GAZA + JERUSALEM ( Web News + MONITORING DESK )
Fears of ground invasion are growing as Israel is escalating measures against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to a “total blockade” including a ban on the supply of food and fuel to war-ravaged Palestinians in the resource-strapped Arab country.
According to Israel’s foreign ministry, at least 1,000 Israelis, including civilian and security forces, have been killed by Hamas, while Palestine’s health ministry has put the tally of martyred Gazans at 560.
Meanwhile the military spokesperson of Hamas, Abu Obeidah has announced that from now on, any targeting of innocent civilians of Gaza will be met (regretfully) by executing an Israeli hostage who’s in our custody. And this will be broadcasted live, Hamas military spokesperson announced while talking to Al Jazeera.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant on Monday described the move as part of a battle against the Palestinian group as Israel’s troops were still battling on Monday to clear out Hamas gunmen more than two days after they burst across the fence from Gaza on a deadly rampage.
The Israeli army said it would soon go on the offensive after the biggest mobilisation in Israeli history.
Hamas executed a meticulous two-year campaign of deception that caught Israel off guard during a devastating attack, marking the worst breach in Israel’s defences since 1973.
The group concealed its military intentions while presenting an image of economic focus. They trained openly, mocked military preparations, and showed restraint in prior operations, lulling Israel into complacency.
Israel shifted its focus away from Hamas, failing to detect their plan. Hamas avoided leaks and executed a multifaceted attack, exploiting Israeli weaknesses.
The consequences led Israel to vow the destruction of Hamas, emphasising the need to address the threat posed by the group.
Fighting raged at several locations inside Israel where the fighters were still holed up after killing hundreds of Israelis and seizing dozens of hostages in a raid that shattered Israel’s reputation of invincibility.
Israel’s chief military spokesperson said troops had re-established control of communities that had been overrun, but that isolated clashes continued as some Palestinian gunmen remained active.
“We are now carrying out searches in all of the communities and clearing the area,” chief military spokesperson Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari said.
Earlier, another spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht, acknowledged that it was “taking more time than we expected to get things back into a defensive, security posture”.
The shocking images of the bodies of hundreds of Israeli civilians sprawled across the streets of towns, gunned down at an outdoor disco and abducted from their homes were like nothing seen before in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel has already responded with its heaviest-ever bombardment of the Gaza Strip, martyring some 500 people so far, and could be contemplating an unprecedented ground assault on the territory it abandoned nearly two decades ago.
Hagari said 300,000 reservists had already been activated in just two days.
“We have never drafted so many reservists on such a scale,” Hagari said. “We are going on the offensive.”
Hamas says the attack is justified by the plight of Gaza under a 16-year blockade, an Israeli crackdown in the occupied West Bank that has been the deadliest in years, and a far-right Israeli government that talks of annexing Palestinian land. Israel and Western countries say nothing justifies the intentional mass killing of civilians.
“We are putting a complete siege on Gaza… No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed,” Gallant said in a video message, referring to the enclave that is overcrowded with 2.3 million people.
Israel continued to pound the Gaza Strip with a new wave of rockets from the early hours of Monday morning, with clashes and shelling reported in the West Bank, Al Arabiya said.
Al Arabiya and Al Hadath sources reported that military planes bombed two mosques in Gaza on Monday morning.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army said it had hit more than 1,00 targets in Gaza and its tanks and drones were stationed across the strip’s openings in the border fence to prevent anyone from entering areas under their control.
Nearly 500 people, including children and women, have been killed in Gaza and thousands of others have been injured in Israel’s attacks.
A humanitarian corridor to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip following Israeli strikes must be opened urgently, a source from the Palestinian Red Crescent told Al Arabiya.
The United Nations said the number of displaced Gazans has risen to more than 123,000 as a result of the fighting between the Israeli military and Hamas since the attack on Saturday.
As of late Sunday, retaliatory Israeli airstrikes had destroyed 159 housing units across Gaza and severely damaged 1,210 others, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said a school sheltering hundreds of families was also hit.
Several Israeli news outlets, citing rescue service officials, said at least 700 people have been killed in Israel, including 44 soldiers.
Sirens sounded in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem
Sirens sounded across Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as Hamas launched retaliatory missiles towards Israel, the army said.
The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of the Hamas militant group, said it had fired a barrage of missiles towards Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in response to Israel’s bombings of civilians and their homes, Al Arabiya reported on Monday.
The group directed a salvo of 120 missiles at Israeli cities Ashdod and Ashkelon in response to the military’s ongoing raids on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Video circulating online appeared to show smoke rising from Ben Gurion Airport, Israel’s main international gateway, but no flights were impacted.
The country’s aviation authority said a missile was intercepted near the airport and no terminals were affected.
Iran said it was not involved in the attacks launched by militant group Hamas on Israel
Iran said it was not involved in the attacks launched by militant group Hamas on Israel, the country’s foreign ministry spokesperson said during a press conference on Monday.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani denied reports of Tehran’s involvement in the Saturday attacks that have killed 700 Israelis and led to the capture of dozens more.
Israel has since retaliated on the Gaza Strip, launching hundreds of attacks that have killed more than 400 Palestinians so far and destroyed entire neighborhoods in the besieged city.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there was no evidence Iran was behind the latest attacks on Israel but he acknowledged that there are long standing ties between Tehran and Hamas.
“Anyone who threatens the Islamic Republic of Iran should know that any foolish action will be met with a devastating response,” Kanaani said.
Iran’s backing for Palestinian groups is part of a broader network of militias and armed groups it supports across the Middle East, giving Tehran a powerful presence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as Gaza.
Iran gave green light for Hamas operation against Israel at meeting in Lebanon: WSJ
Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the operation at a meeting in the Lebanese capital Beirut, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing senior members of Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reportedly played a significant role in the planning and authorization of Hamas’ Saturday surprise attack on Israel, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah cited by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
According to the report, officers from the IRGC had been collaborating with Hamas since August to devise a complex operation involving air, land, and sea incursions, marking one of the most substantial breaches of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s worst escalation in decades has claimed more than 600 lives on the Israeli side, the government press office said, while Gaza officials reported at least 400 deaths in Israeli air strikes.
Details of the operation were reportedly fine-tuned during several meetings in Beirut, where IRGC officers engaged with representatives from four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which governs Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shia militant group and political faction based in Lebanon.
While US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that there was no concrete evidence pointing to Iran directing or being behind this specific attack, he acknowledged the longstanding relationship between Iran and these militant groups.
In response to inquiries by the Wall Street Journal regarding these meetings, Mahmoud Mirdawi, a senior Hamas official, insisted that the group had independently planned the attacks, characterizing them as “a Palestinian and Hamas decision.”
According to senior Hamas and Hezbollah members and an Iranian official cited in the report, the IRGC’s broader strategy involves creating a multi-front threat, aiming to encircle Israel from various directions. This threat involves Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the north, alongside Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said Sunday that Tehran supported the Palestinians’ right to self-defense and accused Israel of being a danger to the region.
“Iran supports the legitimate defense of the Palestinian nation,” Raisi said, quoted by state television.
“The Zionist regime (Israel) and its supporters are responsible for endangering the security of nations in the region, and they must be held accountable in this matter.”
Iran does not recognize Israel and has made support for the Palestinian cause a centerpiece of its foreign policy ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
The two governments have engaged in a shadow war for years, with Iran accusing Israel of a series of sabotage attacks and assassinations targeting its nuclear program.