19 days after the start of the war that began with the attack by the fundamentalist group Hamas in southern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his army is preparing for a ground incursion to hit “the perpetrators of the Hamas massacres.” -ISIS”. Meanwhile, he continues the intense air offensive against hundreds of targets, including underground ones, in the Gaza Strip, which, between bombs and missiles, requested the urgent entry of fuel to prevent the collapse of hospitals.
“I will not detail when, how and how much or even all the considerations we took into account,” Netanyahu declared of the ground offensive. In a television intervention, he pointed out that his forces killed “thousands of terrorists and it is only the beginning” and outlined two objectives: “Destroy the military capabilities of the Hamas Government and do everything possible to return the kidnapped people home.” .
Israel, which accused Iran this Wednesday of helping Hamas, has not yet begun the invasion to give more time to the release of children (30) and perhaps women among the 222 kidnapped in the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and to the United States to to strengthen its defenses in the Middle East.
After the open fronts in Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Syria (militias and Bashar Assad’s regime), Israel faces a new front, although it is not one of fire but of rhetoric: the UN. Its Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has become the target of the Israeli diplomatic campaign that accuses him of linking the jihadist attacks of October 7 with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“It is important to recognize that the Hamas attacks do not come from nowhere. The Palestinian people are under 56 years of suffocating occupation,” Guterres had declared, later clarifying that he does not justify the attacks and being “shocked by the biased representation” of his statements. His clarifications do not reduce Israel’s discomfort – even under unprecedented trauma and in a relentless fight against Hamas – towards the representative of an organization that he already considered “anti-Israeli.”
“There was no distortion of his words. The killings of the Hamas terrorists, who also came from a territory from which Israel withdrew, have nothing to do with the conflict,” denounces the UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, who demands the resignation of Guterres while the possibility of denying visas to his representatives is studied.
In peacetime, the UN has an important role in Gaza. In times of war, vital. According to the agency in charge of Palestinian refugees (UNWRA), 613,000 displaced Gazans found refuge in some 150 buildings converted into a theoretical safe island. But UNWRA warns that if Israel does not allow the entry of fuel, it will have to “make difficult decisions.” Its representative, Tom White, warned on CNN that, “without fuel, people in Gaza will not have access to drinking water, hospitals will close and we will have to end our relief operations.”
In its latest report released on Wednesday afternoon, the closure did not occur, but various reports from NGOs on the ground described a distressing situation. Doctors Without Borders shared Dr Obeid’s shocking testimony about the conditions in which he had to amputate half the foot of a 9-year-old boy at Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
Gasoline is also essential in the distribution of aid in an enclave where, according to a UN report, 80% of its 2.2 million inhabitants needed international aid before the war.
Israel maintains its position of allowing the daily entry of water, food and medicine, but not fuel, considering that it is essential for the armed infrastructure in the Hamas tunnels, which it accuses of not giving the liters it has to civilians in Gaza.
According to the Hamas government, more than 6,500 Palestinians have been killed and 17,000 wounded in the deadliest Israeli offensive since the war against Hezbollah in 2006.
Army spokesman Daniel Hagari took aim at the regional enemy: “Before the war, Iran gave help to Hamas directly through training, delivery of weapons, money and technological knowledge. Even now, aid takes place in the form of Intelligence information and incitement on the Internet in the world against Israel. According to him, Iran is behind the attacks from Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Tehran denounced the Israeli attacks in Gaza which it defines as “genocide of the Palestinian people.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad troops trained in Iran under the leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard weeks before the worst attack in Israel’s history. This Wednesday, the army held a new session with foreign media, including EL MUNDO, to show moments of the attack that left 1,400 dead. Captured by the terrorists themselves, the victims and survivors in the kibbutzim and the Supernova music festival, the images reflect the brutality of the armed wing of Hamas that carried out and broadcast its atrocities against children, young people and the elderly. The 40 minutes of recording confirm that it was a mix of a well-planned military operation and a crazed jihadist version of a pogrom.
At nightfall, Israel launched a massive bombardment against several sections of tunnels, according to local media, in Gaza. Shortly after, and not coincidentally, Hamas fired a volley of “quality” projectiles against central Israeli towns. Hours before, he aimed two missiles at two distant areas: the northern Carmel and the southern, Eilat, which these days houses evacuees from the kibbutzim in its hotels.
