Tag: israel gaza conflict

Israeli strikes kill multiple civilians at shelters in Gaza combat zone, as Blinken seeks more aid

Post By World , , , ,

Israeli military strikes killed multiple civilians Saturday at a UN shelter and hospital in the main combat zone in the Gaza Strip as the assault intensified on the besieged enclave’s Hamas rulers, amid growing international uproar over the soaring death toll and deepening humanitarian crisis.

Israel’s military said it had encircled Gaza City, the target of its offensive to crush Hamas, but on Saturday offered a three-hour window for residents trapped by the fighting to flee south.

The new attacks came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the region seeking ways to ease the plight of civilians caught in the fighting. He met with Arab Foreign Ministers on Saturday in Jordan, the day after talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who insisted there could be no temporary cease-fire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.

Egyptian officials said they and Qatar were proposing humanitarian pauses for six to 12 hours daily to allow aid in and casualties to be evacuated. They were also asking for Israel to release a number of women and elderly prisoners in exchange for hostages held by Hamas — suggestions Israel seems unlikely to accept. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press on the discussions.

The Israeli military has repeatedly demanded that northern Gaza’s 1.1 million residents flee south as it escalates bombardment of the north and tightens the noose around Gaza City. However, some of those traveling south were killed during their journey in recent days, and Israel has continued bombing in the south, saying it is striking Hamas targets.

With wide swaths of residential neighbourhoods levelled in airstrikes, most of northern Gaza’s remaining residents, estimated at around 3,00,000, have sought shelter in UN-run schools and in hospitals where they hope they’ll be safe. But deadly Israeli strikes have also repeatedly hit and damaged those shelters.

On Saturday, two strikes hit a UN school-turned-shelter just north of Gaza City, killing several people in tents in the schoolyard and women who were baking bread inside the building, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Initial reports indicated that 20 people were killed but the agency has not yet been able to verify the figure, said spokeswoman Juliette Touma.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported that 15 persons were killed at the school where thousands have sought shelter and another 70 people wounded.

Also Saturday, two people were killed in a strike by the gate of Nasser Hospital in Gaza City, according to Medhat Abbas, spokesman for the Health Ministry.

About 1.5 million people in Gaza, or 70% of the population, have fled their homes, according to the U.N.

With food, water and the fuel needed for generators that power hospitals and other facilities running out, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged an immediate cease-fire to allow aid in.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is horrific,” Mr. Guterres said late on Friday in an unusually blunt statement. “An entire population is traumatised, nowhere is safe.”

Bread dough lies on the ground near cooking utensils, damaged chairs and other belongings following a strike at a UN-run school sheltering displaced people, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip November 4, 2023.
| Photo Credit:
REUTERS

Mr. Guterres said he had not forgotten the slaughter of civilians at the hands of Hamas militants when they launched their attack on Israel almost a month ago, but said civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected. He also said civilians must not be used as human shields, and called upon Hamas to release all of the roughly 240 hostages it has.

The family home of Hamas’ exiled leader Ismail Haniyeh, in the Shati refugee camp on the northern edge of Gaza City, was hit Saturday morning by an airstrike, according to the Hamas-run media office in Gaza. It had no immediate details on damage or casualties and there was no immediate comment.

Overnight strikes also hit the western outskirts of the city and near Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City. Another strike hit a building close to the entrance of the hospital’s emergency ward on Saturday afternoon, injuring at least 21, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

Despite Israel’s call for civilians to flee south, strikes have continued there as well.

Raed Mattar, who was sheltering in a school in the southern town of Khan Younis after fleeing the north early in the war, said Saturday that he regularly heard explosions, apparently from airstrikes.

“People never sleep,” he said. “The sound of explosions never stops.”

In the center of Khan Younis, an airstrike early Saturday destroyed the home of a family, with first responders pulling three bodies and six injured people from the rubble.

Among those killed was a child, according to an Associated Press cameraman at the scene.

The Israeli military said ground forces were also now operating in the south, with an armored and engineering corps working to remove booby traps from buildings.

