Tag Archives: Gaza

Hamas, Israel clash inside Gaza; “Next stage” of war could be around the corner

War-damage-in-Gaza

Important Takeaways:

  • Hamas and Israeli troops clash in Gaza as airstrikes intensify
  • Hamas fighters and Israeli forces engaged in limited clashes inside Gaza on Sunday as the Israeli military ramped up airstrikes on the Palestinian enclave ahead of what its spokesperson described as the “next stage” of its war on the militant group.
  • Hamas claimed its fighters had destroyed two Israeli military bulldozers and a tank in an ambush near the Gazan city of Khan Younis, forcing Israeli troops to retreat without their vehicles. The Israel Defense Forces confirmed its forces had been operating inside Gaza during the incident, and said an IDF tank struck militants who had fired on its troops.
  • The episode appeared to be one of the first skirmishes between the two sides on the ground inside the strip since war broke out

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Hamas Refugee Affairs calls Israel’s message for civilians to flee the area ‘Psychological Warfare,’ tells them to stay in their houses

Flyers-over-Gaza

Important Takeaways:

  • Get out NOW: Israel drops flyers telling 1.1 million in Northern Gaza to flee ‘immediately’ after giving 24-hour deadline, sparking widespread panic as Palestine warns of ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ and IDF prepares for ground assault
  • Israel has dropped flyers over northern Gaza ordering more than one million people to ‘evacuate your homes immediately’ and flee south ahead of a feared Israeli ground offensive aimed at eradicating the Hamas terrorist group.
  • The order has sparked widespread panic among civilians already struggling under Israeli airstrikes and a blockade, while the UN called such an evacuation ‘impossible’, saying it would turn a tragedy into calamity.
  • Palestine’s health minister also warned that Gaza is facing a humanitarian and health catastrophe and urged all countries and human rights groups to help with the immediate entry of medical and emergency aid to the enclave.
  • The Hamas Authority for Refugee Affairs called on residents in the north of the territory to ‘remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm in the face of this disgusting psychological war waged by the occupation’.
  • On Thursday it [Israel] said that while it was preparing, no official decision has been made.
  • Any ground offensive would be the strongest response yet to Hamas’ shock assault, and would likely bring even higher casualties on both sides in brutal guerrilla warfare as Israeli soldiers go house-to-house and hunt down Hamas terrorists.
  • ‘This evacuation is for your own safety,’ the Israeli military said, in a warning it said was sent to all Gaza City civilians.

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Visual evidence suggests Hamas took at least 64 captives into Gaza

Hamas-hostage-chart

Important Takeaways:

  • The presence of scores of captives in Gaza, a large majority of them civilians, increases the risks involved in a possible Israeli invasion
  • Among them were 49 people who appeared to be civilians — nine of them children — and 11 who appeared to be members of the Israeli military, according to The Post’s review. In four cases, it was not possible to determine whether the captive was a civilian or soldier.
  • Hamas has said that it holds “tens” of people. Israeli authorities have said they estimate that Palestinian fighters took between 100 and 150 people hostage.

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Death toll in Israel continues to climb: Official findings are absolutely horrific

Dead-in-Israel

Important Takeaways:

  • Israel Strikes 450 Targets as Scale of Hamas’ Massacre Rises: Babies Beheaded, 1,200 Civilians Dead
  • Day 5 of the Israel-Hamas war.
  • Israel says it struck at least 450 Hamas targets in Gaza in the last 24 hours, while Israeli ground forces mass on the border for an imminent invasion.
  • The death toll in Israel continues to climb – more than 1,200 civilians dead, 170 soldiers slain, and more than 3,500 Israelis wounded. Forty murdered Israeli babies were found among the massacred civilians, and some of those babies had been beheaded.
  • The health ministry in Gaza says some 1,055 people have been killed and 5,000 injured during Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Hamas in the sealed coastal enclave.
  • In the Israeli community of Kfar Aza, soldiers discovered what’s been described as a “massacre.”
  • Gen. Itai Veruv, who led the three-day campaign to retake Kfar Aza after Hamas militants invaded, said, “You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists killed them. It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre. It’s a terror activity.”
  • Doron Spielman, Israel Defense Forces spokesman, added, “Who could do this? They must have shed their humanity, and what is left is something inhuman. To see baby carriages with bullet holes and blood? Who goes up to a baby and kills a baby? Who kills a mother? I see the bodies in their homes.”
  • On Tuesday, Biden also announced the U.S. is rushing military assistance to Israel including ammunition and interceptors to help the Iron Dome.
  • The president also said he’s instructed his team to share intelligence with Israel as they work together to safely bring home all the hostages.

