Residents said that Israeli tanks penetrated deep into Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, on Tuesday, and that Israel ordered residents to evacuate the area, while it was bombing the historic Palestinian refugee camp from the air, according to what Reuters reported.

Palestinian medics reported to the agency that there were reports of casualties and injuries in Jabalia, but they were unable to reach the areas being bombed.

The phrase “Jabaliya is being annihilated” was repeated in many messages posted by Gazans on social media. On Monday, residents commemorated the first anniversary of the attack, October 7, 2023.

Palestinian health officials did not immediately announce the numbers of casualties and wounded, but they said that dozens had died in the Gaza Strip during the past 24 hours. The Israeli army said that one soldier was killed in northern Gaza

Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe places in Gaza at all.

American fears

American officials told Axios on Tuesday that the administration of President Joe Biden had raised questions with Israel regarding an order issued by Israeli forces to Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza to evacuate their areas and move to the south.

American officials said they were concerned that this would be a prelude to imposing an Israeli blockade on northern Gaza, and that Palestinians who leave would not be able to return. American officials stated that the Biden administration informed the Israelis that such a step would be a violation of international law and American laws.

The military wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said that fighters attacked Israeli forces in the north with anti-tank missiles, and that there were casualties among those forces.

On Tuesday, the Israeli army issued new evacuation orders to residents of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and neighboring Beit Lahia, asking them to go to the Al-Mawasi area designated for humanitarian purposes in the southern Gaza Strip.

He said that his forces are trying to prevent Hamas fighters from launching attacks from Jabalia, and are seeking to prevent them from reorganizing their ranks, according to him.

The return of the Palestinian “genie”

This comes at a time when Israel has shifted its focus to Lebanon, where it faces another conflict with Hezbollah, after saying that Hamas no longer exists as an organized military structure, and that the matter has turned into a mere “guerrilla war.”

The head of the movement’s political bureau abroad, Khaled Meshal, pledged that “Hamas” would rise and regain its health “like the Palestinian genie and the Palestinian phoenix,” and said that “Hamas” continues to recruit fighters and manufacture weapons.

In a speech on the first anniversary of the attack launched by Hamas on October 7th on Israeli cities, Meshaal described the confrontations as a round of a broader conflict extending over 76 years, and whose roots go back to the “Nakba” when many Palestinians were displaced during the 1948 war that coincided with With the establishment of Israel.

Mashaal said in an interview with Reuters, “Palestinian history consists of rounds and stations.”

He added, "There comes a point in which we lose martyrs, and we lose part of our military capabilities, and then the Palestinian giant and the Palestinian phoenix regain health, thanks to God Almighty; and so on over seventy years."

Although he admitted that Hamas's combat capabilities had deteriorated during a year of confrontations, he said that the movement was still capable of setting up ambushes and engaging in confrontations with Israeli forces.

Meshaal was the leader of all of Hamas from 1996 until 2017, when the late Ismail Haniyeh replaced him. Haniyeh was killed in an attack targeting him in the Iranian capital, Tehran, last July.