Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated this Monday that Israel to expand ground offensive in Gaza in the coming days, despite international efforts to stop the fighting.
Addressing members of his Likud party, Netanyahu said the war is “not near the end.”
The Prime Minister of Israel spoke after returning from a visit to the troops who fought inside Gaza, leaving a message of continuity of the war at a time when Egypt presented a Ambitious proposal to end the war. between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas.
“We will not stop. We will continue to fight and expand the fight in the coming days,” Netanyahu declared, reinforcing that “it will be a long battle and it is not close to being over.”
Egypt presented a initial proposal to end the war between Israel and Hamas, with a ceasefire, a gradual release of hostages and the creation of a Palestinian government of experts that would administer the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, a senior Egyptian official and a European diplomat said on Monday.
The proposal was presented to Israel, the Hamas group, the United States and European governments, but still in a preliminary version. The document falls short of Israel’s goal of completely crushing Hamas and appears to fall short of Israel’s insistence on maintaining military control over Gaza for an extended period after the war.
The Israeli War Cabinet, including the Prime Minister, will meet this Monday to discuss the hostage situation, among other issues, an Israeli official said, without mentioning whether Egypt’s proposal will be discussed.
News of Egypt’s proposal comes at a time when Israeli airstrikes are hitting central and southern Gaza hard, destroying buildings housing refugee families.
In the Maghazi refugee camp, rescuers pulled dozens of bodies from the rubble hours after an attack destroyed a three-story building and destroyed others nearby.
According to the Associated Press (AP) news agency, at least 106 people were killed, according to hospital records, making it one of the deadliest attacks of Israel’s air campaign.
The war has devastated large areas of Gaza, killing more than 20,400 Palestinians and displacing almost all of the territory’s 2.3 million people.
The rising death toll among Israeli troops – 17 since Friday and 156 since the start of the ground offensive – could undermine public support for the war, which was sparked when Hamas-led militants invaded communities in southern Israel on the 7th. October, killing 1,200 people. and taking 240 hostages.
Israelis still largely support the country’s stated goals of crushing Hamas’s government and military capabilities and freeing the remaining 129 hostages, despite growing international pressure against Israel’s offensive and the growing death toll and suffering without precedents among the Palestinians.
Source: TSF
