The Israeli military has further intensified airstrikes against Gaza. The bombings have been very intense during the night and are also being intense this morning. The fate of the 150 hostages held by Hamas does not seem to be a priority. The armed group has threatened to kill one every time the Israeli aircraft bombs without warning.
Before Saturday, Hamas’s threats seemed rhetorical, but no one in Israel takes them lightly.
Still, the military offensive intensifies. Prime Minister Beniamin Negtanyahu reiterated last night that he will spare no effort to crush Hamas, and to demonstrate this he ordered the mobilization of 360,000 more reservists. There are already 660,000 soldiers ready to enter combat. It is an enormous force for a country of barely nine million inhabitants, where mandatory military service is completed with several years in the reserve. Never, in any war, had Israel mobilized so many soldiers.
Netanyahu declared a state of war hours after Saturday’s invasion and, since then, military logic is the only one that counts. Diplomatic mediation by Qatar, Turkey and other countries that have offered to negotiate the release of the hostages in exchange for a truce is going nowhere.
The army has regained control of the towns surrounding Gaza, where fighting has been intense for more than three days. Israel claims to have killed some 1,500 Islamist guerrillas and does not rule out that some are still hiding in Israeli territory.
The entire civilian population living near Gaza has been evacuated and the region is now a “war zone” where tanks, ammunition and soldiers are accumulating. There is hardly any civilian traffic and military controls order the flow of weapons that reach the front.
Frontline units have received the order to “shoot to kill anything that moves.” On Saturday morning, Hamas militants smoothly traversed the 500 meters of no-man’s land separating the last homes in Gaza from the perimeter fence, tearing it down with tractors and bulldozers with little opposition. It took the army seven hours to come to the aid of the population.
The news of the thousand dead, of the cold-blooded murders, has shocked the country and influenced the strategic decisions that are being made. Netanyahu compares the cruelty of Hamas to that of the Islamic State and promises the Israeli people that it will be destroyed.
Military spokesmen have advised Gazans to leave the strip while they can, although it is clear that they cannot go anywhere. The enclave, 42 kilometers long by 12 kilometers in its widest part, is blocked. No one can enter or leave, especially now that the Israeli army has regained control of the border. Tanks, planes and helicopters protect it.
The aircraft has destroyed a thousand targets in Gaza and justifies that there are several mosques among them because they hosted Hamas commanders.
Israel already recognizes 900 dead and the Palestinians, 687. There are thousands of wounded on both sides.
The military campaign will be long. Israel has requested more ammunition from the United States and a list of weapons including precision missiles, fighter jets and interceptors for the anti-missile batteries of the Iron Dome, the shield that protects the country and that Hamas rockets have pushed to the limit of its capacity. Some shells continue to fall in central Israel and the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Coordination between the Israeli military and CENTCOM, the central command center of the US military, is total. CENTCOM is assigned the Middle East, Persian and Horn of Africa region. This means that the air force and Navy ships are already providing support to the military operation against Hamas, an ally of Iran. The escalation of the conflict seems inevitable.
