As the fighting continued in Gaza on Tuesday, Israel’s top general Lt Gen Herzi Halevi warned that the war with Hamas could go on for “many months”.
“There are no magic solutions, there are no shortcuts in dismantling a terrorist organisation, only determined and persistent fighting,” Lt Gen Halevi said.
The focus of the fighting remains Khan Younis in the south of the Strip – where Israel believes the Hamas leadership is based in tunnels along with hostages – and around three refugee camps in central Gaza.
Dr Hamis al-Najar, a Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament, was killed in his Khan Younis house on Tuesday in an Israeli attack. His wife, two of his children and several of his grandchildren were also killed. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza reports that since the beginning of the war more than 20,900 people have been killed – more than 240 in the last day.
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Nearly all of the enclave’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times. Israel says it is doing what it can to protect civilians, and blames Hamas for putting them in harm’s way by operating among them, which Hamas denies. But Israel’s closest ally the United States has said it should do more to reduce civilian deaths.
UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Seif Magango said on Tuesday: “Israeli forces must take all measures available to protect civilians. Warnings and evacuation orders do not absolve them of the full range of their international humanitarian law obligations.”
Some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed on October 7th when Hamas gunmen crossed into southern Israel, entering 22 communities. Two hundred and forty people were seized and taken to Gaza.
Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has reiterated his position that the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, would be unfit to govern the Gaza Strip in Hamas’s place.
In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, he said three conditions must be met before there can be peace between Israel and the Palestinians: “Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarised, and Palestinian society must be deradicalised.”
Fierce exchanges of fire continued along the Israel-Lebanon border. Five people were wounded after an anti-tank missile fired by Hizbullah from Lebanon hit a church in the northern Israeli village of Iqrit. Nine Israeli soldiers who came to evacuate the worshippers were wounded, one of them seriously, when Hizbullah fired a second anti-tank missile at the church. Israel says it targeted the Hizbullah cell behind the rocket fire.
Defence minister Yoav Gallant said at a hearing of the Knesset parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee that Israel is in a multi-arena war. “From the beginning we were attacked from seven fronts – Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Yemen and Iran. We have already reacted and acted in six of these fronts, and I say here in the most explicit way – anyone who acts against us is a potential target, there is no immunity for anyone.”
Mr Gallant added that the justification for the war in Gaza is “the highest” there can be.
“We were brutally and barbarically attacked to discourage us from living here. We must make it clear that whoever makes such a move is doomed. Whether it takes months or years, this matter must be finished.”
A blast occurred near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Tuesday and Indian authorities said a threatening letter to the Israeli ambassador was found at the scene. None of the embassy staff were hurt in the blast which occurred after Iran threatened to avenge the assassination of Reza Mousawi, a senior officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He was killed in an alleged Israeli air strike in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Monday. – Additional reporting: Reuters.
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