During the operation the military said fighters were seen exiting a tunnel and they were killed by Israeli troops.

The military said there were also numerous attacks staged from tunnels on Israeli forces in the northern Gaza strip.

Elsewhere, skirmishes along Israel’s northern border continued Saturday morning as the Israeli military said it had struck militant cells in Lebanon trying to fire at Israel, as well as a Hezbollah observation post.

Throughout the war, Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, have traded fire almost daily along the Lebanese border, raising fears of a new front opening there.

Palestinians react following a strike at a UN-run school sheltering displaced people, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip November 4, 2023.

Palestinians react following a strike at a UN-run school sheltering displaced people, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip November 4, 2023.
| Photo Credit:
REUTERS

On Friday in Tel Aviv, on his third trip to Israel since the war began, Blinken pushed President Joe Biden’s calls for a brief halt in the fighting to address the worsening humanitarian crisis. But Netanyahu said there could be no humanitarian pause until Hamas releases all the hostages it holds.

On Saturday he held meetings in Amman with diplomats from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian Authority, who remain angry and deeply suspicious of Israel.

In addition to aid distribution, allowing foreigners out and the release of hostages, Blinken is looking to get Jordan and other Arab states to begin to think about the future of Gaza if and when Israel succeeds in wresting control from Hamas.

There was consensus among Arab governments involved in discussions with the U.S. to resist “any talks” on the postwar period in Gaza before establishing a cease-fire and allowing the delivery of more humanitarian aid and fuel to Gaza, according to the Egyptian officials.

More than 9,400 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far, including more than 3,900 Palestinian children, the Gaza Health Ministry said, without providing a breakdown between civilians and fighters.

More than 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ initial attack. Rocket fire by Gaza militants into Israel persists, disrupting life for millions of people and forcing an estimated 250,000 to evacuate. Most rockets are intercepted.

Twenty-four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the ground operation.

The overall toll is likely to rise dramatically as the assault on densely built-up Gaza City continues.

More than 386 Palestinian dual nationals and wounded exited Gaza into Egypt on Friday, according to Wael Abou Omar, the Hamas spokesperson for the Rafah border crossing. That brings the total who have gotten out since Wednesday to 1,115.

Source link

#Israeli #strikes #kill #multiple #civilians #shelters #Gaza #combat #zone #Blinken #seeks #aid

Hezbollah | The party of God

Post By World , , , , , , ,

With Israel intensifying its bombardment of Gaza, in which more than 7,700 people were killed in 22 days, fears of a wider regional war are also rising. Israel started bombing Gaza, a tiny, defenceless enclave of 2.3 million people, who have been sandwiched between Israel proper and the Mediterranean Sea, after Hamas, an Islamist militant group that controls the land strip, carried out a cross-border raid on October 7, killing at least 1,400 Israelis. After Israel started the retaliatory strikes, Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia militant group that had fought Israel in the past, fired rockets into the Shebaa Farms, a Lebanese territory on the border that Israel occupies, showing “solidarity” with the Palestinians. Last week, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah met Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders and offered support for the “Palestinian resistance”. Some Hezbollah fighters also tried to infiltrate into northern Israel after the Gaza war began. Israel responded with heavy shelling of southern Lebanon. As tensions rise, the world is watching whether Hezbollah would open another front or Israel carry out pre-emptive strikes in Lebanon, widening the conflict.

Also Read | UNGA vote on Gaza | India defends abstention, says resolution should have referred to October 7 terror attacks on Israel

Ironically, the roots of Hezbollah go back to Israel’s 1982 war on Lebanon, which the then Likud Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, said would bring “forty years of peace for Israel”. Lebanon was in the grip of a devastating civil war that began in 1975. According to Lebanon’s post-French Constitution, power was divided among the country’s different communities — the Presidency is reserved for Christians, the Premiership for Sunnis and the Speakership for the Shias. Roughly 40% of Lebanon’s population are Arab Shias. The influx of the Palestinian refugees into Lebanon and the relocation of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) to Lebanon from Jordan in 1971 would create fissures in the country’s delicate confessional system, which would lead to the civil war. While the Sunnis and Maronite Christians were the powerful sects, Shias were the invisible majority, sidelined by the major players and post-colonial institutions.