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Questions arise: US weapons in the hands of Hamas and the Billions just released to Iran

US-Weapons-Palestinians

Important Takeaways:

  • U.S. Weapons from Afghanistan Ended up with Palestinian Groups Operating in the Gaza Strip
  • According to a Newsweek report published in June, an Israeli commander said some of the US small arms seized in Afghanistan have already been observed in the hands of Palestinian groups operating in the Gaza Strip.
  • The report began recirculating on social media, amid accusations that the Biden administration funded Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel by releasing $6 billion in frozen funds to Iran, the main backer of Hamas.
  • Republican presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Saturday:
    • The $6 billion has not been accessed completely by Iran yet, but the fact of the matter is if you have a credit on your account for $6 billion, typically, people count that as access available today, tomorrow, whenever, so you start reworking your spending budget.
    • And by doing so, you put yourself in a position to use that money even though you have not had access to it yet. So the $6 billion that they know they’re getting, they’re using already.
  • Newsweek also reported that another source disclosed a specific event on August 20 where a Russian Il-76 transport aircraft allegedly dropped off cargo in Tehran worth an estimated $100 million, which included Western weapons such as U.S.-made Javelins and United Kingdom-made Next Generation Light Anti-armor weapons (NLAWs).

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Israel takes back control of territory cuts off food, electricity, and fuel to Gaza

Prayer-for-Israel

Important Takeaways:

  • IDF Says Territory Back Under its Control After Battling Hamas Invaders, Long Fight Still Ahead
  • The IDF deployed four divisions to the south to expel Hamas operatives from Israeli soil. Israeli warplanes are carrying out widespread strikes on Hamas targets and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday ordered a “complete closure” of the Gaza Strip.
  • “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” will be allowed into the coastal enclave, Gallant said. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
  • Meanwhile, Hamas continues to rain down rockets on communities in south and central Israel.
  • The numbers reported since the war began are staggering. More than 4,000 rockets fired into Israel, as many as 700 Israelis murdered, almost three thousand injured, many seriously— and about 100 kidnapped and taken into captivity in Gaza.
  • Israel is now on a war footing with up to 300,000 reservists called up to action. Many anticipate a ground incursion into Gaza soon with the likely goal of the destruction of the Iranian-backed terror group, and they’re evacuating some communities near Gaza.

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On June 8th Alarabiya News shed some light on what concessions Israel might be giving up

Important Takeaways:

  • The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine
  • This proposed enlarged kingdom would include present-day Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank (areas populated by Palestinians attached in a contiguous manner and physically connected to Jordan, i.e., not broken up into islands). Israeli arguments as to the need to retain the Jordan Valley become moot since the valley will now be controlled by a Jordanian government with a reliable record of maintaining peace with Israel. The convenient argument that Israel has no “peace partner” will now also be eliminated.
  • Jerusalem, despite the fact that neither Arabs nor Muslims have a hope of dislodging Israel from it, is, given its symbolism, a key bargaining chip in Palestinian hands. The formal relinquishment of any claims to Jerusalem (with an appropriate arrangement for the holy places) can be an important concession used to secure the foregoing terms. The Palestinians, after all, are the only party who can do this and, hence, completely legitimize Israel in the eyes of the region and the world.

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Israel announces completion of underground Gaza border barrier

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel on Tuesday announced the completion of a sensor-equipped underground wall on its side of the Gaza border, a counter-measure developed after Hamas militants used tunnels to blindside its troops in a 2014 war.

Israel went public with the project, which also includes an above-ground fence, a naval barrier, radar systems and command and control rooms, in 2016.

