“CYCLE OF VIOLENCE AND HORROR”
Israeli army spokesman Richard Hecht said on Thursday the military was readying for a potential order to launch a ground invasion in the war with Hamas: “This has not been decided yet … but we are preparing for a ground manoeuvre if it is decided.”
“Right now we are focused on taking out their senior leadership,” he told journalists.
Fears have grown for Gaza’s 2.4 million people now enduring the fifth war in 15 years in the long-blockaded territory, which has also seen Israel cut off water, food and power supplies.
Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz vowed the total siege of Gaza would continue until the hostages are freed.
“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home,” he said in a statement.
“The human misery caused by this escalation is abhorrent,” said the International Committee of the Red Cross Middle East chief Fabrizio Carboni, who stressed hospitals without electricity “risk turning into morgues”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres voiced concern about the “supercharged cycle of violence and horror”, urged the release of all hostages and the lifting of the siege, and stressed that “civilians must be protected at all times”.
There have been calls for a humanitarian corridor to allow Palestinians to escape ahead of a possible Israeli ground invasion that would spell brutal urban combat and house-to-house fighting.
If Israel does send ground forces into Gaza, it risks walking into a Hamas “trap”, warned a former head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, Alex Younger, speaking on BBC radio.
“You shouldn’t do what your enemy wants you to do,” he said, arguing the inevitable loss of innocent life would further drive radicalisation and regional sentiment against Israel and its allies.
“These are all things that Hamas wants,” he said.
“ALL I DO IS CRY”
Israel has called up 300,000 reservists and rushed forces, tanks and heavy armour to the southern desert areas around Gaza from where Hamas launched their unprecedented attack on Oct 7.
Israeli soldiers have since then swept the southern towns and kibbutz communities and killed 1,500 of the militants, while making ever more shocking discoveries of large numbers of dead civilians.
“I would never have been able to imagine … something like this,” Doron Spielman, an Israeli army spokesman, said at one gated community where more than 100 residents were killed.
“It looks like… an atomic bomb just landed here.”
Israeli outrage has been further fuelled by Hamas’s capture of at least 150 hostages – mostly Israelis but also foreign and dual nationals – now being held in Gaza.
“I know he’s out there somewhere,” one of the affected Israelis, Ausa Meir, said of her brother Michael, who is among the captives. “It’s very, very painful.”
Hamas has threatened to kill hostages if Israel bombs Gaza civilian targets without advance warning – deepening the anger and fear in shell-shocked Israel.
“Everybody is impacted in Israel,” said Joana Ouisman, 38, a finance executive. “I’ve been watching TV all day for the past three to four days. All I do is cry.”
Source: CNA
