic operation, but stopped short of claiming responsibility.

Hamas spokesman Abd al-Latif al-Qanua said: “The occupation is reaping the price of its crimes and aggression against our people.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extremist legislator who has called for the death penalty for Palestinian attackers and who is set to become the minister in charge of police under Mr Netanyahu, said the attack gave him the impetus to take a tougher stance on Palestinian attackers.

“It’s time to take a hard line against terrorists, it’s time to make order,” he tweeted.

More than 130 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the West Bank and east Jerusalem this year, making 2022 the deadliest year since 2006. The Israeli army said most of the Palestinians killed have been militants.

However, stone-throwing youths protesting against the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.

At least five more Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks in recent weeks.

An Israeli court jailed an Israeli Arab poet for five months on Tuesday after convicting her of incitement to terrorism for a poem and remarks she posted on social media during a wave of Palestinian street attacks.

Dareen Tatour, 36, posted on Facebook and YouTube a video of herself reading out her poem “Resist, My People, Resist”, as a soundtrack to footage of masked Palestinian youths throwing stones and firebombs at Israeli soldiers.

Tatour published her poem in October 2015 during a spate of deadly Palestinian stabbing, shooting and ramming attacks on Israelis. She was arrested a few days later, and prosecutors said her post was a call for violence. She denied this.

Her case became a cause celebre for freedom of speech advocates in Israel and abroad. It drew attention to the advanced technology used by Israeli security agencies to trawl through social media to identify and arrest users suspected of incitement to violence, or of planning attacks.

Tatour said her poem was misunderstood by the Israeli authorities as it was not a call for violence, rather for non-violent struggle.

U.S.-backed negotiations on a Palestinian state in territory Israel captured in a 1967 war have been stalled since 2014.

Tatour was also charged with supporting a terrorist group. Prosecutors said she had expressed support for the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad’s call for an uprising.

“I wasn’t expecting justice to be done. The case was political from the start, because I am Palestinian and support freedom of speech,” she told reporters at the Nazareth Magistrate’s Court in northern Israel.

ARAB MINORITY

Tatour belongs to Israel’s Arab minority, which comprises mainly descendants of the Palestinians who remained on their land after the 1948 Arab-Jewish war that surrounded the creation of the state of Israel. Hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes.

The court added a six-month suspended sentence to Tatour’s jail time, according to the official minutes distributed by the Justice Ministry. Her lawyer, Gaby Lasky, said Tatour would appeal both the verdict and the sentence.

Israel says the string of Palestinian attacks that began in 2015 was fuelled by online incitement and it has launched a legal crackdown to curb it.

Indictments for online incitement have tripled in Israel since 2014. Prosecutions by the Israeli military have also increased in the occupied West Bank – most of those charged are young Palestinians.

The campaign against alleged incitement has raised questions about the balance between security and free speech.

On July 18 the Israeli parliament was set to pass legislation that would have empowered the justice system to order Internet providers, such as Facebook and Google, to take down social media posts in Israel deemed as incitement.

But hours before the scheduled vote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shelved the bill. An adviser to Netanyahu, Jonatan Urich, said the law was open to a too-wide interpretation that could allow cyber-censorship and harm freedom of speech.

Israel has released a Turkish woman who had been arrested while visiting on a tourist visa and accused of helping the Hamas Palestinian militant group, in a case that angered Ankara, her lawyer said on Monday.

Turkey threatened retaliation after Ebru Ozkan’s detention last month. The ex-allies have long been at loggerheads over Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and Jerusalem’s status.

Ozkan’s lawyer, Omar Khamaisi, said she flew to Istanbul on Sunday, a week after an Israeli military court indicted her. An appeals court had ordered her freed and returned her passport, he told Reuters, adding: “The indictment still stands, but I think that will be cancelled too.”

The Turkish news agency Anadlou quoted Ozkan, upon landing, as thanking President Tayyip Erdogan for having been “kind enough to be very interested in my case”.

An Israeli military spokesman had no immediate comment.

Ozkan was held at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport last month while trying to board her original flight home after a visit that took her to Jerusalem, whose Al Aqsa Mosque draws pilgrims from the few Muslim countries that have relations with Israel.

She was charged with helping smuggling money and packages to Hamas, which is classed as a terrorist group in Israel and the West, but not by NATO-power Turkey. Ozkan’s lawyer dismissed the charges as baseless and, potentially, politically motivated.

