The Israeli army carried out its largest ground attack in Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack early Thursday, the military reported. It was not the invasion to destroy Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been announcing for days and which he promised on Wednesday would come in due course. But it is the first time in 20 days that tanks and infantry have entered the Gaza Strip for “hours” to “eliminate terrorists,” “neutralize threats” and defuse explosives, military spokesman Daniel Hagari explained in his daily newspaper Media reports. The Israeli army has released videos of the targeted raid in the north of the Gaza Strip. Armored vehicles cross the same concrete barrier that hundreds of Hamas members crossed in the surprise attack on October 7 that left 1,400 Israeli citizens, mostly civilians, dead and triggered the current crisis.
The aim of the night’s attack was, in Hagari’s words, to “prepare for the next phases of the fight,” an effort that runs parallel to an intensive campaign of airstrikes that are killing hundreds of Palestinians every day, 68% of them women and children Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry and the worsening humanitarian crisis. Due to a lack of fuel for their generators, hospitals have begun rationing electricity and using it only for emergencies. And humanitarian aid, which was already considered meager when it flowed from Egypt last Saturday, is becoming increasingly scarce. In the last 48 hours, only 20 trucks carrying water, food and medicine were allowed to pass through the Rafah crossing, the only open border crossing connecting the Palestinian enclave with Egypt. That is, 2% of those who did it every day before the war.
None of these trucks carried fuel that Israel and the United States refused to allow through. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) warned on Thursday that “the next 24 hours are very important” because if the fuel does not arrive, they will be forced to reduce their humanitarian operations throughout the Gaza Strip and in some cases even stop completely. Of the more than one million people who have left their homes due to the bombings, 613,000 are seeking refuge in UNRWA facilities such as schools and hospitals. The agency also lost 38 employees in the airstrikes. Israel will not allow fuel to enter Gaza, arguing that Hamas, the Islamist armed group that has ruled Gaza since 2007, is using it for its “operational needs,” the military spokesman said.
In recent days, Netanyahu has had to emphasize that he has not given in to the invasion and that the government and the armed forces are working hand in hand. “We are preparing for a ground invasion. I won’t go into detail about when, how, or how many. “I am also not going to go into detail about the various calculations that we do, which the public is largely unaware of, and that is how things should be,” he said in a televised address to the nation on Wednesday, after days of briefings to the national Media leaks reported the army’s dissatisfaction over delays in the start of an operation that had been prepared for days.
Publicly, Israel and the United States insist that only Israel decides when and what action to take. American involvement, they say, is limited to providing assistance (e.g. through the use of aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean) so that Israel does not have to “defend itself” alone, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken did shortly after the Hamas attack. Attack said. President Joe Biden has reiterated Israel’s “right and responsibility” to “protect its citizens from terrorism and to do so in accordance with international humanitarian law.” The White House statement comes amid controversy over Biden’s questioning of Palestinian death toll figures released by the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.
But behind closed doors, Americans are concerned about Israel’s ability to deal with the regional war that the invasion could trigger. In fact, the Navy reported intercepting a barrage of missiles and drones fired from Yemen against Israel, apparently by the Houthi militias that Iran supports.
According to various analysts, this is one of the main factors delaying the invasion. But Washington doesn’t just want to help its ally before going full speed ahead in the Gaza Strip. The US government, through the mediation of Qatar, also wants to bring to a successful conclusion the negotiations for the release of the at least 224 remaining hostages in Gaza, some of whom are also US citizens. Since last weekend, Hamas has released four people: an American mother and daughter and two elderly Israeli women. Qatar is currently working on a much larger package of around 50 hostages with foreign passports.
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