Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday a ground incursion into Gaza will take place and that current airstrikes were “just the beginning,” as new satellite images revealed the devastation wrought by Israel’s bombs in the besieged enclave.
As the humanitarian crisis reaches a critical point in Gaza, with daily airstrikes, life-saving fuel on the verge of running out and health services crippled, pressure is building on the international community to get Israel to allow desperately needed aid into Gaza with more countries advocating for a “humanitarian pause” in fighting.
“We are raining down hellfire on Hamas,” Netanyahu said in a televised address Wednesday evening, while claiming Israel has “already eliminated thousands of terrorists – and this is only the beginning.”
“At the same time, we are preparing for a ground incursion,” he added, but said the decision on when such action would be taken would be decided by Israel’s War Cabinet.
The prime minister also acknowledged for the first time that he will “have to give answers” for the intelligence failures that allowed the worst terror attack in Israeli history, saying it will be “examined fully” after the war.
Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas, the militant group which controls Gaza, in response to its October 7 deadly terror attacks and kidnap rampage in which 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.
Its retaliatory air assault on what Israel calls Hamas “terror infrastructure” has since devastated the densely-populated 140-square-mile enclave, which had been described by rights groups as an “open-air prison” long before the current war began.
New satellite images released by Maxar taken on October 21, show significant destruction to sites across northern Gaza with entire neighborhoods flattened in eastern Beit Hanoun, and similar devastation near the Al Shati Refugee Camp, Atatra and Izbat Beit Hanoun.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told civilians to leave the crowded northern portion of the Palestinian enclave, where the bombardment has been especially severe. But it has also continued to bomb areas in the south, with a CNN producer in Gaza saying “there is no safe area.”
Israeli strikes have killed more than 6,400 people, and injured a further 17,000, according to information from Hamas-controlled health authorities in Gaza and published by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah.
On Wednesday, Al Jazeera said its bureau chief in Gaza, Wael Al-Dahdouh, lost his wife, son, daughter and grandson in what it said was an Israeli airstrike. The blast hit a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip where the family was taking shelter after being displaced, according to Al Jazeera. In total, 12 members of the Al-Dahdouh family were killed in the blast, including nine children, a statement from the family said Thursday.
The IDF told CNN it did carry out an airstrike in the area where Al-Dahdouh’s relatives were killed, saying it had “targeted Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the area.”
“Strikes on military targets are subject to relevant provisions of international law, including the taking of feasible precautions to mitigate civilian casualties,” it added. But harrowing photos show Al-Dahdouh seeing the bodies of his wife and children in the morgue. In one image he can be seen holding the body of his daughter, who is wrapped in a white shroud.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 24 journalists have died since the start of this conflict as of Wednesday. Twenty of those killed are Palestinian, three are Israeli, and one is a Lebanese journalist, CPJ said.
Overcrowded hospitals on the brink of collapse say they are overwhelmed with the numbers of injured people arriving every day and doctors have repeatedly told CNN they don’t have the supplies or the electricity to run critical functions to care properly for them, or other patients, who rely on oxygen supplies to survive.
Videos filmed by journalists working with CNN showed victims in body bags in the aftermath of airstrikes and severely injured people, including children, in overcrowded hospitals.
Families that fled south in an attempt to flee the bombs and staying in UN shelters are grappling with overcrowded conditions which are “severely constraining access to basic assistance and essential services, increasing health and protection risks, and negatively affecting mental health,” the UN humanitarian affairs office (OCHA) warned Thursday.
A total of 1.4 million people – of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million – have been displaced since October 7, with almost 629,000 people living in UN shelters, OCHA said. Half of Gaza’s population are children.
The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza said Wednesday it will have to halt aid operations within a day if fuel is not delivered, saying it would mark the end of a “lifeline” for civilians. UNRWA director for Gaza Tom White told CNN that aid workers would have to decide what aspects of life-saving aid they could and could not provide to civilians.
“Do we provide fuel for desalination plants for drinking water? Can we provide fuel to hospitals? Can we provide the essential fuel that is currently producing the bread that is feeding people in Gaza?” he said.
Nearly three weeks since the outbreak of fighting, the UN’s Security Council remains divided on how to proceed with the crisis. Two differing resolutions on the matter, introduced by the US and Russia, both failed to pass on Wednesday.
The draft resolution from the US called for “humanitarian pauses,” not a ceasefire, to allow for aid to reach Gazan civilians. The US previously vetoed a Brazilian draft calling for a humanitarian pause.
The European Union may also lean toward calling for a “short humanitarian pause” in Gaza after leaders meet on Thursday, a senior diplomat said. Several leaders have already voiced some version of this, including Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the foreign ministers of Ireland and Slovenia.
Qatar, which is helping to mediate with Egypt, US, Israel and Hamas, is hopeful for a breakthrough soon on negotiations to release hostages held by the militant group, the prime minister and foreign minister said Wednesday.
The hostage crisis is a truly international one. Israel’s government press office said 135 hostages – more than half of those being held by Hamas – hold foreign passports from 25 different countries. They include 54 Thai nationals, 15 Argentinians, and 12 citizens from Germany and the US.
Four hostages – two American and two Israeli – have been freed so far. Talks to secure the release of the rest of the hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza are ongoing, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said.
US President Joe Biden said Wednesday he told Netanyahu that if it’s possible to secure the release of hostages in Gaza ahead of an Israeli ground invasion, he should do so.
But Biden said flatly “no” when asked whether he’d sought assurances from his Israeli counterpart that he would hold off on a ground invasion while the hostages remain in custody.
— CutC by cnn.com
