Gaza was plunged into darkness, isolation and violence on Saturday evening, with communications with the outside world almost completely cut off, as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his country was entering the “second phase” of what is likely to be a long and difficult war against Hamas.
In a televised press conference, Netanyahu told Israelis: “We have unanimously approved the expansion of the ground invasion… Our goal is unique: to defeat the murderous enemy.” We have declared: “Never again,” and we affirm: “Never again, now.”
Netanyahu described the escalating war as Israel’s “second war of independence” and continued: “In the first weeks of the war, we launched massive air strikes that dealt a heavy blow to the enemy.”
“We eliminated many terrorists. However, we are only at the beginning. The fight in Gaza will be difficult and protracted; This is our second war of independence.”
As 2.3 million Palestinians in the blockaded coastal strip braced for a second night of sharply escalating Israeli military operations, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the campaign against the militant Islamist group Hamas would continue until a new order was given.
After the heaviest airstrikes of the war so far, in which up to 100 Israeli jets bombed dozens of targets on Friday night, Israeli tanks and infantry that had entered the Gaza Strip under cover of darkness continued to fight in the enclave.
Netanyahu’s comments followed those of Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, both of whom signaled that the war was entering a new phase. Halevi, head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), announced that the objectives of the war against Hamas required a ground operation within the coastal strip. “IDF ground forces are conducting a significant and complex operation,” he said.
“There are no successes without risks, and as we know, there is no victory without sacrifices.” To expose and destroy the enemy, there is no choice but to forcefully invade its territory. This operation serves all war aims.”
With cell phone connections, the internet and electricity almost completely disrupted in Gaza, emergency services, including medical teams, were operating almost blindly as they struggled to respond to the scores of dead and injured from the airstrikes.
Some civilians pulled injured people from the rubble with their bare hands and loaded them into cars or donkey carts to take them to the hospital.
In a video published by local media, Palestinians sprinted with a wounded man covered in dust from a collapsed building as he winced and lay on a stretcher with his eyes closed. “Ambulance!” Ambulance!” The men screamed as they pushed the stretcher into the back of a pickup truck, shouting to the driver, “Go! Go!”
Israel launched its attack on Gaza after hundreds of Hamas militants crossed the Israeli border in vehicles, by air and by sea on October 7, indiscriminately killing civilians on the streets, in their homes and at an outdoor rave.
Lynn Hastings, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the Palestinian Territories, Post on social media, said: “Hospitals and humanitarian operations cannot continue without communication,” even as Elon Musk, the owner of X – formerly known as Twitter – offered to provide internationally recognized agencies in Gaza with his Starlink satellite system. Amid growing global concern over the civilian death toll, the IDF said its warplanes struck 150 underground Hamas targets in Gaza overnight on Friday, as Palestinian residents reported clashes with Israeli tanks and infantry at three locations in the Gaza Strip.
While rockets continued to be fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip, exchanges of fire also broke out on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon on Saturday after anti-tank rockets and mortars were fired at towns and Israeli military positions. The latest airstrikes came as the IDF repeated its call for residents of the northern Gaza Strip to move south of the Wadi Gaza Strip with air-dropped leaflets.
With communications cut off, numerous reports from Gaza reported overcrowded hospitals and morgues on the verge of collapse and frightened civilians not knowing where to flee.
In a statement calling for a humanitarian ceasefire, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it had lost contact with its staff and described horrific scenes in hospitals.
It said: “During a night of heavy bombardment and ground attacks in Gaza, where hostilities were reportedly still raging, health workers, patients and civilians were subjected to a complete communications and power blackout.” Reports of bombing near hospitals in Indonesia and al-Shifa are of great concern. The WHO reiterates that it is impossible to evacuate patients without endangering their lives.
“Hospitals across the Gaza Strip are already at capacity due to injuries sustained during weeks of relentless bombardment and are unable to accommodate the dramatic increase in patient numbers while simultaneously housing thousands of civilians.”
“Health care workers who have remained at their patients’ side are facing dwindling supplies, no room to accommodate new patients and no way to ease their patients’ pain.
“There are more wounded every hour. But ambulances cannot reach them due to the communications failure. Mortuaries are full. More than half of the dead are women and children.”
The WHO statement reiterated a warning from U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk about the “potentially catastrophic consequences” of large-scale ground operations in the Gaza Strip that would lead to thousands more deaths. “There are a large number of martyrs and a large number of survivors are under the rubble and we cannot reach them,” said a Gaza civil defense official.
“The stench of death is everywhere – in every neighborhood, every street and every house,” said respiratory doctor Raed al-Astal in an interview with the AFP agency from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry said about 7,700 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 7, after Hamas murdered about 1,400 Israelis living on the Gaza border. The figures claimed by Hamas cannot be verified.
On Saturday, the Israeli military released grainy images showing columns of tanks moving slowly in open areas of the Gaza Strip, many apparently near the border. “The armed forces are still on the ground and continuing the war,” said army spokesman R Admiral Daniel Hagari.
According to reports from Gaza residents, the heaviest clashes appeared to have occurred in the north of the Gaza Strip in the areas of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, while fighting was also reported east of Bureij in the center of the Gaza Strip and east of Khan Younis – approach routes for Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip Past.
Witnesses said the bombings were concentrated in the Jabalia district in northern Gaza, leaving craters in the streets and destroying many buildings.
The attacks on Gaza’s extensive Hamas tunnel system, known to Israeli military planners as the “Metro,” follow a report by released hostage Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, that she was taken deep into the tunnels along with other hostages during her captivity.
Wafaa Abdul Rahman, head of a feminist organization in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said she had not heard from her family trapped in central Gaza for many hours.
“We saw these terrible things and massacres live on television. “So what happens if there is a total power outage?” she said, referring to scenes of families crushed in their homes by airstrikes in recent weeks.