Israel made it clear that the war against Hamas will not end soon, while intensifying its attacks on the southern part of Gaza.
New bombardments targeted the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, while Israel announced that it was stepping up its offensive against Hamas, despite international calls for a cease fire.
On Tuesday, thick clouds of smoke rose into the skies over Gaza after strikes, according to AFP images, particularly over Khan Younes, the large town in the south where Israel has announced that it is now concentrating the bulk of its offensive against Hamas.
According to an AFP correspondent, Israeli night strikes also targeted the neighboring town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border, where tens of thousands of displaced people are crammed into makeshift camps.
Thirty bodies of victims of the bombardments have been transported in the last 24 hours to the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, according to the Ministry of Health in Haiti.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that there wouldn’t be peace until Hamas rulers are destroyed, and Palestinian society is “deradicalized”, more than two and a half months after the start of the war, triggered by a bloody attack on Israeli soil on 7 October by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. Global concern has mounted since then, and international calls for a ceasefire have multiplied, but Netanyahu pledged to stay the course in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal late Monday.
“Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized,” he argued. “These are the three prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza.”
Once the fighting ends, he said, “for the foreseeable future, Israel will have to retain overriding security responsibility over Gaza” and build a “temporary security zone on the perimeter” of the territory.
Netanyahu had earlier visited Israeli troops inside Gaza, then reportedly told a meeting of his conservative Likud party that “we’re not stopping… We’re intensifying the fighting in the coming days.”
The Gaza war has heightened regional tensions between, on the one hand, Israel and its ally the United States, and, on the other, Iran-backed armed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
During a hearing of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, on Tuesday, Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, stated that Israel is in a multi-arena war since October 7. “We were attacked from seven fronts — Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran,” Gallant said, as cited by Haaretz. “We have already reacted and acted on six of these fronts, and I say here in the most explicit way — anyone who acts against us is a potential target; there is no immunity for anyone,” the Israeli media conveyed from Gallant’s speech.
Gallant asserted the war in Gaza is justified as a response to a brutal attack, emphasizing a decisive response to deter future aggression. He stated, “Whether it takes months or years, this matter must be finished,” according to Haaretz.
Miroslava Salazar, with AFP
