Israel is at war, is going to war: the story of the Gaza assault on the Gaza Strip 52 years after Israel became a free country
Israel battled on Saturday to repel one of the broadest invasions of its territory in 50 years after Palestinian militants from Gaza launched an early-morning assault on southern Israel, infiltrating 22 Israeli towns and army bases, kidnapping Israeli civilians and soldiers and firing thousands of rockets toward cities as far away as Jerusalem.
At least 250 Israelis have been reported dead and more than 1,400 injured by Israeli officials, and many of them have been taken to the Gaza Strip. Israel retaliated with huge strikes on Gazan cities, and the Gaza Health Ministry said at least 234 Palestinians had been killed in either gun battles or airstrikes.
Unverified video footage, circulated by Hamas, the Iran-backed militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, appeared to show some Palestinian gunmen arriving in Israel in a sort of makeshift hang glider.
In Sderot, a southern city, photographs showed dead bodies strewn on the streets. The militants also targeted an all-night dance festival in the desert, prompting hundreds of young Israelis to sprint for safety.
Netanyahu said that Israel was at war and would win it in a televised statement.
The spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the operation that took place today is a new chapter in resistance and armed operations against the occupiers.
The potential role of Iran in the operation drew scrutiny in Israel as the violence spread to other parts of the region. In addition to Hamas, Tehran backs another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, providing all of them with weaponry and intelligence.
After a skirmish between Israeli and Hezbollah troops on the border of Lebanon and Israel on Saturday, the United Nations said that they were bolstering their activity on the frontier.
The ease with which Palestinian fighters entered Israel prompted recriminations and anger among Israelis. There were questions about whether or not the intelligence gathering was top-notch, as well as a suggestion that the Israeli military had been focused on the wrong area.
The shock of the attack appeared to rekindle a sense of unity among Israelis, as government critics who had resigned from reserve duty in protest of the judicial plan announced they would return to service in Israel’s hour of need. Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition has said that he is willing to join a national unity government that would allow the PM to end his alliance with the far right.
The scale of the latest Palestinian attack shocked Israelis, many of whom were observing the Jewish Sabbath. Diplomats and analysts, too, were caught off guard. They had expected the Gaza front to remain quiet for the foreseeable future, after international mediators appeared to have persuaded Hamas to end a recent weekslong series of riots and protests on the border with Israel.
President Biden was told by Prime Minister Netanyahu that Israel would triumph, according to Mr. Netanyahu’s office. In his own statement, Mr. Biden said that “the United States unequivocally condemns this appalling assault against Israel” and that “Israel has a right to defend itself and its people.”
Israeli Defense Fails May Change Strategy to Hamas Attacks: Israels Defense Failures May Change Strategies to Toward Gaza And Gaza (Nambu-Israel)
After Hamas took control of Gaza from the more moderate Palestinian group in 2007, Israel and Egypt placed the enclave under a blockade, increasing the amount of food and water in the area. According to the UN, unemployment is close to 50 percent in the Gaza Strip and only 10 percent of Gazans have access to clean water.
Hamas militants have occasionally broken out of Gaza, which is surrounded by both walls and fences, as well as subterranean fortifications to prevent tunneling into Israel. For as long as they’ve been in Israeli territory, they’ve never penetrated so deep. Militants are believed to have captured the remains of two Israeli soldiers during the 2014 war with Israel and held an Israeli soldier hostage for five years until 2011, when he was released in a prisoner swap.
Israel allowed up to 18,000 workers to cross daily from Gaza into Israel in the past few months, which helped the economy and made for a sense of calm.
The Israeli army secured the land border and made a ground invasion more difficult for Hamas because it had an arsenal of rockets.
Palestinian fighters appeared to easily get through the gaps in the fortifications to get to Sderot and other towns early Saturday morning.
In desperate interviews with Israeli broadcasters, residents of the Israeli border towns said the gunmen were walking through their houses, forcing them to barricade themselves in their bomb shelters — a common feature of Israeli homes.
The streets of Gaza City, the enclave’s largest urban area, emptied out as residents gathered at schools to take shelter. Lines also formed at supermarkets, as people stocked up on supplies. The people living close to the Israeli border fled to areas further inside the enclave fearing a ground invasion.
One of those who fled with their family away from the border said that they could not take it anymore. “The situation is really, really bad.”
The West Bank and the Palestinian Uprising since Intifada: How the Israelis are going to have to deal with the problem
The West Bank has already experienced its bloodiest year since the second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising that ended in 2005 and left over 1,000 Israelis and around 3,000 Palestinians dead.
Reporting was done by Raja Abdulrahim from Istanbul, Iyad AbuHeweila from Cairo, and Euan Ward and Hwaida Saad from Lebanon.
So they have to conduct this war, make some tough decisions about trade-offs among deterrence, retaliation, getting hostages back from Hamas and maybe even invading Gaza, knowing all the time that at the end of the road, some kind of inquiry will await them. It is not easy to think straight under those conditions.