Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 15: The Israeli military has opened a safe corridor in northern Gaza and issued three hours’ notice to allow residents to go to the “safer” southern part of the seaside territory as it was readying for a looming Gaza ground invasion aimed at destroying Hamas.
In a post on X, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said they will not launch any operation on this corridor for three hours. “Residents of Gaza City and northern Gaza, in the past days, we’ve urged you to relocate to the southern area for your safety. We want to inform you that the IDF will not carry out any operations along this route from 10 pm to 1 pm,” the Israeli military said. “During this window, please take the opportunity to move southward from northern Gaza,” it said.
Israel has called up some 360,000 military reserves and massed troops and tanks along the border with Gaza. U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said late Saturday that the U.S. was moving in a second carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, as a deterrence to any regional actors seeking to widen the war.
In the eight days since the gunmen of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist militant group that unleashed the bloodiest attack in the country’s history, killed more than 1,300 Israelis in their surprise onslaught, Israel has responded with a devastating bombing campaign that has claimed over 2,300 lives in Gaza.
Fear and chaos reigned in the 40-kilometre long strip that is one of the world’s most densely populated areas, with no safe place for the large numbers of internally displaced Palestinians to flee to. The IDF said the safety of Gaza residents and that of their families matters. “Please follow our instructions and head southward. Be assured, Hamas leaders have already ensured their safety and that of their families,” it said.
Earlier today, the Israeli military has released photos that claim to show the Hamas group stopping people from going to southern Gaza. The Hamas group has been accused of using human shields. Hamas is deliberately keeping hostages in places where it knows Israel would carry out bombings, the country’s former national security adviser said. The comment by Eyal Hulata was in response to a statement by Hamas that nine more Israeli hostages have been killed in Gaza in Israeli airstrikes.
Entire Gaza city blocks lie in ruins and hospitals are overflowing with thousands of wounded in the besieged territory, but there were fears of worse to come. A senior Israeli official accused Iran on Sunday of trying to open a second war front by deploying weapons in or through Syria as Israel steps up a counter-offensive in Gaza to the south.
Israel also claimed that a top Hamas commander responsible for the Kibbutz Nirim massacre in Israel, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday. Israeli intelligence pinned Billal Al Kedra’s location in Khan Yunis, a city in the south of Gaza Strip. Al Kedra was a commander of the Nukhba force, a naval commando unit under Hamas’ special forces unit of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. The IAF said in its statement that other Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror operatives were also killed in the strike.
The Israeli forces carried out airstrikes on over 100 military targets in Zaytun, Khan Yunis, and west Jabaliya, targeting Hamas operational command centres and military compounds. The airstrikes neutralised several anti-tank missile launch pads and observation posts.
Last week, in a sensational land-sea-air assault on Israel, Hamas operatives infiltrated the country using motorised gliders, boats, and on foot. Nirrim, a kibbutz (settlement) located less than a mile from the Gaza border, was also one of the targets where Hamas carried out a massacre.
Residents of Nirim and other small agricultural communities along the border have become accustomed to the relentless barrage of rocket fire from Hamas. The people residing there often seek refuge in reinforced safe rooms, sometimes even sleeping in them, since Hamas came to power in Gaza in 2005 after the US unilaterally withdrew from the Palestinian enclave. According to Israeli authorities, several were killed in this settlement in the Hamas onslaught.
A bereaved and infuriated Israel has massed forces outside the long-blockaded enclave of 2.4 million ahead of what the army has said will be a land, air and sea attack involving a “significant ground operation.” Israel has also stationed troops and tanks on its UN-patrolled northern border with Lebanon and closed a four kilometre wide zone there to civilians after repeated exchanges of cross-border fire with Hezbollah and other militants groups.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited front line troops in the south near Gaza on Saturday, wearing a flak jacket. “Are you ready for what is coming?” he said. “More is coming.” Israel’s military spokesmen have repeatedly said the army was ready for a ground operation but awaiting a “political decision” on the timing.
Special forces have made forays into Gaza and recovered the bodies of some of the up to 150 hostages feared taken by Hamas. Israel has said it has identified more than 120 captives, while Hamas has claimed 22 have died in Israeli air strikes. A Gaza ground invasion threatens to bring the kind of gruelling house-to-house fighting that devastated Iraq’s Mosul and Fallujah in years past, further complicated for Israeli forces by Hamas’ vast tunnel network. Israel has warned 1.1 million Palestinians to leave northern Gaza and a steady stream of families in overloaded cars, trucks and donkey carts have since headed south.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi charged that Israel’s actions have gone “beyond the scope of self-defence” and said it must “cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza.” Egypt to the south controls the only other crossing with Gaza but has so far refused to open it to help evacuate foreign citizens unless aid convoys are allowed to enter, according to unnamed intelligence sources cited in media reports.
Anger has flared in much of the Muslim world and beyond, with pro-Palestinian protesters burning Israeli and American flags. Militant groups allied with Israel’s arch foe Iran have a strong presence in Lebanon and Syria, heightening the risk of a multi-front war for Israel’s army as deadly clashes have also flared in the occupied West Bank.
The past week has seen repeated clashes on Israel’s northern frontier with Lebanon where the Iran-back Hezbollah movement has tried to send small groups of militants across the heavily fortified border. The mood in Israel has swung between collective grief, fury and a strong desire to punish Hamas which Netanyahu has likened to the Islamic State group. Public outrage has been fuelled by images and reports virally shared on social media of youths and families shot, stabbed, burnt and mutilated in the Hamas attack.