An Israeli military spokesman announced this Friday night the “expansion of ground activity” in Gaza and in a few minutes the strip was subjected to intense bombing, the cutting of all communications – internet included – and an undetermined number of ground entrances. , which are the closest thing to the beginning of the land war, although it has not been declared by the Israeli Government.
Hamas admitted, in a dramatic succession of statements, that there are “violent combats” in a midnight that coincides with the three weeks of its terrorist attack.
A country with good antennas and a historical ally of Israel, the kingdom of Jordan, expressed itself this Friday night in a catastrophic manner, and assumed that the ground war has begun. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi noted that “Israel has just begun a ground operation in Gaza the result of which will be a humanitarian disaster for years to come.”
The Government of Israel did not clarify this Friday whether this “expansion” amounts to a full-fledged invasion or it will be an hours-long operation. In his collaboration with CNN, former NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark warned that “it is easy to enter (the strip), it is more difficult to stay.” No one dares, however, to venture how long the objective of eradicating – at any price – Hamas, which has been ruling the strip alone and with an iron fist for 15 years, requires.
The White House stated, in parallel, that it has not put any red line to Israel, a way of giving the green light to the imminent land war.
The expansion comes on the day that Qatar sent a hopeful message about the possibility of new hostage releases. Al Jazeera television reported that negotiations were progressing “rapidly” on the basis of “a ceasefire” in exchange for additional releases. Until now, Israel is unnerved by the request for a ceasefire, contrary to its military preparations, which are already slower than expected.
However, the same Israeli military spokesman mentioned the point: “Israel will continue to do everything possible for the return of the abductees.” And there are more and more Israelis who wear a yellow ribbon on their wrist: the color that claims that the kidnapped are – or should be – a priority.
“You, the media and your governments, are to blame, you only defend Israel,” the employee who cleaned the small chapel of the VII station of the Via Dolorosa in the old city of Jerusalem told us this Friday, by way of greeting, without a soul.
The war in Gaza is already close to a record in terms of information: 2,500 accredited foreign journalists, fifty Spanish. We all work in Israeli territory. Loop? Impossible to access, only the media with a permanent presence, very few Westerners (among them the France-Presse agency). And yet, despite so much scoundrelism, it is impossible to certify anything, which reinforces the historical polarization of an endless conflict.
Thus, a spokesman for the Israeli army, Daniel Hagari, denounced this Friday – with various intercepted photographs and recordings of alleged Hamas leaders – that the Islamist organization used the main operating hospital in the Strip, Al Shifa, as a cover, especially to enter the underground tunnel network. The same military source accused Hamas of locating one of its main command centers in the basement of the hospital. Time and again, the Israeli Government tries to make credible its thesis that they are trying to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza, but that it is Hamas that exposes its own people as human shields.
Within minutes, a Hamas spokesperson stated that it was a “hoax” typical of someone “with a ten-year-old child mentality” and the prelude to “a new massacre against our people, greater than that of the Al Ahli hospital,” in reference to the explosion of last October 17. Initially, Hamas and its allies accused Israel of the deaths of about five hundred people, which was proven false.