“The barrier, which is an innovative and technologically advanced project, deprives Hamas of one of the capabilities it tried to develop,” Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said, according to a defense ministry statement.

“(It) places an ‘iron wall,’ sensors and concrete between the terror organization and the residents of Israel’s south,” he said of the project, which beefs up an existing border fence.

The ministry said the barrier, which includes hundreds of cameras, radars and other sensors, spans 65 kilometers (40 miles) and that 140,000 tonnes of iron and steel were used in its construction, which took 3.5 years to complete.

It said the project’s “smart fence” is more than 6 meters (20 feet) high and its maritime barrier includes means to detect infiltration by sea and a remote-controlled weapons system. The ministry did not disclose the depth of the underground wall.

Gaza also has a 14-kilometre-(8.7-mile)-long border with Egypt, which has also clamped down on crossings, citing security concerns. Since 2013, Egyptian forces have demolished smuggling tunnels while Hamas, on its side, has stepped up patrols.

Israel and Hamas have fought four wars since the Islamist group seized control the coastal Gaza Strip in 2007 from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In the latest conflict, last May, Hamas and other militant groups fired more than 4,300 rockets at Israel, which deployed Iron Dome interceptors against them and carried out extensive air strikes in Gaza.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller and Dan Williams, editing by Mark Heinrich)

Former UN rights boss to head probe into Israel, Hamas alleged crimes

GENEVA (Reuters) – Former United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay will head an international commission of inquiry into alleged crimes committed during the latest conflict between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza, the U.N.’s Human Rights Council said in a statement on Thursday.

The council agreed in late May to launch the investigation with a broad mandate to probe all alleged violations, not just in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, but also in Israel during hostilities that were halted by a May 21 ceasefire.

At least 250 Palestinians and 13 people in Israel were killed in the fierce fighting, which saw Gaza militants fire rockets towards Israeli cities and Israel carry out air strikes across the coastal enclave.

Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the council at the time that deadly Israeli strikes on Gaza might constitute war crimes and that Hamas had violated international humanitarian law by firing rockets into Israel.

Israel rejected the resolution adopted by the Geneva forum at an emergency special session and said it would not cooperate.

Pillay, a former South African judge who served as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008-2014, will lead the three-person panel also composed of Indian expert Miloon Kothari and Australian expert Chris Sidoti, said the statement issued by the Human Rights Council. The investigators, who have been tasked with trying to identify those responsible for violations with a view to ensure they are held accountable, are due to present their first report in June 2022.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Israel to ease more Gaza restrictions as truce holds

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel said on Thursday it would ease restrictions on trade and fisheries in the Gaza Strip that had been tightened during 11 days of fighting with the Palestinian enclave’s Hamas rulers last month.

Israel keeps tight controls over Gaza’s borders, with support from neighboring Egypt, citing threats from Hamas. The Israeli restrictions were intensified during the May fighting – halting Gaza exports, restricting imports of raw materials and limiting the area that Palestinians are permitted to fish.

With an Egyptian-mediated truce largely holding, Israel on Monday allowed a limited resumption of commercial exports from Gaza. But Hamas demanded a wider easing of curbs and held out the possibility of resuming hostilities.

Starting from Friday, Israel will “expand the fishing zone in the Gaza Strip from six to nine nautical miles, and (approve) the import of raw materials for essential civilian factories,” COGAT, a branch of Israel’s defense ministry, said.

The new measures are “conditional upon the preservation of security stability,” COGAT said in a statement.

At least one factory in the Strip, Pepsi Gaza, had shut down due to Israeli restrictions on raw materials imports, including carbon dioxide gas. COGAT did not say which raw materials would be allowed in.

Egypt and the United Nations stepped up mediation last week after incendiary balloons launched from Gaza drew retaliatory Israeli air strikes on Hamas sites, challenging the fragile ceasefire.

At least 250 Palestinians and 13 in Israel were killed in the May fighting, which saw Gaza militants fire rockets towards Israeli cities and Israel carry out air strikes across the coastal enclave.

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub; Editing by Giles Elgood)