The land and sea blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel since 2007, when the Islamic resistance movement Hamas seized power in the Palestinian strip, has left its more than two million residents trapped in a tiny area described by the United Nations as “uninhabitable.” “ was explained. United. The horror they have endured for three days in the open war between the Israeli army and the Palestinian militias of the enclave threatens to turn into hell after the Minister of Defense, former General Yoav Gallant, gave the order for “total encirclement” this Monday. has granted. The veto on the supply of water and food, and especially electricity and fuel, aims to choke Hamas’s rear while artillery and aviation continue to pound its bases in retaliation for the massive surprise attack it launched on Hamas on Saturday she has captured more than 150 hostages.
Hamas, for its part, has said it will begin executing a captured Israeli civilian in return for any new bombing Israel launches without warning. The spokesman for the organization’s armed wing, Abu Obaida, said that so far they have acted in accordance with Islamic instructions to keep Israeli prisoners safe and healthy. “Any attack on innocent homes in Gaza without prior warning and alarm will be punished with the public execution of a hostage,” he said in a statement quoted by Efe. “The execution involves civilian, not military, hostages and the execution will be broadcast online.”
Since Saturday, more than 900 people have lost their lives and another 2,600 have been injured in Israel. There are at least 687 Palestinian deaths and 3,726 injured in Gaza. The Israeli army, which has carried out hundreds of attacks, insists its targets are the military centers of Hamas, which rules Palestinian territory outside the Palestinian Authority and is dominated in the West Bank by President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular nationalist Fatah party.
“That’s just the beginning. “We have eliminated hundreds of terrorists and we will not stop,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late in the evening in a speech to the nation in which he called on the opposition to form a government “without conditions.” like in the Six Day War of 1967.
The army announced at midday Monday an end to fighting with small militia groups that had entered Israeli towns around the Strip and were continuing at the start of the day. “That’s what we thought yesterday [por el domingo] “We already have full control,” admitted military spokesman Richard Hecht. However, military spokesmen warn that “terrorists could still be hiding in the area.” It is the area near the Gaza Strip that the soldiers stationed at the entrances are preventing from crossing. Residents have been evacuated and armed militia members are believed to still be present. It is also the most punished with missiles when tensions with the Palestinian territory rise.
The airstrikes on Gaza, which hit a mosque and a market in recent hours and claimed dozens of victims, are being heard with as much force as they often do in the Israeli city of Ashkelon, 13 kilometers away, where a rocket struck, killing four people injured, one of them seriously. “Is it us or them?” “Everything has changed so much that I’m not even sure anymore,” Avi asks when he is startled by the noise as he refuels his vehicle. Almost all shops are closed and gas stations only operate in self-service mode. The busiest place in Ashkelon is the hospital.
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Artillery shells line up next to an armored vehicle as Israeli soldiers take up positions near the Gaza border in southern Israel on Monday.JACK GUEZ (AFP)
There are only a few cars on one of the streets leading into the city, but suddenly hundreds of private vehicles are parked in a row on the shoulder. After the attack, Israel massively mobilized reservists (300,000 in a country of almost 10 million people) to monitor both the offensive in the Gaza Strip and the borders with Lebanon and Syria to the north. Four military transport vehicles loaded tanks heading south on Highway 6 near Tel Aviv. Every few kilometers there is a “hot corner,” as the points are called where volunteers distribute food and drinks to soldiers. “We are all with you,” reads in colorful letters on a sign hanging on a bridge.
The Ezedin al-Qasam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, said in a statement that a quarter of the Israelis held hostage had lost their lives along with the militiamen guarding them in an Israeli Forces night bomber in Gaza. In Beittar Illit, Jerusalem province, four people were injured, two of them seriously, by rockets fired from the Palestinian territory. On Monday afternoon, the air alarm sounded again in Jerusalem, where no sirens had been heard since 2021. Since Saturday, Gaza militias have fired more than 4,400 rockets. According to military sources, many of them were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense shield.
In an unexpected turn in tensions, a member of the pro-Iran militia Hezbollah has been killed in an Israeli helicopter strike in an area bordering Lebanon. In response, Hezbollah attacked in northern Israel. There have been armed incidents in recent days between Hezbollah forces and the Israeli army, which waged open war in 2006, raising the risk of the opening of a new battle front on the territorial dividing line with Lebanon. A spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) confirmed to Portal the seriousness of the latest confrontation and called for restraint on both sides of the so-called Blue Line.
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