Israel-Gaza live updates: France, UK, Canada recognize Palestinian statehood

Hundreds of thousands of people have evacuated Gaza City in recent weeks after Israel announced plans to launch a major offensive into the strip's largest urban area -- an operation that began overnight into Tuesday.

People are traveling with their belongings piled on top of flat-bed trucks, in cars, by bike or on foot if necessary.

ABC News spoke with a man who said he was evacuating south on foot.

"This is not life. We're losing. We lost our homes, children and money," Ibrahem Hashem Shamallakh said. "There’s no transportation. There's nothing. I will shelter myself with a blanket if I have to."

Joumana Mabhouh has been displaced several times during the war, she said.

"To displace from north to south, it's not just losing your house, it's losing Gaza itself," Mabhouh said. "We are really tired of these difficult conditions in the Gaza Strip."

Mabhouh said people are traveling south without "basic food supplies."

"As you can see people coming from the north, from north to south without basic food supplies, and the mothers are trying to calm their children with empty hands," she said.

About 400,000 people had evacuated Gaza City as of Wednesday, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Some 600,000 people are thought to remain in Gaza City.

-ABC News’ Diaa Ostaz and Ellie Kaufman

Hospitals across the Gaza Strip recorded 79 deaths -- including nine aid seekers -- and 228 injuries in the past 24 hours due to Israeli military actions, the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health reported on Thursday.

Four people, including a child, also starved to death in Gaza over the previous 24 hours, officials said Thursday. The deaths bring the total number of starvation deaths in Gaza since the war began to 435, which includes 147 children.

Since the war began in October 2023, a total of 65,141 Palestinians have been killed, per the ministry’s data. This includes 2,513 people who were killed while trying to access food at distribution points across the strip since May 28, the ministry said.

-ABC News’ Diaa Ostaz, Somayeh Malekian and Morgan Winsor

Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich -- one of the country's most vocal proponents of Israeli settlements in both the West Bank and Gaza -- said on Wednesday that the Gaza Strip represents a "real estate bonanza."

Speaking at an urban renewal conference in Tel Aviv, Smotrich said there was a "business plan" for Gaza on U.S. President Donald Trump's "table."

The White House has not commented on Smotrich's remarks.

"I have started negotiations with the Americans, I say this not jokingly now," Smotrich said, in quotes carried by The Associated Press.

"We paid a lot of money for this war, so we need to divide how we make a percentage on the land marketing later in Gaza," Smotrich continued. "And now, no kidding, we've done the demolition phase, which is always the first phase of urban renewal. Now we need to build, it's much cheaper."

The White House has not commented on Smotrich's remarks.

Trump has previously suggested that the U.S. will "take over" and "own" the Gaza Strip as part of any future peace deal. The president has suggested that all Palestinians could be relocated from Gaza during its reconstruction, saying the U.S. could "just clean out that whole thing."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters after Trump's February comments that Palestinians would be only "temporarily relocated" while the rebuild took place, although officials say it could take upward of 15 years for it to be completed. 

Meanwhile, settler groups and far-right politicians in Israel have been lobbying for the construction of new Israeli settlements in the strip and the permanent relocation of Palestinians out of the territory.

Regional and other U.S. allies have rejected Trump's proposals for Gaza.

Experts have noted that seizing a territory by force would violate international law, and displacing its people would constitute a war crime. Some critics of the plan say forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza could constitute "ethnic cleansing."

-ABC News' Will Gretsky

The Israel Defense Forces said in a post to X on Thursday morning that its forces are "expanding their activities in Gaza City" and continuing operations elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.

Divisions 162 and 98 are pressing Israel's assault on Gaza City -- the strip's largest urban area -- the IDF said in its post, destroying what it called "terrorist organization infrastructure" and eliminating "numerous" enemy fighters.

Meanwhile, the IDF's 143rd Division -- also known as the Gaza Division -- is operating in Khan Younis and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, the force said.