The Israeli war machine was set in motion towards Gaza with the intention of taking revenge. After destroying the periphery of the Palestinian strip with a wave of airstrikes, the army attacked the bases of Hamas’ elite unit, the Nujba Force, at dawn this Thursday. Members of the unit led the attack last Saturday that left more than 1,200 Israelis dead and ended with more than a hundred civilians taken hostage.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a few hours later that he would put an end to Hamas, an Islamic resistance movement that he equated with the jihadists of the Islamic State (ISIS). “Just as ISIS was dismantled, Hamas will be dismantled,” he said during Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Jerusalem.
The US diplomat chief guaranteed that his country would stand with Israel but also urged Netanyahu not to harm civilians in a military campaign of retaliation considered one of the fiercest in the Jewish state’s 75 years of existence . During his visit, Blinken reported that at least 25 Americans had died in Israel since the Hamas offensive.
The Israeli army said that the command center of the attacked Nujba unit “consisted of terrorists selected by senior Hamas officials” and that its task was to carry out operations such as ambushes, raids and sabotage operations. Israeli forces also claimed they killed Mohamed Abu Shamla, a senior commander in Hamas’s naval division.
Israel has completely sealed off the Gaza Strip, except for its southern border with Egypt, the only point through which humanitarian aid enters the Palestinian coastal exclave, where 2.3 million people are crammed into an area only slightly larger than Malta. Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz has warned Hamas that it will leave Gaza without electricity, fuel, water and food until the hostages are released. “Humanitarian aid for Gaza? “No electric switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no tanker truck will enter until the Israeli hostages return home,” Katz tweeted.
The number of victims was the same on both sides of the conflict this Thursday for the first time since Israel began escalating the war. The death toll since last Saturday stands at around 1,300 on both sides (later raised by the Palestinian Ministry of Health to over 1,400), while in Israel the number of wounded exceeds 3,200 and in the Gaza Strip the number reached 6,000.
From the West Bank, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned violence against civilians, both over Hamas’ attacks on Israel and the Israeli army’s subsequent bombing of Gaza. “We reject the practices of killing or mistreating civilians on both sides because they violate morals, religion and international law,” Abbas told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
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