The Israeli army announced on Saturday October 21 that it would intensify strikes on the Gaza Strip as part of preparations for the next phase of Operation Iron Swords, which consists of investing the Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas, in order to to “annihilate” the Islamist movement that launched a bloody attack on Israel two weeks ago.
“From today we will increase strikes” on the Gaza Strip, said General Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for the Israeli army, the aim being according to him to “reduce the risks for our forces in the next stages » of the conflict.
Several Israeli army officials visited the troops, emphasizing the preparedness of the armed forces. “We are going to enter Gaza, we are going to do it for an operational purpose, to destroy Hamas infrastructure and terrorists, and we are going to do it in a professional manner,” the head of state said during a troop review. major, Herzi Halevi. “Gaza is complex, Gaza is densely populated, the enemy is preparing a lot of things there, but we are also preparing for him,” warned the senior officer. “And we will remember the photographs and images and the deaths of two weeks ago.”
“This is a test for our civilization and we will win,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in the evening during a meeting with his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni in Tel Aviv.
” Time is counted “
After fifteen days of war, rocket fire from Palestinian groups targeting Israel is still responding to Israeli strikes on the Palestinian enclave where, according to the United Nations (UN), 1 million people have fled the bombings in the North to mass in the South, near the border with Egypt
The situation is “catastrophic”, five UN agencies said on Saturday, after, in the morning, a humanitarian aid convoy of twenty trucks was able to enter the territory thanks to a brief opening of the post -Rafah border, the only exit from the Gaza Strip not to be controlled by Israel.
More than 44,000 bottles of drinking water, “just enough for 22,000 people for a day”, were transported to Gaza, but according to the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), these twenty trucks are not equivalent than 4% of Gaza’s daily imports before the start of hostilities, and at least 100 trucks per day are needed to improve the situation. At least 42% of housing in the Gaza Strip has been destroyed or damaged since the start of the conflict, according to OCHA.
“Time is running out before death rates skyrocket due to the outbreak of disease and lack of health care capacity,” the United Nations warned.
“A massive delivery of aid is necessary,” insisted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during a peace summit organized Saturday in Cairo in the presence of several regional and Western leaders, calling for a “ humanitarian ceasefire” to “end the nightmare” of the population.
US President Joe Biden on Saturday urged all parties to the conflict to continue to allow humanitarian aid, “a crucial necessity”, into the Gaza Strip, which has been under “complete siege” since October 9. by Israel, which cut off water, electricity and food supplies there.
Tensions on the border with Lebanon
In Cairo, the Palestinian, Jordanian and Egyptian leaders gathered alongside the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, pleaded for a “ceasefire” and a “solution”. to seventy-five years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We will not leave” Palestinian lands, affirmed the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, while Cairo and Amman are up in arms against the evacuation of the inhabitants of Gaza to the south of the territory claimed by Israel. They see it as a first step towards “a forced displacement” towards the Egyptian Sinai which would amount, according to Mr. Abbas, to “a second Nakba [catastrophe, in Arabic]”, in reference to the 760,000 Palestinians pushed into exile after the creation of Israel in 1948.
Another source of tension, the northern region of Israel bordering Lebanon is emptying of its inhabitants. Exchanges of fire are increasing between the Israeli army and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas. Hezbollah announced on Saturday that four of its fighters had been killed. Israel, for its part, indicated that three soldiers had been injured by anti-tank missile fire, one of them seriously.
In the West Bank, the Israeli army claimed to have killed “terrorists” in a strike on a mosque in Jenin, considered a “compound belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives (…) who were organizing another imminent terrorist attack.” . The director of the Jenin Red Crescent, Mahmoud Al-Saadi, was quoted by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA as saying that one person was killed and three others injured in the strike.