Israel attacked Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, first to push the PLO out of the border region and then out of the country. In 1982, the PLO would agree to leave Lebanon, but one community that bore the brunt of Israel’s disproportionate bombing was the already marginalised Shias.

Three years earlier, a geopolitical earthquake had shaken West Asia — in Iran, which was an American ally, Shia Mullahs captured power after bringing down a thousands of years old monarchy. Iran, which was already fighting a conventional war with Iraq (1980-88), sensed an opportunity in Lebanon’s chaos. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Iranian regime helped mobilise thousands of Shias in Lebanon in 1982 to form a loose network of what was then unofficially called the ‘Islamic Resistance’.

Early attacks

One of the first targets of the Islamic Resistance was the Multinational Forces (MNF) deployed in Lebanon. In April 1983, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed, killing 63 people. In October, 305 people, mostly American and French soldiers, were killed in suicide attacks on their military barracks. Following these attacks, the MNF would leave the country, providing the first victory to the newly organised Shia militants. Israeli troops retreated to a “security zone” in southern Lebanon. In 1985, the Islamic Resistance would come up with a manifesto, calling for the destruction of the state of Israel, vowing to oust occupied forces from Lebanon and declaring allegiance to Iran’s Supreme Leader. According to some reports, it was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader, who picked the name ‘Hezbollah’ (literally ‘the Party of God’) for the new movement.

Over the years, Hezbollah has built sprawling social, political and military networks with deep roots in Lebanon’s Shia community. In southern Lebanon, a Shia stronghold, it carried out a disciplined, effective, popular guerilla war against the occupying Israeli forces, turning the ‘security zone’ into what Adam Shatz calls an ‘insecurity zone’. The party organisation has been built in a Leninist order, centralising authority in the hands of the Secretary General. The chief would oversee a seven-member Shura council, like the Polit Bureau of a communist party, and then there are sub councils. Their social network caters to the Shia working class, offering support, including healthcare and education assistance, in a country where the state is systemically weak, while the political and parliamentary councils have played the role of a kingmaker in Lebanon’s fractured polity since 1992, when Hezbollah participated in the elections for the first time. Yet, the most important arm is the Jihad Council, which controls its military activities.

Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s co-founder Abbas al-Musawi in 1992 as part of a policy of targeted killings to weaken rival outfits. But the man who succeeded Musawi, Hassan Nasralla, turned Hezbollah into a socio- politico-militant giant, “a state within the state”, though it has been designated as a terrorist outfit by Israel and several of its allies. In 2000, after 18 years of occupation, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak decided to unilaterally withdraw from southern Lebanon, which Hezbollah celebrated as “the first Arab victory in the history of Arab-Israeli conflict”. But Israel’s withdrawal would not quieten the Lebanese border. Hezbollah said it would continue to fight the Israelis as long as its occupation of Shebaa Farms and Palestinian territories continues. In its 2019 updated manifesto, Hezbollah reiterated its commitment for the destruction of Israel.

War with Israel

In 2006, after Hezbollah carried out a raid and abducted two Israeli soldiers, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared war against the militant group. The war lasted for over 30 days and even on the last day of fighting, Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets into Israel. Israeli air strikes and ground attacks destroyed much of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, but the group survived, and emerged politically stronger in Lebanon. In the subsequent years, Hezbollah rebuilt its military power, mainly with help from Iran. From the 1980s, Syria’s Baathist regime has been a conduit between Iran and Hezbollah. When Bashar al-Assad’s regime was losing control in the midst of the Syrian civil war, Nasrallah despatched thousands of soldiers to fight alongside the Syrian Army. Under Russian air cover and with support from Iran, the Syrian Army, Hezbollah and other Shia militias turned around the civil war. Hezbollah emerged stronger out of the Syrian conflict, with newly gained battlefield experience. It has also strengthened the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis. In recent years. Israel has carried out repeated air strikes inside Syria, mainly targeting Iranian supplies for Hezbollah.