Hamas did not comment on the case.

Turkey’s Islamist-rooted government had cited Israel’s treatment of Ozkan and several other detained Turkish visitors as among “inhumane policies” that were souring bilateral ties.

Ankara vocally opposed the U.S. recognition in December of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Palestinians want a state with a capital in eastern parts of the city where Al Aqsa, as well as major Jewish and Christian shrines, are housed.

A truck ramming attack killed four Israeli soldiers and injured at least 16 others at a popular promenade in southern Jerusalem on Sunday afternoon.

Rescue workers at the scene said the truck suddenly accelerated towards a group of soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces after they had got off a bus at the Armon Hanatziv Promenade.

“Several buses loaded with soldiers were stopping here today. This is a very popular point for tourists, as well as a very popular point for new soldiers to come here to learn about the country, learn about the land. Today, as the soldiers were exiting the bus, a truck that was situated behind rammed up next to the bus and began to injure soldiers,” said Dovi Meyer, a rescue worker.

Meyer said the rescue operation was difficult because many victims were left trapped under the truck. Some of the victims died as they were unable to receive treatment missed the prime time for first aid.

According to surveillance video footage from the promenade, soldiers at the scene did not fire their weapons until they had confirmed there was a threat to life.

Israeli police said the attacker, who was shot dead at the scene, was an Arab resident called Fadi al-Qanbar, who resided in East Jerusalem.

According to police, the 28-year-old attacker had spent several stints in Israeli prisons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman rushed to the site of the attack.

Netanyahu said the attack was similar to those carried out in Europe recently, adding that the driver was a follower of extremist groups.

So far, Israeli police have identified the incident as a “lone wolf” attack, saying it will not affect the overall security situation in Jerusalem.

“We’ve heightened security in and around Jerusalem in order to make sure there won’t be any further attacks. We are not talking about [adding] thousands (more police officers). We are talking about hundreds of police officers in and around the different areas,” said Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesperson.

It was the first truck attack in Jerusalem in nearly ten years, breaking the calm situation in the recent winter months.

Local residents say they feel rather disturbed and angry following the incident.

“I wish that [it will come to] a finish, all this war, all this killing of people by cars, trucks, knives, weapons. They killed children, they killed moms, they killed fathers, they killed soldiers in their twenties. It’s crazy. We have to stop it,” said Benjamin, a local resident.

A Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing four of them in an attack that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said is likely to have been inspired by Islamic State.

It was the deadliest Palestinian attack in Jerusalem in months and targeted officer cadets as they disembarked from a bus that brought them to the Armon Hanatziv promenade, which has a panoramic view of the walled Old City.

The military said that a female officer and three officer cadets were killed and that 17 others were injured. Police said three of the dead were women.

Police identified the truck driver as a Palestinian from Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and said he was shot dead. His uncle, Abu Ali, named him as Fadi Ahmad Hamdan Qunbor, 28, a father of four from the Jabel Mukabar neighbourhood.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that nine Jabel Mukabar residents, including five members of the attacker’s family, were arrested on suspicion of aiding the attacker.

The Israeli military regularly takes soldiers on educational tours of Jerusalem, including the Armon Hanatziv vantage point.

Netanyahu visited the scene and convened his security cabinet, a forum of senior ministers, to discuss Israel’s response. He said that security forces were controlling access in and out of the neighbourhood.

“We know the identity of the attacker. According to all the signs he is a supporter of Islamic State,” the prime minister said.

A government source said that ministers had called for the demolition of the attacker’s home and for his body not to be returned to the family for burial. It also decided to detain without trial persons expressing sympathy for Islamic State.

The United States condemned the attack “in the strongest terms possible” and expressed condolences for the victims, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement that also reiterated U.S. support for Israel’s security.

Roni Alsheich, the national police chief, told reporters he could not rule out that the driver had been motivated by a truck ramming attack in a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people last month.

“It is difficult to get into the head of every individual to determine what prompted him, but there is no doubt that these things do have an effect,” Alsheich told reporters.

In another attack claimed by Islamic State and involving a truck driven into a crowd, nearly 90 people were killed in the French city of Nice in July.

STREET ATTACKS SLOWED

Actions inspired by Islamic State in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem have been rare and only a few dozen Arab Israelis and Palestinians are known to have declared their sympathy with the group.

