“Are you ready for the next phase? The next phase is coming,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told infantry soldiers stationed near Gaza. In recent days, Israel has sent more than 300,000 soldiers and reservists to the border in anticipation of an incursion into Palestinian territory. A week after the Hamas attack on Israel, which left more than 1,300 dead and 2,800 injured, Netanyahu visited the soldiers and one of the kibbutz which was targeted by Palestinian terrorists. On the other side of the border, in anticipation of this raid, the bombing continues and the Palestinians try to flee south, where there is a lack of shelter and food.
The Israeli army said on Saturday that it is preparing to invade Gaza and that it also has offensive plans “an integrated and coordinated attack by air, sea and land”. According to an official statement, “battalions and soldiers of the Israeli army (…) are prepared to increase preparedness for the next phases of the war, with an emphasis on a significant ground operation.” The goal, which has been reiterated in recent days, is to “destroy” Hamas, which continues to fire rockets into Israel.
On the evening, the army had already revealed that it had carried out raids in Gaza to kill terrorists and try to find the approximately 120 hostages that Hamas took on the day of the attack, and this Saturday it admitted to having recovered the bodies of some people .. The Palestinian terror group claimed that at least 22 people were killed in the bombings carried out by Israel in response to Saturday’s attack. The Israeli government’s security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, admitted ‘mistakes’ by the intelligence services prior to this action.
This Saturday, after exhausting an initial ultimatum — which the United Nations had said lasted 24 hours — the Israeli army gave the people of Gaza until 4 p.m. local time (2 p.m. in Lisbon) to complete the withdrawal south of complete the area. The deadline ended without all of the approximately 1.1 million people living in Gaza City and further north having managed to leave.
Those in charge of the region’s largest hospital, who refused to withdraw, said the space housed at least 35,000 people hoping to escape Israeli bombardment. And there were cases of people fleeing and being targeted by Israeli attacks, despite following a route that was supposedly declared ‘safe’.
Hamas refuses to leave Gaza
The Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are surrounded and threatened at any time by an invasion by Israel, which is driving them south into the area towards Egypt and Sinai. But they find the doors closed to the Arab countries, who repeat that they must remain in their countries to preserve their right to an independent state, and fear a new situation. Nakba – Arabic word for ‘catastrophe’, as the great exodus of 1948 after the establishment of the state of Israel is known. And this generates a new wave of refugees.
A flight to Egypt is also a scenario that Hamas is not considering. The political leader of the Palestinian terrorist group, Ismail Haniyeh, made this clear in a television message: “I say to my brothers and sisters in Egypt: it is our decision to stay in our country.”
Haniyeh, who lives in Qatar, claimed that Israel is trying to remove Palestinians from Gaza and has “resorted to massacres with the support of the US government and several European countries” because its “cowardly army” does not have the capacity to to confront the Hamas fighters.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military claims the terrorist group is blocking roads and preventing Palestinians from fleeing south.
Those who manage to cross the Rafah-Egypt border are closed, but foreigners in the area have the only possible escape point there. The Egyptians and Israelis agreed to let American citizens leave Gaza (their numbers are estimated at between 500 and 600), with the border remaining open for five hours, and it is not clear whether other foreigners will be able to leave.
Portuguese Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho said in an interview with TVI Jornal yesterday that “there are a small number” of Portuguese and their families in the area. “We have already passed on this information to the Egyptian and Israeli authorities and we are of course full of anticipation about the possibility that these people will leave Gaza,” he stated.
With no way out for the Palestinians, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories, Francesca Albanese, warns of the serious risk of “mass ethnic cleansing.”. The Italian lawyer accuses both Hamas and Israel of “international crimes” over the deaths of civilians on both sides, but warns of the consequences of the Israeli operation in Gaza. “Israel has already committed massive ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians under the fog of war” and “is trying to justify in the name of self-defense what a new cleansing would entail,” he said.
The Rafah border is closed not only to Palestinians, but also to the entry of humanitarian aid. Two more planes, one sent by Turkey and the other by the World Health Organization, arrived loaded in Egypt this Saturday, along with three others already in the country. However, with Gaza under siege, Israelis are not allowed to enter the area, and no humanitarian corridor has been created.
The Palestinians who managed to reach the south of the Gaza Strip are left without shelter and without food, after Israel cut off access to food, as well as water and electricity, to the area where 2.3 million people live a few days ago. Without access to drinking water, the scenario is catastrophic, with the United Nations sounding all possible alarms and warning of the risk of disease, in addition to the threat of bombing.
Source: DN
