Israel is facing its bloodiest war in 50 years, since the Yom Kippur conflict it almost lost, and a government of national unity begins this Wednesday. After remaining hidden behind the statements of his press service in the first days after the unexpected Hamas offensive, the prime minister, the conservative Benjamin Netanyahu, has stopped dragging his feet and fulfilled the tradition of forming broad governments on a Jewish war footing state . Two former generals who served as chiefs of the armed forces’ general staff and led Gaza operations, centrist political leaders Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, are joining the war cabinet’s hard core. The opposition leader, former Liberal Prime Minister Yair Lapid, has refused to be part of a grand coalition as long as it includes far-right parties and xenophobic anti-Arab forces. In principle, Gideon Saar, the conservative leader of Netanyahu’s Likud party, also enters the executive branch.
The new government of national unity will have a central goal: revenge for the attack by the Islamist militia that has caused the deaths of 1,200 Israelis and the injury of another 2,700 since Saturday, as well as the taking of more than a hundred civilian and military people hostage. After eliminating Hamas commandos that had invaded its territory, Israel launched hundreds of waves of airstrikes and artillery shelling against the Palestinian coastal enclave. The bombings pave the way for an army ground operation that Hebrew press analysts say is inevitable in response to the unprecedented aggression of the Islamic resistance movement. Both Gantz and Eisenkot controlled the course of the 2014 war from the command post.
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According to the Defense Ministry, the Israeli army, which bombed around 200 targets in Gaza in the early hours of Tuesday, has stationed 300,000 soldiers on the Gaza border. The delay in the operation was criticized in the Hebrew press. “Netanyahu dreamed for years that he was Winston Churchill. “He is now waging this war like Neville Chamberlain, the British Conservative prime minister who was caught off guard by World War II,” warned Yediot Ajronot columnist Nadav Eyal. “Just like Chamberlain, he still hasn’t come to his senses. “More Jews have now been murdered in a single day in Israel than at any time in recent history,” this analyst added.
The war already has other political consequences. Israel’s Interior Ministry announced on Wednesday that local elections scheduled for October 31 will be postponed indefinitely. The last time an election was postponed in Israel was during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
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The years-long eradication of Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s war capabilities was also the goal of Israel’s invasions in Operations Cast Lead (between 2008 and 2009) and Protective Edge (which lasted more than two months in the summer of 2014). The cycle of violence is now repeating itself, but while in the first operation the number of dead Israeli soldiers was limited to nine, in the second it rose to 66. The Ezedín al-Qasam Brigades, the armed ship of the Islamist movement, have now demonstrated their strength by striking mercilessly on Israeli territory and demonstrating their level of training in an unprecedented and surprising operation carried out in a matter of hours. The invasion of Gaza will no longer be as easy for the Israeli army to deal with as it was 15 years ago. The presence of such a large number of hostages also represents a nightmare for the plans of the Jewish General Staff. Netanyahu himself had to release a thousand Palestinian prisoners in 2011 in return for the release of the soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip for five years was held.
From Gaza, the Palestinian Ministry of Health has counted 1,055 deaths in fighting and raids and 5,184 injured in just four days, leading to the collapse of the hospital system in Gaza. The same source assures that 60% of the victims registered in the enclave area are women and children. Seven Palestinian journalists and eleven employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were among those killed.
Forced blackout
After announcing a total siege of the Gaza Strip on Monday, Gaza’s only power plant, which was running at half capacity following damage in the 2014 bombings, ceased operations this Wednesday due to a lack of fuel. There have been more than 600 power outages in Gaza since Saturday. The enclave relies on Israel for electricity and imports fuel to run its only power plant. However, since Saturday it has received neither one nor the other. Israel’s complete blockade began on Monday in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people spread over 365 square kilometers. Supplies of fuel, food, water and energy have been completely disrupted following Saturday’s attack.
An Israeli bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza, the most important in the Gaza Strip, has virtually destroyed the institution’s main campus, as seen in a video from Arabic television channel Al Arabiya. The Israeli army’s X account (formerly Twitter) confirmed the attack and stated that “Hamas has turned an institute of knowledge into an institute of destruction.” The embassy defines this university as “an important operational, political and military center of Hamas in Gaza” and asserts that its facilities served as an “engineering training camp” for the fundamentalist group.
According to UN figures, the number of Palestinians displaced by Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip currently stands at 263,934 people, of which 175,486 are housed in UNRWA schools.
The Egyptian Red Crescent has announced the deployment of a humanitarian aid convoy to the Rafah border crossing, which connects Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula with the Gaza Strip, to receive critical cases requiring transfer across the Egyptian border. Egyptian Red Crescent sources have confirmed to Efe Agency that they have “sent a convoy of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian land border crossing to receive critical cases requiring transfer across the Egyptian border,” without providing further details to date.
In the north, there was an exchange of blows between Israeli troops and the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia on the Lebanese border. Early on Wednesday morning, an Israeli army position stationed near the border was attacked from Lebanese territory with an anti-tank missile. Shortly afterwards, the Shiite group claimed responsibility for the attack and ensured that there were “a large number of victims”. The Israeli government has not indicated whether there have been any deaths within its ranks. The reaction was not long in coming and Israeli forces bombed positions in southern Lebanon.
Israel has said only that its detachment was attacked near the Bedouin village of Araba Al Aramshe, which is on the Israeli side of the border opposite the Lebanese village of Dhayra. The army reported that “the air force attacked Hezbollah reconnaissance positions in retaliation for the shooting from across the border.”
So far, the various incidents have resulted in the deaths of three members of Hezbollah, in addition to some casualties in the ranks of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and in the Israeli army, carried out in an infiltration across the border from Lebanon for this pro-Iranian movement.
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