No one expects what will happen. Israeli tanks are moving on two axes, with their artillery directed at two targets: the first is Gaza, where Benjamin Netanyahu announced that there is no choice but to eliminate Hamas, and the second is southern Lebanon in anticipation of any intervention by Hezbollah in the war that appears to break out after an attack. It was launched by Hamas fighters against Israel.
The waters of the Mediterranean Sea will be moved by a giant American aircraft carrier, the USS Ford, the largest lethal force in the world, as part of an American military repositioning in the region in a signal of deterrence against Iran and Hezbollah.
As for Hamas leaders, they threatened to execute an Israeli civilian kidnapped in exchange for any new Israeli bombing of civilian homes without prior warning.
Ambiguity in the situation on the ground near Gaza and on the borders of Lebanon, accompanied by a state of anticipation prevailing throughout the world, which is holding its breath for the moment when Israel is forced to aim its weapons at new targets in response to other parties that may engage in the potential war.
To avoid expanding the circle of tension, Abu Dhabi rushed, according to the Axios website, to warn the head of the Syrian regime, Bashar al-Assad, against interfering in the war between Hamas and Israel, or allowing attacks on Israel from Syrian territory, while Egypt, Turkey and Qatar rushed to mediate, which Israel rejected and Hamas accepted.
Israel said, on Monday, that it had summoned an unprecedented number of 300,000 reserve soldiers and imposed a complete siege on the Gaza Strip, in the latest indication of its intention to launch a ground attack in response to the devastating attack by Hamas militants on Saturday.
After Israeli aircraft launched intense air strikes on the Gaza Strip for hours, Hamas, which controls the Strip, said that it would execute an Israeli kidnapper for every Israeli bombing of a civilian home without warning.
Inside Israel, Palestinian fighters are still holed up in several locations, two days after they killed hundreds of Israelis and took dozens of hostages.
Israeli television channels said that the death toll from the Hamas attack had risen to 900, in addition to at least 2,600 wounded. The Gaza Ministry of Health said that at least 687 Palestinians were killed and 3,726 others were injured in Israeli air strikes on the besieged Strip since Saturday.
A Palestinian man stands early on October 8, 2023 in front of the rubble of Gaza City’s Watan Tower, which was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. – Fighting between Israeli forces and the Palestinian militant group Hamas raged on October 8, with…
Among the dead were citizens of Italy, Ukraine, and the United States, where President Joe Biden announced on Monday that at least 11 Americans had been killed.
Abu Ubaida, spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, said that the movement “acts in accordance with the teachings of Islam with regard to preserving the safety of Israeli prisoners, but issued and broadcast the threat to execute them in response to the intensified raids.”
The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, also called on Israel to refrain from targeting civilians if it is concerned about the fate of the Israelis it detains. On Sunday, it announced that it was detaining more than 30 Israelis.
Denunciation of Gallant’s statements
While Israel launched intense retaliatory strikes on Gaza, Defense Minister Yoav Galant sparked international condemnation by announcing a tightening of the siege to prevent food and fuel from reaching the Strip, which is inhabited by 2.3 million Palestinians.
Omar Shaker, director of the Israel and Palestine office at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement, “Depriving people in the occupied territories of food and electricity is collective punishment, and it is a war crime.”
The Israeli air strikes became more powerful as night fell, and witnesses said that several Hamas security headquarters and ministries were bombed. The raids destroyed roads and homes.
This image from video provided by South First Responders shows charred and damaged cars along a desert road after an attack by Hamas militants at the Tribe of Nova Trance music festival near Kibbutz Re’im in southern Israel on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023…
Israel also bombed the headquarters of the private Palestinian telecommunications company, which could affect landline, Internet and mobile services.
As the rain fell, explosions and lightning lit up the sky, and the sound of bombing mixed with thunder.
In another sign of Israel’s rapid shift toward war, a cabinet member from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party said the party may form a national unity government with opposition leaders joining within hours.
Netanyahu told the mayors of the southern towns that were subjected to the sudden attack on Saturday that Israel’s response “will change the Middle East.”
In the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, men scaled a crumbling building to pull the body of a young child from under the rubble, carrying it through the crowd below amid the ruins of bombed buildings.
The Ministry of Health in the region said that this air strike killed and injured dozens.
Meanwhile, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, said that about 137,000 people have taken refuge in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), affiliated with the international organization.
Israeli soldiers take position in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon on October 9, 2023 – The Israeli army said on October 9 that its soldiers had “killed a number of armed suspects” who had crossed the border from Lebanon
The possibility of the fighting spreading to other areas has raised concern in the region. The Israeli army said that Israeli forces “killed a number of suspected militants who infiltrated Israeli territory from Lebanese territory,” adding that helicopters were “currently bombing the area.”
The Israeli army spokesman, Avichay Adraee, announced on Monday that the deputy commander of the 300th Brigade in the Galilee Division, Lieutenant Colonel Alim Saad, was killed in a clash with gunmen who infiltrated from Lebanese territory into Israel.
