In parallel with the commemoration events of the month of the attack by the jihadist group Hamas to remember the 1,400 dead and request the release of the 240 kidnapped, Israel carried out attacks and combats in Gaza. From this city, in the north of the Palestinian strip, thousands of inhabitants left this Tuesday towards the south in a war that seems to have no end in sight.
“A month ago, in a shocking murderous massacre, Hamas attacked us and hit us hard. On that terrible day, we did not accomplish our mission,” admitted the head of the Southern Command, Yaron Finkelman, alluding to the greatest failure in the history of the Army. Israeli before lifting some of the secrecy around the location of its ground forces: “For the first time in decades, the Army is fighting in the heart of Gaza City. In the heart of terror.”
For some soldiers it is also a personal mission. Like the reservist captain who blew up a tunnel found in northern Beit Janun, remembering his uncle, Ofir Lipstein, a well-known community leader who died trying to stop terrorists a month ago in southern Israel. “Ofir used to say that the towns near the Gaza Strip were 95% paradise and 5% hell (in reference to the Palestinian projectiles). I want, not as an act of revenge but of defense of the nation, to dedicate this explosion to him as one of the efforts to return 100% paradise to our populations”.
Israel attacked a Palestinian command near Al Quds Hospital which, according to the Army, “caused major secondary explosions indicating the presence of a Hamas weapons depot in a civilian area” while Hamas accused the Air Force of “indiscriminate attacks” . The Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, conditioned the humanitarian truce on the release of the hostages and assured that one of the objectives of the war is “the liquidation of the terrorist leadership including Yahia Sinwar” without specifying whether he believes that the Hamas leader is located in a bunker in Gaza that, due to its tunnels, he defines as “the largest terrorist base ever built.”
The armed wing of Hamas asked “not to believe Zionist propaganda” and boasted of damaging the advance of the Israeli Army, causing it “great losses.” The militiamen trust in the effectiveness of the tunnels distributed for several hundred kilometers to surprise and hit the enemy forces – who fight with the help of the Air Force – while waiting for some type of truce as a result of international pressure or the hostage negotiation.
Those who do not have tunnels and bunkers in Gaza are its inhabitants under incessant bombardments. Many of them left the city and crossed the Wadi Gaza line in search of a safer place in the south. It is estimated that more than 200,000 Palestinians remain in the north while several Palestinian NGOs put the number of internally displaced people at 65% of the population.
“We are human beings. What have they done to us? May Allah take revenge on those responsible,” demanded a Palestinian to Arab media, forming part of a long line that left the Gazan neighborhood of Zeitun, some with white flags, through the established corridor. by the Israeli Army on the Salah Al Din road to reach the south. The Hamas Government asked not to disseminate these images of inhabitants leaving Gaza and in which Israeli tanks are seen deployed to prevent the militants from avoiding the evacuation.
According to the Hamas Health Ministry, 10,328 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israeli bombings since the start of the war 32 days ago. Among them, 160 health workers when they were caring for the injured and sick, according to the World Health Organization, which after reporting the arrival of its aid trucks clarified that it was not sufficient to meet the needs. “The population is exhausted and the rescuers are practically helpless. In the face of the catastrophe, a ceasefire is a matter of vital urgency,” asks the director of Doctors Without Borders, Claire Magone.
The consensus in Israel on the need for the military operation to put an end to the armed wing and regime of Hamas and to free those kidnapped “in a war imposed on 7-O” extends to the rejection of the occupation of the Gaza Strip after withdrawing ago. 18 years. The Israeli leadership told the US that it rules out two post-war scenarios: the control and presence of both Hamas and Israel.
“I believe that Israel will have to have overall security responsibility for an indefinite period of time because we have seen what happens when we do not have it. When we do not have this security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that “we couldn’t imagine,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview on ABC television. Asked about the high number of civilian deaths in Gaza, he questioned the credibility of the balance, adding that among them “there are thousands of terrorists.”
The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, is betting on the return of the Palestinian National Authority to Gaza from which it was expelled by Hamas in 2007. But the Palestinian president Abu Mazen, already heavily criticized by Islamists for this possibility, does not want to be seen as someone who returns thanks to the tanks of the common enemy and asks for a general solution for the Palestinian people. The veteran leader, who accuses Israel of “war crimes in Gaza,” had in the past denounced Hamas for its actions in Gaza, such as hiding in the Shifa Hospital.
“For those who think that Hamas will disappear, Hamas will remain anchored in the conscience (…) of our people, and no force on Earth will be able to annihilate or marginalize it,” warned the Palestinian Islamist leader in Lebanon Ossama Hamdan. And he added in a triple message to Ramallah, Jerusalem and Washington: “Our people will not allow the United States to impose its plans to create an administration that suits them and the occupation and our people will not accept a new Vichy government.”
With half a million reservists mobilized and citizens displaced, Israel remembered this Tuesday the largest terrorist attack in its history that occurred a month ago. The request for the release of the 240 kidnapped people, who include 38 children (including a 10-month-old baby), women and the elderly, was expressed in prayers at the Wailing Wall and in their photos displayed on the Walls and Parliament of Jerusalem. and in the Tel Aviv Museum. This city in the heart of Israel fell into darkness, once again, with the sound of sirens before bursts of projectiles announced by the armed wing of Hamas as a “response to the massacres in Gaza.”
