Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Wednesday October 11 to “destroy” the Palestinian movement Hamas, responsible for the deadliest attack in the history of the State of Israel. On the sixth day of the war which has already left thousands dead, Israeli nighttime strikes continued on Palestinian territory from which several rocket salvos were launched towards southern Israel.
“Every member of Hamas is a dead man,” Mr. Netanyahu said during a first joint solemn address with members of his war cabinet. “Hamas is Daesh [Arabic acronym for the Islamic State organization] and we are going to crush and destroy it like the world destroyed Daesh,” he added after describing the attack as “savagery.” never seen since the Holocaust.”
The army reported 1,200 deaths in Israel, most of them civilians. In the Gaza Strip, at least 1,200 people, including many civilians, were killed in retaliatory Israeli air raids, according to local authorities.
A “war cabinet” in Israel
Israel has mobilized 300,000 reserves and deployed tens of thousands of troops around the Gaza Strip, sparking fears of a ground assault on the Palestinian territory.
On the political level, after months of divisions, Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival Benny Gantz announced, Wednesday, “the establishment of an emergency government and a war cabinet” for the duration of the conflict with the Hamas. The war cabinet will be composed of the two men and the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant. Mr. Gantz, a former army chief, notably during the fifty-day war in Gaza against Hamas in 2014, served as defense minister between 2020 and 2022.
The statement said five members of Mr. Gantz’s party will be named ministers without portfolio and a place in the security cabinet will be kept for the other opposition leader, Yair Lapid, former prime minister and head of the centrist Yesh Atid party.
This announcement suspends until further notice the justice reform project which has divided the country since the beginning of the year just after the formation of Mr. Netanyahu’s government with the support of the far right and ultra-orthodox Jewish groups. .
Joe Biden calls for respect for “the laws of war”
This announcement came on the eve of the arrival Thursday in Israel of the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, for a solidarity visit, and while the United States said it was ready “if necessary” to deploy a second door -aircraft for deterrence purposes.
“You can count on me, here and abroad,” Joe Biden wanted to reassure on Wednesday during a meeting with representatives of the Jewish community in the United States. The US president vigorously expressed his support for Israel and once again expressed his outrage after the offensive by the Palestinian Islamist group, calling it “the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.”
Joe Biden reaffirmed Israel’s right to respond to the Hamas attack. But this response must be carried out in accordance with the “laws of war”, demanded the American president. “It is really important that Israel, with all the anger and frustration … that exists, acts according to the laws of war,” he said.
True-false release of hostages
The Hamas attack caused astonishment in Israel where chilling stories from witnesses and survivors are multiplying. Several media outlets were able to access Kibbutz Beeri, less than five kilometers from the border with the Gaza Strip. At the entrance, a pile of corpses further testified, Wednesday, to the scale of the attack inside the village: out of 1,200 inhabitants of the locality, more than a hundred were killed, according to the army .
Concern is also growing over the fate of people kidnapped by Hamas. The Islamist movement claimed in a statement on Wednesday evening that it had released an Israeli woman and her two children, with supporting video, but the Israeli media immediately called it a hoax.
According to the Israeli press, this is Avital Aladjem, a resident of Kibbutz Holit who, according to the story she gave in a series of interviews, had been taken by force on Saturday by Hamas men with two of the children of a neighbor to the border area between Israel and the Gaza Strip, before being left free to leave with the little ones.
Hamas fighters kidnapped around 150 Israelis, foreigners and dual nationals, including women, children and the elderly, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 338,000 people displaced in Gaza
Israel continued to respond overnight from Wednesday to Thursday by shelling Gaza, killing more than fifty people, according to Hamas. Subjected to an Israeli blockade for more than fifteen years, the Gaza Strip is now under siege. Israel has cut off water, electricity and food supplies there. The only power plant in the region is shut down for lack of fuel and hospitals, which lack equipment, are overwhelmed.
“We are preparing for the next steps. We hit a large number of targets,” Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Cornicus said at dawn on Thursday. Over the past twenty-four hours, there have been “fewer rockets” fired toward Israel and “that’s always a good sign,” he noted.
More than 338,000 people have been displaced by the strikes, according to the United Nations (UN). The White House announced that the United States was “actively” working with Israel and Egypt to allow civilians to leave the enclave.
In the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, six Palestinians were killed on Wednesday, four in an attack by Israeli settlers and two by soldiers, according to the Palestinian Authority. Since Saturday, twenty-nine Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank in violence linked to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Finally, on the northern front, the situation is volatile. On Wednesday, the Israeli army once again struck southern Lebanon, in response to rocket fire from Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas.