Israel will not allow water, food and medicine to enter Gaza, nor will it restore electricity, until it releases the approximately 150 people it captured during Saturday’s attack outside the strip.
The requests of the United Nations and the Red Cross to do so will not be heeded, and it remains to be seen whether the United States will be to open a corridor through which the citizens of Gaza can escape the incessant bombardment they have been suffering for the past six days.
The civilians, the innocent, always caught in the crossfire of the armies and the leaders, have a lot of suffering left to endure in this new war between Arabs and Israelis. Egypt agrees to allow humanitarian aid to enter through the Rafah border in southern Gaza, but Israel does not allow it. He also assures that he has never crossed this border. But Hamas refuses that the Palestinians leave with the argument that “they have the right to defend their homeland”.
Israel’s armed forces announced yesterday that they were entering “the next phase of the war”, implying that the decision to enter Gaza has been made and all that is missing is the order. The priority is Hamas, not the hostages, nor safeguarding the population of Gaza.
Nevertheless, Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, who traveled to Tel-Aviv yesterday more as a Jew than as the first diplomat, said that “necessary measures must be taken not to harm civilians. We are mourning the loss of every civilian life.”
Blinken’s stepfather was a Holocaust survivor and among the hostages is an 84-year-old woman, Ditza Heiman, who is also close to him.
When he saw the photographs of fathers executed in front of their children, young men burned alive, women raped and soldiers beheaded, Antony Blinken gave credit to the slaughter carried out by Hamas guerrillas. He said that they were barbarians and that the only goal of the Islamist movement is to “destroy Israel and kill Jews.”
The war has united two administrations as opposed as those of Biden and Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister yesterday could not but thank the military aid provided by his main ally, the money to buy weapons, ammunition, the naval battle group that takes positions off the coast and the fighters that will be in service of the Israeli Air Force.
“Crush and eliminate Hamas”, as Netanyahu repeats almost daily, requires a ground invasion which, in turn, requires destroying as much as possible. The bombings, as military spokesmen have acknowledged, are “extensive and imprecise”.
They have razed entire neighborhoods and, according to the latest count by the Ministry of Health in Gaza, have left 1,354 dead and more than 6,000 injured, admitted to hospitals that can no longer treat them, lacking light and everything that is essential to save lives
Adjusting force to military objectives without harming political interests is difficult for any army and any government, except now for the Israeli one. Netanyahu said on Monday that there is no limitation on the use of force, and the intensity has been maintained now that decisions are made by a small cabinet that has included Benny Gantz, a general and former head of state Major, as the most responsible for the course of the war together with the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant.
Both know that decapitating Hamas without endangering the hostages is impossible. They have hidden them underground, in the underground Gaza, made up of tunnels that run for hundreds of kilometers and from where they will fight the land offensive.
There are no reports that they have executed any, although they said they would if Israel continued to bomb homes without warning.
Bombs continue to fall without warning and the generals hope that when they see Gaza burning and its 2.3 million people suffering, Hamas will come to exchange the hostages for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
Truces are agreed upon when both sides understand that on the battlefield they stand to lose more than they aspire to gain. This has always been the case in Hamas’ clashes with Israel, but now it is different. Both sides are fighting for their existence and this means many more deaths, civilians in Gaza and soldiers in Israel.
Gazans who still have battery on their cellphones upload stories online that are impossible to confirm, but give names and surnames to the dead. This is the case, for example, of Areeg Qannan, a teacher who left Gaza two months ago to teach in Kuwait and who now claims to have lost his entire family: his parents and siblings, in addition to his wife Khitam , pregnant and mother of five children between the ages of three and twelve – Mayar, Muhammad, Reem, Omar and Lina–, all also dead. They lived in the neighborhood of Al-Sahaba, in Gaza City, and apparently died during a bombardment.
The UN puts the displaced in the strip at 340,000 and warns that “we are facing a major disaster”. The situation is “absolutely horrific”, added a spokesman.
The United States will support Israel until it achieves its goals, whatever they may be, and expects Egypt and Jordan to support it as well. They are the only countries with full diplomatic relations with Israel. Yesterday Blinken also met with the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, to whom he guaranteed that they would collaborate in Israel’s victory in this war.
The enthusiasm of the current American Administration for Israel was in evidence on Wednesday night, when Joe Biden claimed that he had seen a video in which Hamas militiamen behead children. He then had to come out to correct himself and say that he hadn’t really seen it.
Blinken will be in Amman today to meet with Mahmoud Abbas, the veteran leader of the Palestinian Authority who has been ignored for years and who today has fallen out of favor with his own people.
Netanyahu scoffed at the latest US mediation. He said you were not there to negotiate with Abbas. That was nine years ago and the war continues.
