Thousands of Palestinians were fleeing Gaza City on Monday, where the Israeli military deployed elements, including tanks, and ordered the hasty evacuation of civilians from entire neighborhoods amid raging fighting and shelling.

On the 277th day of the war in the Gaza Strip, which broke out on October 7 when Hamas’s military arm launched an unprecedented raid on southern sectors of the Israeli territory, fresh negotiations are expected to agree a ceasefire this week in Qatar and Egypt, the countries that mediate, together with the US, in the marathon indirect negotiations of the warring parties.

In the northern part of the small Palestinian enclave, Israeli tanks advanced into districts of Gaza City yesterday, supported by airstrikes and UAVs.

On foot or in carts, thousands of people left, eyewitnesses and civil protection reported. They once again hit the dusty streets, with the incessant sound of drones and gunfire in the background.

For the third time since June 27, the Israeli army has ordered residents of the city to urgently evacuate its neighborhoods, this time in its center, then Sujaya, an eastern suburb, and its outskirts.

He said yesterday that he had “started an anti-terrorist operation” in Gaza City, particularly around buildings of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

“Where should we go?” Abdullah Hamas, a resident, wondered aloud. “We left at three in the morning, we slept on the street. Now we will go back to live in the ruins.”

According to the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, the ongoing fighting is “the most intense in months”.

Civil protection said it has received information about “dozens” of dead and wounded, but cannot reach the districts where they are, due to the intensity of the fire.

In the south of the small coastal enclave, where civilians were also ordered in recent days to urgently leave vast areas, the Israeli army said it had “eliminated more than 30 terrorists” in Rafah, on the closed border with Egypt, and that it had shelled locations from where rockets were fired at Khan Yunis.

On May 7, the Israeli army launched a ground attack on Rafah, which it presented at the time as the final stage of the war against Hamas. But since then, fighting has resumed, in areas he assured he had controlled, especially in the north.

Some of the civilians moved in the direction of Deir al-Bala, in the central part of the Gaza Strip, where the humanitarian situation continues to worsen, as Maisa Saleh of the non-governmental organization Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) warned yesterday, returning from shipment to the area.

“The first question every morning is the same, ‘shall we eat today?’ During my stay in Deir al-Bala, I saw nothing resembling help. It is almost non-existent,” he summarized.

After months of deadlocked negotiations, a new round of talks is beginning with the aim of concluding a ceasefire and hostage release agreement, “probably” tomorrow Wednesday in Doha, with the participation of the three mediating countries, a Palestinian source said yesterday.

CIA chiefs William Burns and Mossad David Barnea are expected in Doha tomorrow for talks with Qatar’s prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdelrahman al-Thani, a source briefed on the matter added.

According to Egyptian media, an Israeli and American delegation are also expected in Cairo.

A senior Hamas official said last Sunday that his movement no longer considers declaring a permanent ceasefire a necessary condition to hold negotiations for the release of hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, for its part, reiterated that “any deal” would allow Israel to continue the war “until all of its goals are achieved,” in other words the elimination of Hamas and the release of all hostages.

Hamas yesterday accused Mr Netanyahu of obstructing the negotiations, “raising new obstacles”.

The leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Ismail Haniya, warned mediators that “the massacres, the killings, the displacements” being committed in Gaza City and the “catastrophic consequences” of the developments could “take the negotiations back to square one,” according to Hamas statement.

The unprecedented raid by Hamas’ military arm in southern Israel on October 7 left 1,195 people dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people kidnapped during it, 116 remain hostages in the Gaza Strip, but 42 are believed to be dead, according to the Israeli military.

In retaliation, Israel’s political and military leadership vowed to destroy Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, which the US and EU designate as a terrorist organization.

Israel’s large-scale military operations in the Gaza Strip have so far killed at least 38,193 people, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry.

The threat of war spilling over into Lebanon remains as cross-border fire between Israel’s armed forces and the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement, an ally of Hamas, has recently escalated.

Yesterday the Israeli army spoke of 24 attacks from Lebanese territory and added that it targeted Hezbollah military facilities.