Vicious return to combat in Gaza
After a delicate seven-day truce, fighting returned to the Gaza Strip today after Israel faced rocket attacks.
In response, the IDF claimed to have struck “200 terror targets” and the Hamas-run health ministry said over 100 Palestinians were killed in little over half a day.
The IDF struck all over Gaza, but particularly in the south at Rafah and Khan Younis, just after having leafleted the area urging Palestinians to flee. In Khan Younis, there has been near-constant bombardment. Mohammad Ghalayini, a resident, told NBC News: “Every 10-15 minutes there have been strikes, some of it 500 metres away from us.”
Israel has been facing attacks itself. Hamas’s armed wing, al Qassam Brigades, claims it has fired a “missile barrage” at Tel Aviv. On social media, it said: “Al Qassam Brigades bombard Tel Aviv with a missile barrage in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians.” Not only that, but another Palestinian terrorist group, Islamic Jihad, has also been firing rockets heavily at Israel.
Both sides have blamed each other for the breakdown in truce negotiations.
Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan accused Israel and the US of a desire to return to warfare. He said: “We blame the failure on two sides, the Israeli and American sides. It was clear yesterday that the Israeli side wants to go back to fighting as several ideas were put forward by mediators and we accepted three of them, and despite that the Israeli side said ‘no, no, no’ every time.”
Mediators Qatar seemed to take this line as well: “Qatar expresses its deep regret at the resumption of the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip following the end of the humanitarian pause, without reaching an agreement to extend it.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking from COP 28 in Dubai disagreed: “It’s important to understand why the pause came to an end – it came to an end because of Hamas.”
The truce had been extremely delicate and not what one might normally call a truce. Earlier this week, Hamas gunmen opened fire on Jewish civilians at a bus shelter killing two in Jerusalem while the IDF raided Jenin in the West Bank, shooting two Palestinian boys in the process.
But a startling new report from The New York Times has shed light on the question still on everyone’s mind: how did Israel not see 7 October coming? The report has claimed that Israeli officials were made aware of Hamas’s attack plans more than a year in advance, yet failed to defend the southern Kibbutzim. The paper said “Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision,” but that officials considered the plans “aspirational” and “too difficult for Hamas to carry out”.
Underestimating the enemy is not a viable option for Israel ever again. The IDF says it has killed 5,000 of an estimated 25,000 Hamas terrorists. Critics, and even some friends of Israel, wonder how many more they’ve created in the process.
This return to combat signifies a new stage in the war. Given today’s brutality, another truce looks some way off. As Tim Marshall, Reaction columnist, puts it in his latest piece, the conflict looks likely to get worse for all concerned.
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