The “Jerusalem Brigades”, the military wing of the Palestinian “Islamic Jihad” movement listed on the US terrorist list, claimed responsibility for the infiltration operation, which was carried out on Monday afternoon, and spoke in a brief statement of “the injury of 7 Israeli soldiers, including a serious injury.”
The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah launched a barrage of missiles at northern Israel on Monday, in response to the killing of at least three of its members in an Israeli bombing of Lebanon.
The UAE warned Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria against interfering in the war between Hamas and Israel, or allowing attacks on Israel from Syrian territory, according to what Axios reported, citing two sources familiar with UAE diplomatic efforts.
The website reported on Monday that many countries, including the United States, are deeply concerned that the war may spread to Lebanon or Syria and escalate into a regional conflict.
The website explained that the Emiratis, who last year restored their relationship with Syria and invited Assad to visit Abu Dhabi, have greater influence over the Syrian government than most Arab countries in the region.
According to the site, the UAE also enjoys a close relationship with Israel after the two countries signed a peace treaty in 2020 as part of the Abraham Accords brokered by former US President Donald Trump.
The website stated that Emirati officials directed their messages to high-ranking Syrian officials and informed the administration of US President Joe Biden about their contacts with the Syrians, according to the sources.
Axios: The UAE warned Assad against getting involved in the Hamas-Israel war
The UAE has warned Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria against interfering in the war between Hamas and Israel or allowing attacks on Israel from Syrian territory, according to what Axios reported, citing two sources familiar with UAE diplomatic efforts.
The American President, Joe Biden, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, called on Iran “not to expand the scope of the conflict beyond Gaza” after the sudden Hamas attacks on Israel.
Hamas attack on Israel.. America “does not intend” to deploy ground forces on the ground
White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday that Washington has no intention of deploying military forces on the ground in the wake of the attacks launched by Hamas on Israel, but that it will protect American interests in the region.
In southern Israel, which witnessed the Hamas attack, the chief Israeli military spokesman said that the forces had regained control of communities inside Israel that had been overrun by fighters from the movement, but isolated clashes continued with the continued activity of some militants.
Never before has the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict witnessed shocking images of the bodies of hundreds of Israelis scattered in the streets of towns, shot dead at an open-air dance party and hijacked from their homes.
The announcement of the call-up of 300,000 reserve soldiers in just two days increased speculation that Israel might consider launching a ground attack on Gaza, an area from which it withdrew nearly two decades ago.
Military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hajari said, “We have never called in so many reserve soldiers… We are continuing the attack.”
Palestinians said that they received phone calls and voice messages on their mobile phones from Israeli security personnel asking them to leave the areas, most of which are located in northern and eastern Gaza, and they added that they had received warnings that the Israeli army would carry out operations there.
Hamas says that the attack came as a result of the crisis in the Gaza Strip, which has been under siege for 16 years, and the Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank, which were the bloodiest in years.
‘A complete massacre’
The main Palestinian groups that condemned the attacks said that the violence was expected with the peace process frozen for nearly a decade, while the far-right Israeli government spoke of permanently annexing Palestinian territories.
Israel and Western countries say nothing justifies the deliberate mass killing of civilians.
The gunmen shot and killed dozens of Israeli youth in a nightclub located in an open-air desert area, and media reported that 260 people were killed there.
The remains of a destroyed vehicle are seen on a road after a rocket, launched from the Gaza Strip landed in the Israeli settlement of Beitar Ilit
The next day, dozens of survivors came out of their hiding places and the place was full of broken and abandoned cars.
“It was a massacre, a complete massacre,” said Eric Nani, who was celebrating his 26th birthday and hid for hours in a field after his escape.
In Gaza, footage obtained by Reuters showed dozens of people climbing collapsed buildings in search of survivors, and the air was still full of dust from the collapse of the buildings. Sirens sounded as emergency teams worked to extinguish the cars that caught fire.
A man appeared in a video clip while people were extracting a body from under the rubble. “A large number of martyrs. The place is inhabited by residents and displaced people from Beit Hanoun. As you can see, this is a martyr.”
Egyptian and Qatari mediation
Egypt has previously mediated between Israel and Hamas in previous periods of escalation of the conflict, and Egyptian security sources said that Cairo is in close contact with both sides in an attempt to prevent the conflict from escalating.
A source told Reuters that Qatari mediators made urgent contacts with leaders in the Hamas movement to try to negotiate the release of Israeli women and children held by the movement in Gaza in exchange for the release of 36 Palestinian women and children from Israeli prisons.
The violence threatens US-backed moves toward normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a security realignment that could have threatened Palestinian hopes for self-determination as well as undermining the influence of Iran, which supports Hamas.
The Israeli army faces difficult questions regarding the worst intelligence failure in 50 years.
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2023-10-10 04:27:49
