As Israel moves closer to launching a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip after urging its citizens to move south and continues its massive airstrikes against the Islamist group Hamas y his soldiers carried out several limited incursions into Gazan territory. The objective is to locate the more than 100 hostages who were kidnapped in the lethal jihadist attack on October 7.
“We have searched and collected some samples that may perhaps contribute to the effort to locate the missing persons,” announced the military spokesman, Daniel Hagariabout the action near the border in which its infantry troops “They killed several terrorists in the area and aborted cells of Hamas, including one that had fired anti-tank missiles at Israel.” Hours later, it was learned that the military found bodies of missing Israelis.
Just a week ago, Israelis were fighting among themselves over the judicial reform plan in the biggest internal crisis, the West Bank was simmering, the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel seemed to be waiting around the corner and the Hamas leadership completed negotiations with Qatar and Egypt over increased economic aid that promised calm with Israel. But the massive attack by the Izzedin Al Qassam Brigades against towns, several border bases and a massive music festival that caused 1,300 dead in Israel dynamited the local, regional and international board. The Israeli offensive is the harshest in the Gaza Strip in recent decades, with more than 1,800 dead, the unprecedented kidnapping of Israelis in Gaza, the record tension between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah since the war in 2006 that Any moment can explode, demonstrations of protests in Arab countries and the “return” of the US to the region to stage support for its Israeli ally against the Iranian axis.
Under the rain of projectiles from the militias against Israel, arriving for the first time in the Haifa area and while the massive bombings that sow panic among the Palestinians do not stop, Northern Gaza has become a key theater of war. There, Israel addressed the inhabitants with leaflets and messages asking them to leave their homes and head south “in the next 24 hours.”
The request, defined by the UN as “impossible” and a new source of the worsening of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, is interpreted as a step to “facilitate” the land incursion that would begin in that area. Given that the Israeli government raised the goal from “damaging Hamas’s military capabilities to “ending” its regime, the ground offensive seems inevitable. On Friday night, tens of thousands of soldiers were preparing for an operation that will mark the third phase of the war after the surprise attack by Hamas in Israel and the massive aerial retaliation.
“We have asked by all means the inhabitants in northern Gaza to leave their homes for their safety and protection but Hamas, which is worse than Daesh tells them not to do it and puts them in danger to be their human shield from their attacks,” Hagari protested about a step that seeks to prepare a scenario in which combats between soldiers and militiamen take place in areas without Palestinian civilians.