\n<\/p>\n
As the Israeli military stepped up pressure on what it calls Hamas\u2019s last stronghold in Gaza, fighting elsewhere in the Palestinian enclave on Sunday led to warnings that the militants might remain a force for a long time to come.<\/p>\n
Close-quarters ground combat between Hamas fighters and Israeli troops raged in parts of northern Gaza over the weekend, both sides said on Sunday, even as the world\u2019s attention was largely focused on the southern city of Rafah, where Israel escalated military operations last week.<\/p>\n
It has become a familiar scenario in the Gaza Strip over the course of the seven-month war: After pitched battles, Israel declares an area clear of Hamas, only to return after the militants reconstitute their forces.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said he was concerned that Israel\u2019s failure to lay down a template for the governance of Gaza meant that its victories might not be \u201csustainable\u201d and would be followed by \u201cchaos, by anarchy and ultimately by Hamas again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Blinken\u2019s warning came as the Israeli military said its soldiers had \u201celiminated a number\u201d of fighters in the Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun. In nearby Jabaliya, where civilians were ordered to evacuate on Saturday, troops went in overnight after fighter jets struck more than two dozen targets, the military said. The operation, it said, was \u201cbased on intelligence information regarding attempts by Hamas to reassemble.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamas said on Sunday that its fighters were engaged in \u201cfierce clashes\u201d with Israeli soldiers near Jabaliya and that the fighters had fired heavy-caliber mortar shells at Israeli forces in Zeitoun.<\/p>\n
Neither claim could be independently verified.<\/p>\n
Palestine TV, a network affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, a rival to Hamas based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, broadcast footage that it said showed civilians, many of them women and children, fleeing northern Gaza. Some were on foot, while others were on bicycles, in cars or piled onto carts drawn by donkeys.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am deeply distressed by the fast-deteriorating conditions in Gaza,\u201d the United Nations\u2019 human rights chief, Volker T\u00fcrk, said in a statement<\/a> about the fighting in the north.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Rafah, the southernmost city where more than a million Palestinians have fled for safety since the war began in October, Gazans were once again on the move, fearful that Israel was about to move into the city in full force.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Israel has been under intense international pressure \u2014 including from the United States, its closest ally \u2014 not to launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah. The Israelis say they are determined to eradicate the militants who led the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.<\/p>\n