Israel sees Hezbollah as a potent rival, unlike other non-state actors, including Hamas. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, the militia has up to 20,000 active fighters and as many reservists, with an arsenal of small arms, tanks, drones, and long-range rockets. Last November, while briefing about Israel’s past conflicts with Hezbollah on the Lebanese border, an Israeli Brigadier told this writer they never underestimated Hezbollah, which “has now amassed more than 1,00,000 rockets”. “Hezbollah is a tough enemy. They have very good military equipment. They are very well-trained,” he said, requesting anonymity. That Israel has mobilised 3,50,000 troops, including all reservists, suggests that it is taking the risk of a wider war seriously. Hezbollah, on the other side, keeps everyone guessing, while reiterating its rhetorical support for Hamas. “We are fully ready to fight Israel when time comes,” says the ‘Party of God’.

Source link

#Hezbollah #party #God

Scores killed in Gaza strikes as new aid convoy arrives

Post By World , , , , ,

October 23, 2023 05:19 am | Updated 05:19 am IST – Rafah, Palestinian Territories

Scores of Palestinians were killed in central Gaza on Sunday after Israel stepped up its strikes on the war-torn enclave and another convoy of 17 aid trucks arrived as the Hamas-run territory faces “catastrophic” shortages.

With the violence raging unchecked, Iran said the region could spiral “out of control”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a stark warning to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, saying getting involved would be “the mistake of its life”.

Washington warned any actors looking to inflame the conflict that it would not hesitate to act in the event of any “escalation”.

Hamas militants in Gaza stormed across the border into Israel on October 7, launching a raid that killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians who were shot, mutilated or burnt to death on the first day, according to Israeli officials.

They also seized more than 200 hostages in the worst-ever attack in Israel’s history.

Israel has hit back with a relentless bombing campaign which has so far killed more than 4,600 Palestinians, mainly civilians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Officials said the central town of Deir al-Balah had been particularly badly hit overnight Saturday to Sunday.

The Ministry said at least 80 people had been killed in the overnight raids on central Gaza, which destroyed more than 30 homes.

At the hospital morgue, an AFP journalist saw the bodies of many children on the bloodied floor, where distraught families wept as they identified the victims.

Among them was a man clutching his dead toddler and a young boy who pulled back a blanket over his little sister’s body.

“My cousin was sleeping in his house with his daughter in his arms. He was a man with no record, nothing to do with the resistance,” said Wael Wafi, gazing at the body of his cousin, his arm still wrapped around his three-year-old daughter Misk.

Also Sunday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that 29 of its staff had been killed since the start of the war in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying half of them were teachers. On Saturday it had given a toll of 17.

The scale of the bombing has left basic systems unable to function. The UN saying dozens of unidentified bodies had been buried in a mass grave in Gaza City because cold storage had run out.

Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier was killed near the Gaza border by an anti-tank missile fired by militants inside the enclave, the army said.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned the war with Hamas could take months.

“It will take one month, two months, three months, and at the end there will be no more Hamas,” Mr. Gallant said.

A second convoy of 17 trucks of aid entered Gaza from Egypt on Sunday following an initial delivery of 20 trucks on Saturday after intensive negotiations and U.S. pressure.

Separately, an AFP journalist saw six trucks leaving Rafah after filling up from dwindling fuel stocks held at the crossing as the enclave faces catastrophic shortages after Israel cut off supplies of food, water, fuel and electricity.

It later resumed water supplies to the south on October 15.

Although Egyptian media said another 40 trucks would enter Gaza on Monday, the UN says the enclave needs 100 trucks per day to meet the needs of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents.

And so far, there have been no deliveries of fuel, with UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warning Sunday that supplies would run out “in three days”.

“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and.. aid will not reach many civilians in desperate need,” he said.

The Hamas government said 165,000 housing units — half of those in the entire Gaza Strip — had been destroyed in the raids.

With fears growing that the conflict could spread, Israel on Sunday admitted accidentally hitting an Egyptian border post, apologising for the incident which Cairo said had left an unspecified number of border guards with “minor injuries”.

