Exactly one week after the Hamas attack that has brought new winds of war to the entire region, Israel is preparing for a ground offensive in the second phase of its massive retaliation for the multiple and lethal infiltration that caused 1,300 deaths. Before the tanks and armored cars enter Gaza territory, Israeli air pressure on the fundamentalist group is causing enormous punishment in the Gaza Strip. This Saturday the evacuation from north to south continued in the Palestinian enclave which, once again, will have to deal with reconstruction in a few weeks, at best, or months after a large-scale operation that has caused at least 2,200 dead.
“The operational plans include a combined and coordinated attack by air, land and sea,” warned military spokesman Daniel Hagari, prioritizing reaching “the ringleaders and those responsible for Hamas and especially for the terrible terrorist attacks.” On his first visit to the razed Kibbutz Beeri, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with soldiers, to whom he said: ”Are you ready to take the next step? The time is coming”. The proclamation of the conservative president, dressed in a bulletproof vest, was broadcast in a video by his cabinet.
Hamas, for its part, warned that for years it has been preparing for the invasion of its enemy while its armed wing continued to launch projectiles against central and southern Israel.
The clock for the eighth day of the worst war in memory between the Palestinian militias and Israel set the key moment this Saturday at four in the afternoon. The time at which the new deadline given by the Israeli army for northern Gazans to head south through two corridors (the Saladin road and the sea road) towards Wadi Gaza ended.
According to the UN, tens of thousands decided to head south while the army estimates the evacuees at around half a million. “If you care about your safety, go south. The army will allow you safe passage. The Hamas leaders worry only about themselves and are in shelters,” said the Israeli official in charge of communicating in Arabic with the Palestinians. Avichai Adraee, who denounced: “Hamas tries to prevent the evacuation of civilians that it uses as human shields in its attacks.”
But many refused to leave their homes. Either because fleeing to the south does not provide security guarantees, given that there is no safe place in the Palestinian Strip, because they do not want to become displaced again, because of pressure from Hamas or because they still believe that Israel will not launch a major ground offensive.
And, in this context, a convoy of Palestinian civilians leaving northern Gaza along one of the designated routes was attacked by Israel this Saturday, leaving more than a dozen dead, including children between two and five years old.
The Hamas Government in Gaza denounced “indiscriminate attacks and massacres of the civilian population” including during the evacuation and asked “not to fall into Zionist propaganda.”
“Hamas’s objective is to have civilians killed in Gaza, while hiding the number of terrorists killed, so that Israel is condemned by the international community and puts pressure on them,” added another Israeli spokesman.
The UN reiterated its strong condemnation from a moral and operational point of view of the mass evacuation, especially of Gaza City, where some 400,000 inhabitants reside and where hospitals are treating as best they can the growing and high number of wounded waiting for foreign help. According to the UN, 270,000 Palestinians are in their shelters.
“Even wars have rules,” warned the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, recalling that international humanitarian law and human rights laws must be defended and respected: “Civilians must be protected at all times and never used as shields,” he emphasized.
The closure of the six accesses to the Strip, including Rafah (Egypt), with the consequent lack of electricity and water supply, heightens the drama that the civilian population is going through.
Egypt shielded its border crossing due to fear of an avalanche of Palestinians in the face of bombs and calls from Israel, which, together with the United States, is pressuring it to open the doors allowing the exit from Gaza. “You must be strong in your land,” told them the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who organizes humanitarian aid convoys but refuses to make the Sinai the destination for the displaced.
The US fully supports Israel in the war but has asked it to do everything possible to avoid both the death of civilians – or minimize their number – and a humanitarian crisis. He also told his nationals in Gaza that “if they see that it is safe enough, they should approach the Rafah crossing.”
The leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniya, assures that “there is no emigration from the West Bank or Gaza nor is there emigration from Gaza to Rafah. I tell our brothers that the decision to stay in our land is ours.”
Before launching its offensive on the ground, Israel continued its bombing and announced the death of two high-ranking officials in the Hamas military organization who, according to Israeli Intelligence, were key in the 7-O attack: the head of the air unit, Murad Abu Murad, and Nukba commando chief Ali Qadi. The latter was arrested in 2005 for the murder of an Israeli and released in 2011 along with 1,026 other prisoners in the exchange for soldier Gilad Shalit.
Hamas now intends to carry out a new exchange with the 126 people it has in its hands together with Islamic Jihad, according to an Israeli military spokesman. The kidnapped people are his bargaining chip, which he always promised to achieve although he never imagined there would be so many, a measure to try to stop Israel’s attacks. The armed wing of Hamas announced the death of nine kidnapped people by bombs. If all his announcements in this regard are confirmed, the number of dead kidnapped people would be 26.
“It does not benefit Hamas to have so many babies, children, women and elderly among the hostages. It is something that violates all known rules,” says former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, recruited to deal with the thorny and complex issue of the hostages. After citing the close relationship of the Iranian regime with Hamas translated into weapons, knowledge or money, he was asked on Channel 12 if he believes that what happened now has traces of Iran. “No doubt,” he replied.
As in previous escalations, Hamas spokesmen abroad – as well as the spokesman for the armed wing in Gaza, Abu Oveida – are the most vocal since the leadership in Gaza is aware that the slightest error of precaution, a missile Israeli will finish them off. After the testimonies and images of rapes, murders and beheadings, the main Hamas leaders abroad are in Israel’s crosshairs even if they are in Beirut, Damascus or Tehran.
Like almost all the previous days of the war, Hezbollah and Israel staged a new confrontation this Saturday in a dynamic that could break the balance of mutual deterrence established since the 2006 war. In the early hours of Saturday, Hezbollah launched two drones against the city from Haifa being intercepted and subsequently fired 30 mortar shells at Israeli military targets in the disputed Sheba Farms area. Israel responded by attacking positions of the Shiite group.
Although hidden by the monumental shadow of southern Israel and Gaza and the exchanges of fire on the Israeli-Lebanese border, the West Bank is also in effervescence. Several dozen Palestinians have died in armed clashes or riots with Israeli security forces who in the early hours of Friday carried out a new massive raid that included two Hamas leaders, Adnan Asfour and Ahmed Awad.
With parts of southern Israel evacuated by Palestinian shells and still burying their dead, Gaza under lockdown, bombs, death and the threat of a ground offensive, the war is approaching a new and uncertain phase.