The American newspaper The Washington Post said that the world is looking forward to establishing a truce in the Gaza Strip, while Israel threatens to continue fighting.
It indicated in a report that the UN Security Council called for an “urgent and extended” humanitarian truce in Gaza to allow more aid to enter the Strip, while the United States – which is “Israel’s best friend” – says that it wants its ally to move from the stage of aerial bombardment that destroys the Gaza Strip. Residential buildings on the ground, to carry out operations targeting leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) more precisely.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and military leaders recently announced that the pace of violence with which they are waging the war – one of the most destructive wars ever in this century – will continue and intensify, according to the American newspaper report.
Israeli air strikes since Christmas Eve have injured or killed hundreds of Palestinians, many in refugee camps, according to Palestinian and international health officials. 19 Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting with Palestinian resistance elements during the past four days, in one of the bloodiest battles for Israel since it began its campaign, which it says aims to eliminate the Hamas movement.
Relief officials say that the few hospitals still providing treatment in Gaza are working beyond their capacity.
Expand the scope of combat
The newspaper quoted Netanyahu as saying in statements published by his Likud party, that they will work to “expand the scope of the fighting in the coming days, and this will be a long battle.”
In turn, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant warned on Tuesday that Israel has been under attack from “seven different arenas” – Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran – since the beginning of the war, and that it has “acted and responded” to 6 of them.
Before the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee in the Knesset (Parliament), Galant vowed, “Everyone who works against us is a target,” and “no one is safe” from being targeted.
Netanyahu had written an article published by the American Wall Street Journal on Monday in which he stated that the Gaza war will end when Israel wins and not before that. He said, “Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be disarmed, and extremism must be eradicated from Palestinian society.”
For his part, Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli Army, General Herzi Halevy, said, “There are no magic solutions or shortcuts to the radical dismantling of a terrorist organization, other than continuous and determined fighting, and we are fully determined” to implement that.
mutilation of corpses
The Washington Post reported in its report that a senior Israeli official and a close advisor to Netanyahu traveled to Washington, where he held closed meetings on Tuesday with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
It quoted a White House official – who requested anonymity – as saying that the talks covered “moving to a different phase of the war to achieve maximum focus on high-value Hamas targets,” taking practical steps to improve the humanitarian situation, efforts to return prisoners, and planning for… After the war in Gaza.
On Saturday and Sunday, the Israeli army bombed at least three areas in central Gaza, including the Bureij and Maghazi refugee camps and the city of Deir al-Balah. The newspaper quoted the director of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Iyad Abu Dhaher, as saying that at least 80 people were martyred in an Israeli raid on a residential complex in Al-Maghazi last Sunday.
Palestinian officials announced on Tuesday that Israel had returned the bodies of 80 people it had detained during the Gaza war through the Kerem Shalom border crossing. The government media office in the Gaza Strip said that Israel did not identify the bodies or mention the place from which they were transferred. The office confirmed in a statement that the bodies were “mutilated,” and that there were “clear” indications that the organs were “stolen” from the bodies.
The Washington Post commented on the office’s statement by saying that it was not able to independently verify what was contained in the statement.