Thousands of reservists have begun reporting for duty as the Israeli military presses ahead with its offensive to conquer Gaza City.
Ground forces are already pushing into the outskirts of Gaza's largest urban area, which the military has said is a stronghold of Hamas.
The city is also coming under heavy Israeli aerial and artillery bombardment, with local hospitals saying that more than 50 Palestinians have been killed there since midnight.
The military has ordered residents to evacuate and head south immediately. The UN says an estimated 20,000 have done so over the past two weeks, but almost a million remain.
UN humanitarian officials have warned that the impact of a full-blown offensive would be 'beyond catastrophic', not only for those in the city but for the entire Gaza Strip.
Last month, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said about 60,000 reservists would be called up ahead of 'Operation Gideon's Chariots II' – the next phase of the ground offensive that it launched in May and has seen it take control of at least 75% of Gaza.
It also extended the service of 20,000 reservists who had already been mobilized. On Tuesday, an Israeli military official said thousands had begun reporting for duty.
Israeli media said many of the reservists would be deployed to the occupied West Bank and northern Israel to free up active-duty personnel for the offensive. They also reported that some combat units were seeing lower turnout than for previous call-ups, with reservists who had already served several tours during the 22-month war requesting exemptions for personal or financial reasons.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would conquer all of Gaza after indirect talks with Hamas on a ceasefire and hostage release deal broke down in July. At a government meeting on Sunday, he said the security cabinet had agreed the IDF's objectives were 'defeating Hamas and releasing all of our hostages'. The armed group is currently holding 48 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
The hostages' families fear the new offensive will endanger them and are demanding the prime minister negotiate an agreement that would secure their release.
There were reportedly angry exchanges between IDF's Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, and ministers at a meeting on Sunday. The general warned that their Gaza City plan would put the hostages at risk and lead to Israel establishing a military government there.
In an address to reservists at Nachshonim base in central Israel on Tuesday, Zamir declared that the IDF was preparing for nothing less than 'decisive victory'. 'We are going to increase and enhance the strikes of our operation, and that is why we called you,' he said. 'We will not stop the war until we defeat this enemy.'
On the ground in Gaza on Tuesday, hospital officials said Israeli strikes and fire had killed at least 95 Palestinians since midnight. The Al-Shifa hospital reported 35 of the deaths, including nine people who were killed in an air strike.
The UN has warned that forcing hundreds of thousands of people to move further south is 'a recipe for further disaster and could amount to forcible transfer', which would be a war crime.
Global food security experts have confirmed that a famine is occurring in Gaza City and projected that it will expand to the central city of Deir al-Balah and the southern city of Khan Younis by the end of September. The UN has also said tent camps for the displaced are overcrowded and unsafe, and that southern hospitals are operating at several times their capacity.
Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry reported that malnutrition deaths have been increasing, asserting that 361 have died from it during the war, including 185 in August alone.
Israel has disputed these figures while claiming there are no restrictions on aid deliveries, yet humanitarian crises continue to grow as international observers note the dire situation in the region following the ongoing conflict.