There were fresh exchanges of fire over Israel’s northern border with Lebanon as fears grew that Hezbollah, a close ally of Hamas and Iran, could enter the conflict, prompting Israel’s Netanyahu to warn it would be “the mistake of its life”.

“We will strike it with a force it cannot even imagine, and the significance for it and the state of Lebanon will be devastating,” he said.

Iran also warned about the conflict spreading on Sunday, with top diplomat Hossein Amir-Abdollahian cautioning that if Washington and Israel did not “immediately stop the crime against humanity and genocide in Gaza.. the region will go out of control”.

But Washington said it wouldn’t hesitate to act in the event of any “escalation”, just hours after the Pentagon moved to step up military readiness in the region.

“If any group or any country is looking to widen this conflict and take advantage of this very unfortunate situation that we see, our advice is: don’t,” U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on ABC News.

On Sunday, Pope Francis used his weekly Angelus prayer in Rome to plead for an end to the bloodshed.

“War is always a defeat, it is a destruction of human fraternity. Brothers, stop!” he said.

He later held a 20-minute conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden about “conflict situations in the world and the need to identify paths to peace”, the Vatican said.

Mr. Biden later discussed with war with the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy, the White House said.

The U.S. President also held talks with Mr. Netanyahu, said the White House, adding: “The leaders affirmed that there will now be continued flow of this critical assistance into Gaza.”

In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron’s office announced he would be travelling to Israel on Tuesday for talks with Mr. Netanyahu.

Protesters marched in several European capitals on Sunday.

At least 10,000 people rallied in support of Israel in Berlin as Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to stamp out a resurgence of anti-Semitic incidents linked to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

And thousands gathered in Paris to demand an end to Israel’s operation in Gaza, the first pro-Palestinian rally in the French capital that wasn’t banned on security grounds.

Source link

#Scores #killed #Gaza #strikes #aid #convoy #arrives

Israel steps up bombing of Gaza hours after first relief convoy enters

Post By World , , , , , , ,

October 22, 2023 03:29 am | Updated 03:29 am IST – Rafah, Palestinian Territories

The Israeli military announced it was stepping up its bombardment of Hamas-controlled Gaza Saturday just hours after the first aid trucks arrived from Egypt bringing desperately needed relief to civilians in the war-torn enclave.

The military said it aimed to reduce the risks its troops would face as they enter Gaza in the next phase of the war it launched on Hamas after the militant group carried out the deadliest attack in Israel’s history on October 7.

Hamas militants killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians who were shot, mutilated or burnt to death, and took more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Israel has retaliated with a relentless bombing campaign that has killed more than 4,300 Palestinians in Gaza, mainly civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

An Israeli siege has cut food, water, electricity and fuel supplies to the densely populated territory of 2.4 million people, sparking fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Tens of thousands of Israeli troops have deployed to the Gaza border ahead of an expected ground offensive that officials have pledged will begin “soon”.

“From today, we are increasing the strikes and minimising the danger,” military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari told a press conference Saturday.

“We have to enter the next phase of the war in the best conditions, not according to what anyone tells us.”

On a visit to a frontline infantry brigade, chief of staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said troops were ready to deal with any surprises Hamas had in store for them when they enter Gaza.

“Gaza is densely populated, the enemy is preparing a lot of things there — but we are also preparing for them,” Mr. Halevi said.

AFP journalists saw 20 trucks from the Egyptian Red Crescent pass through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt into Gaza on Saturday.

The crossing — the only one into Gaza not controlled by Israel — closed again after the trucks passed.

The lorries had been waiting for days on the Egyptian side after Israel agreed to a request from its main ally the United States to allow aid to enter.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said the 20 trucks admitted on Saturday fell far short of the needs of Gazans, more than one million of whom have been forced from their homes.

“Much more” aid needs to be sent, Mr. Guterres told a peace summit in Egypt.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the aid and urged “all parties” to keep the Rafah crossing open.

But a Hamas spokesman said “even dozens” of such convoys could not meet Gaza’s requirements, especially as no fuel was being allowed in to help distribute the supplies to those in need.

In Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hosted a peace summit attended by regional and some Western leaders.

“The time has come for action to end this godawful nightmare,” Mr. Guterres told the summit, calling for a “humanitarian ceasefire”.

Mr. Guterres said “the grievances of the Palestinian people are legitimate and long” after “56 years of occupation with no end in sight”.

But he stressed that “nothing can justify the reprehensible assault by Hamas that terrorised Israeli civilians”.

“Those abhorrent attacks can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” he added.

According to Arab diplomats who spoke with AFP on condition of anonymity, the summit broke up without a joint statement, highlighting the gulf between Arab and Western countries on how best to bring lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Western delegates demanded “a clear condemnation placing responsibility for the escalation on Hamas” but Arab leaders refused, the diplomats said.

Instead, the Egyptian hosts released a statement — drafted with the approval of Arab delegates — criticising world leaders for seeking to “manage the conflict and not end it permanently”.

The statement said such “temporary solutions and palliatives… do not live up to even the lowest aspirations” of the Palestinian people.

Israel bemoaned the lack of a condemnation of the October 7 attacks by Hamas.

“It is unfortunate that even when faced with those horrific atrocities, there were some who had difficulty condemning terrorism or acknowledging the danger,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.

A full-blown Israeli ground offensive of Gaza carries many risks, including to the hostages Hamas took and whose fate is shrouded in uncertainty.

So the release of two Americans among the hostages — mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Raanan — offered a rare “sliver of hope”, said Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

U.S. President Joe Biden thanked Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s political bureau, for its mediation in securing the release.

He said he was working “around the clock” to win the return of other Americans being held.

Natalie Raanan’s half-brother Ben told the BBC he felt an “overwhelming sense of joy” at the release after “the most horrible of ordeals”.

Hamas said Egypt and Qatar had negotiated the release and that it was “working with all mediators to implement the movement’s decision to close the civilian (hostage) file if appropriate security conditions allow”.

Almost half of Gaza’s residents have been displaced, and at least 30% of all housing in the territory has been destroyed or damaged, the United Nations says.

Thousands have taken refuge in a camp set up in the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

Fadwa al-Najjar said she and her seven children walked for 10 hours to reach the camp, at some points breaking into a run as missiles struck around them.

“We saw bodies and limbs torn off and we just started praying, thinking we were going to die,” she told AFP.

The United States has moved two aircraft carriers into the eastern Mediterranean to deter Iran or Lebanon’s Hezbollah, both Hamas allies, amid fears of a wider conflagration.

Exchanges of fire continued across Israel’s border with Lebanon Friday.

Hezbollah reported the loss of four of its fighters while Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad reported one fighter killed.

In Israel, two Thai farm workers were wounded, emergency services said.

Violence has also flared in the West Bank, where 84 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, according to the health ministry.

Source link

#Israel #steps #bombing #Gaza #hours #relief #convoy #enters

What did Hamas achieve from the attack on Israel?

Post By World , , , , , , ,

Police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, on October 7, 2023. The rockets were fired as Hamas announced a new operation against Israel.
| Photo Credit: AP

On October 6, 1973, when Egyptian and Syrian troops launched a coordinated attack on Israeli forces stationed in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, Israel was totally caught off guard. Just six years before, Israel had defeated Arab armies and seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Sinai Peninsula and Gaza from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria — all in six days. Israel’s policy makers as well as military pundits then believed that Israel had established credible deterrence against its rivals in the region. Then came the combined Egyptian-Syrian attack, shattering this theory.

Parallels are already drawn between the Yom Kippur war and the attack Hamas launched from Gaza on Israel on October 7. In 1973, after the initial shock, Israel got itself together and recaptured the lost territories. But the fact that Egypt launched such a massive attack, causing heavy casualties, remained etched in Israel’s collective psyche. In five years, Israel signed the Camp David Agreement with Egypt, agreeing to hand over Sinai in return for normalisation. Egypt’s risky bet paid off in the medium term.