A wave of Palestinian street attacks, including vehicle rammings, has largely slowed but not stopped completely since it began in October 2015, with 37 Israelis and two visiting Americans having been killed in these assaults.

At least 231 Palestinians have been killed in violence in Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the same period. Israel says that at least 157 of them were assailants while others died during clashes and protests, blaming the violence on incitement by the Palestinian leadership.

The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, denies that allegation, and says assailants have acted out of frustration over Israeli occupation of land sought by Palestinians in peace talks that have stalled since 2014.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, routinely praises those who carry out street attacks, and did so on Sunday.

“We bless this heroic operation resisting the Israeli occupation to force it to stop its crimes and violations against our people,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Reuters.

Security camera footage showed the truck racing towards the soldiers and then reversing into them.

A security guard identified only as “A” told Channel 10 how he shot at the truck and its driver.

“I shot at a tyre but realised there was no point as he has many wheels, so I ran in front of the cabin and at an angle, I shot at him and emptied my magazine,” he said.

“When I finished shooting, some of the officer cadets also took aim and also started firing.”

The footage showed many of the soldiers fleeing the scene as the attack took place, their rifles slung on their shoulders.

As a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, the truck driver would carry an Israeli identity card and be able to move freely through all of the city. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its united capital, a stance not supported by the international community.

A Saudi-Palestinian firm has invented a multi-purpose umbrella with a fan, navigation system and flashlight, to meet the needs of Muslims performing the Hajj pilgrimage.

An Israeli man convicted of murdering a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem, a crime that helped trigger the 2014 Gaza war, was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison.

Jerusalem District Court sentenced Yosef Haim Ben-David, who organised the killing of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudair, to life, which in Israel usually means around 25 years, and an additional 20 years for other counts, to be served consecutively.

Two Jewish youths who helped Ben-David abduct the teen, who was bludgeoned, strangled and burned alive, were sentenced in February, one to life imprisonment and the other to 21 years.

All three defendants had confessed and said the July 2, 2014, murder was revenge for the killing days earlier of three Israeli youths by the Hamas Islamist group in the occupied West Bank.

Ben-David, 30, had lodged an insanity plea that held up his formal conviction and sentencing. After receiving psychological assessments, the court ruled he “fully understood his actions” and found him guilty last month.

Abu Khudair’s killing raised tensions, and a seven-week Israeli offensive against the Hamas-run Gaza Strip began on July 8, 2014, after cross-border Palestinian rocket attacks and an Israeli roundup of suspected militants in the West Bank.

The Israeli military filed manslaughter charges on Monday against a soldier who shot a wounded Palestinian assailant as he lay on the ground in a killing a poll said many Israelis felt was justified.

The defendant – a conscript infantry medic whose name has been barred from publication – was captured on video firing once into the head of the Palestinian after the man had been shot by other soldiers while taking part in a March 24 stabbing attack.

The incident in Hebron, a city in the occupied West Bank that has been a focus of a six-month-old wave of Palestinian street violence, tapped into international controversy over whether Israeli security forces’ response has been heavy-handed.

Defence lawyers say the soldier took action, fearing the Palestinian had a hidden bomb. Prosecutors, citing the testimony by the soldier’s comrades and his apparently calm disposition, see it as an illegal shooting motivated by revenge.

The soldier was initially held on a murder warrant. The lighter manslaughter charge, reflecting a view that the killing was not premeditated, could spell a jail term of up to 20 years.

“The terrorist … was left lying on the ground, still alive, and did not present any immediate and tangible danger to the civilians and soldiers around him,” the manslaughter indictment said.

It said the accused handed his helmet to a comrade, cocked his rifle, walked a few steps towards the Palestinian and “fired one bullet at the terrorist’s head”, causing his death.

Such action, the charge sheet said, violated rules of engagement and had no “operational justification”.

An opinion poll last month found 57 percent of Israelis think the soldier should never been arrested. His supporters, including some rightist politicians, have demonstrated for his release. Almost 60,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that he be decorated for heroism.

The soldier’s family and supporters planned to hold a rally, under the slogan of “you don’t abandon a warrior”, in a main square in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

Two popular Israeli singers initially said they would perform at the gathering but later withdrew, saying they feared the event would have political overtones and be seen as a protest against military authorities.

The outcry over the Hebron incident has flagged up rare rifts over the role and ethics of Israel’s conscript armed forces, long the symbol of unity among the majority Jews where deep concern about security is largely shared across the social and political spectrum.