Israel Escalates Attacks on Gaza City as Qatar Strike Scuttles Ceasefire Talks

The Washington Post

17:14 JST, September 11, 2025

A hope sustained Lina al-Madhoun during the relentless Israeli bombing of her Gaza City neighborhood over the past few weeks, a cold comfort amid the gnawing fear of death: If her family is killed by a missile, they might not hear it.

“When we hear the sound of the bombing,” she said, “it means we are not dead.”

Israel’s military issued orders early Tuesday demanding that the entire population of Gaza City – up to a million people – flee south. It came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the city’s residents had been “warned,” but it also came after a fierce, deadly military campaign using artillery, airstrikes and drone attacks that made it impossible for residents to stay.

Later Tuesday, it became clear that the escalation was more than an effort to pressure Hamas into making greater concessions in negotiations over a possible ceasefire and release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, as Israeli officials have suggested. A surprise Israeli airstrike on Qatar’s capital, Doha, aimed at eliminating much of Hamas’s senior leadership, who had been meeting there to consider their next move in the negotiations.

The strike targeted Khalil al-Hayya, a Hamas chief who had been leading the indirect negotiations with Israel, an Israeli official said. Hamas said that he survived the attack but that it killed al-Hayya’s son and the director of al-Hayya’s office, as well as three bodyguards and an officer from Qatar’s Internal Security Forces.

With the talks scuttled, Israel was left to fully focus on recapturing Gaza City, an operation that would force the displacement of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living there. The city’s residents are left with an impossible choice: to escape and try to survive elsewhere in the decimated enclave, or to risk death in their homes.

Netanyahu has said Gaza City’s takeover is necessary for the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and the militant group’s defeat. Most Israelis support a negotiated deal to return the hostages and end the war.

Ola Qadas, 20, said she was too busy trying to survive the attack on Gaza City to follow the news about the strike on Hamas’s leadership in Doha. “I don’t have a clue what happened or who was killed or how it will impact the interests of Gazans,” she said late Tuesday.

“All I am thinking about is how I can protect my family and go to the south in safety.”

Much of the Israeli fire in recent weeks has been concentrated in neighborhoods in the city’s northwest, including Sheikh Radwan. Recent attacks on the neighborhood included a strike on a market that killed six people, and drone fire targeting tents, cars and an ambulance, said Mohamad Ahmed, a 25-year old video journalist and resident of the district.

The violence was “a message from the Israeli army for everyone” to leave, he said.

The barrage has intensified in recent days, even before the strike on Qatar. Israeli jets have struck and toppled several high-rise residential buildings in the city after providing residents with a brief window to escape. The destruction of the buildings has displaced at least 4,100 people sheltering inside, Gaza’s civil defense said in a statement Tuesday. Tent encampments below some of the high-rises had also been destroyed.

Israel has accused Hamas of operating in the buildings or “near” them, which Hamas and residents have denied.

But despite the dangers, many people in Gaza City appear to be staying put, some citing exhaustion at the thought of another displacement, or the perils of trying to move while parts of Gaza are gripped by famine and while shelter, food and medicine are scarce.

Between Aug. 14 and Sept. 5, some 41,000 people had moved “from the north to the south – mostly from Gaza city,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday. Netanyahu, in a statement Sunday, cited a higher number, saying 100,000 people had fled Gaza City.

The estimates represented between 4 and 10 percent of Gaza City’s population, suggesting that the displacement of the city’s residents could take many weeks. In the meantime, any full-scale military operation would proceed with hundreds of thousands of civilians still in the line of fire.

Madhoun, 22, said last week that she and her family had packed their bags but were staying put. They would reevaluate if and when the Israeli tanks rolled in.

“We are dealing with these days as if they are the last of our lives,” she said in a phone interview. Many people had not left because “there are no places at all” to go, she said. “Every part of the Gaza Strip is destroyed.”

By Tuesday, though, her family had left their house in Sheikh Radwan, after “difficult days,” and moved elsewhere in Gaza City, she said.

The plan to occupy Gaza City, which was approved by Netanyahu’s cabinet in early August, has sparked protests in Israel, condemnation from the country’s allies in Europe and panic from aid agencies.

The unfolding offensive came during a “narrow window” to prevent the spread of famine from Gaza’s north to communities in the south, Tom Fletcher, the U.N. relief chief, said in a statement Sunday.

“Death, destruction, starvation and displacement of Palestinian civilians are the result of choices that defy international law and ignore the international community,” he said. “We continue to insist that this horror can be stopped.”

Oxfam, in a statement Tuesday, said that “Israel’s order that around 1 million civilians, half of whom are living in famine, must leave Gaza City immediately, is impossible and illegal.”

“Displacement orders, on leaflets thrown from the sky, or posted on social media are all too familiar in Gaza, where every order has preceded new waves of destruction and mass casualties,” the group said.

Ahmed, the video journalist, said conditions in Sheikh Radwan were “dire.” After multiple displacements during the war, his family had resettled in their burned and damaged family home in the neighborhood. The houses around them were either partially or completely destroyed, he said.

Israel’s bombardment felt nonstop and “random,” he said. Neighbors ventured out together, in groups, to find canned food or the few vegetables that were available. But there have been fewer neighbors around these days, he said.

Sheikh Radwan had been a refuge for people displaced from other areas in and around Gaza City, he said. But “people value their lives, and no one wants to die in vain,” he said. His family would leave once the danger drew too close. He did not expect any of his neighbors to remain.

Basel Abu Ramadan, who works for the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, lives in one of the city’s residential towers still standing. He did not know for how long that would remain the case. “Any moment now, they are going to call us to evacuate the building,” he said in a voice message. “We are so confused.”

He thought he should take his family south. But his parents were elderly, and the journey would be difficult. To have an apartment in a building, in the context of Gaza’s misery, was an unbelievable comfort. “We don’t want anything more,” he said. Probably, though, they would all be forced into a tent.

There was no way to make a decision. “There is bad, there is worse, and there is the worst,” he said. “All of this uncertainty is just tearing us apart.”