Israel-Palestine conflict October 9 updates

Hamas’ goal 

Will Hamas achieve anything for the Palestinian cause from its attack on Israel? If the Yom Kippur war was fought between national Armies, here, Israel is facing an Islamist militant group. Also, if, in 1973, the fighting mostly took place in Sinai and Golan — territories captured and occupied by Israel — Hamas launched attacks into Israeli towns on its southern border and fired thousands of rockets, killing some 700 Israelis, including many civilians. A furious Israel has already declared war on Hamas and is mobilising troops. What’s awaiting Gaza is fire and fury. While it’s unclear whether Hamas would make any strategic gains in the medium term, like Egypt did, the key question here is whether Hamas actually wanted to extract any strategic gains or concessions from Israel. What was the goal of Hamas’s attack?

After the Oslo process, which promised a two-state solution, froze in the mid-1990s, there has been no major movement in the peace efforts. The late Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and the Middle East Quartet (the UN, the U.S., the EU and Russia) made separate proposals in the millennium aimed at reviving the two-state solution, but those proposals reached nowhere. During this period, divisions between the Palestinian leadership factions widened further, plunging the territories into armed battles between Fatah and Hamas. Israel saw international focus shifting away from Palestine, regional Arab countries coming forward to have ties with it and Palestinian resistance getting weakened by the year. So Israel took a status quoist approach — continue occupation without compromise. 

Unsustainable status quo

It pulled back from Gaza unilaterally in 2005, following the violent first intifada. But from 2007 onwards, Israel (along with Egypt) has imposed a permanent blockade on the enclave. In the West Bank, Israel has set up hundreds of security checkpoints and huge security barriers, limiting the Palestinian movements. Jewish settlements mushroomed in the West Bank (which are segregated by barriers from Arab inhabitants) and pro-settlement politicians rose to power. The Palestinian Authority, which is dependent on foreign aid, or Fatah remained largely helpless

Also read | Breaking the Israel-Palestine logjam

There were frequent isolated violent attacks by the Palestinians, mostly knife attacks, which were met with instant retribution — in almost all cases the attacker would be shot dead and their houses would be demolished. Over the years, Israel managed to build a security order that neutralised large-scale Palestinian violence through force, checkpoints and barriers, while the occupation and blockade of the Palestinian territories continued. The status quo, without any progress in their quest for statehood, was unsustainable for the Palestinians, but preferable for the Israelis — until October 7.

Collapse of deterrence 

Hamas’s coordinated attack on Saturday seems to have punctured holes in this security model and Israel’s aura of invincibility. For a country that’s proud of its intelligence prowess and military superiority, which it never hesitated to use against its enemies, the failures on October 7 is likely to haunt Israel’s policymakers for years, if not decades. It’s an old axiom in conflict studies that deterrence doesn’t hold in asymmetric conflicts, which was proved right once again. But if deterrence doesn’t hold against Hamas, Islamic JIhad and other non-state actors such as Hezbollah, what shall Israel do next to ensure its security?    

Hamas also showed that the Palestine issue remains at the centre of West Asia’s political problems, irrespective of the geopolitical realignments that are recently under way in the region, be it the Saudi-Iran detente; the Qatar-Saudi patch-up; the Turkey-Saudi/UAE reengagement, the reaccommodation of Syria into the Arab fold; or the Israel-Saudi talks.

So the objective of Hamas’s attack was the attack itself, which drilled holes into Israel’s security model and brought the Palestine issue back to the fore of West Asian geopolitics. But for that, it has taken a huge risk. By massacring hundreds of Israeli civilians, Hamas has gone back to its original tactics used in the 1990s and early 2000s, which earned it the terrorist tag. Its regional backers would come under heavy international pressure. The unprecedented attack would also invite a ground offensive from Israel, besides massive air strikes that are already under way. Israel would target Hamas’s military and social infrastructure. Hundreds more Palestinians would be killed. When Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon in 2006, Hezbollah fought back for 30 days, finally forcing Israel to reach a ceasefire. Does Hamas have the wherewithal to resist Israel for long in the tiny besieged Gaza strip? Only time would tell. 

Source link

#Hamas #achieve #attack #Israel