Roving Periscope: Bibi vows to annihilate Hamas, prepares to turn the Gaza Strip into ashes

Virendra Pandit 

New Delhi: As an angry Israel, still smarting due to its utter failure to predict the October 7 surprise multipronged invasion by Hamas, prepares for a final land assault on the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to destroy the Iran-supported Sunni terror outfit root and branch. “Every Hamas terrorist is a dead man,” he declared after the reported killing of nearly 1,500 extremists.

As the Jewish state upped the ante against Hamas and pledged to wipe it “off the face of Earth,” India braced to evacuate over 12,000 students and citizens stranded in war-torn Israel. New Delhi is set to launch its Operation Ajay to rescue them late on Thursday.

Netanyahu, who formed an emergency wartime Cabinet with Opposition leader Benny Gantz on Wednesday, to demonstrate political unity against terrorists, is reportedly preparing for a decisive ground assault on the Gaza Strip that could surpass the 2014 events when the Israeli forces invaded it and killed some 2,000 Gazans, the media reported on Thursday.

Five days after the Palestinian terror outfit carried out the deadliest assault on Israel since 1948, both sides are bracing for a final bloody confrontation with Israel amassing thousands of soldiers by the Gaza border. The fate of over 160 Israelis taken hostage by Hamas over the last weekend hangs in the balance.

“There is a time for war and time for peace,” Gantz said. “Now is time for war.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, using the strongest language of the three, said “We will wipe them off the face of the Earth.” The three leaders’ tone signaled Israel may be entering final preparations for an unprecedented invasion of the narrow strip of land, wedged between Israel and Egypt, that has been under Hamas control.

Officials say the stakes are far different this time given the unprecedented scale of the Hamas attack that killed at least 1,200 Israelis. Retaliatory strikes on Gaza have left more than 1,000 Palestinians dead. Israel has stated that nearly 1,500 Hamas terrorists have been killed so far.

The Israeli preparations and statements indicate that it is not waiting for the hostages’ safety before invading the Gaza Strip, despite Hamas threatening to start killing the captives.

“This is not time for difficult questions,” Gantz said. “This is the time for overwhelming answers on the battlefield.”

Meanwhile, India will evacuate the first batch of its citizens from Israel by 10 pm on Thursday when Operation Ajay gets underway as Israel’s defense forces reportedly prepare a ground invasion of Gaza to fight Hamas militants.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on X, formerly Twitter, Wednesday night that special charter flights and other arrangements were being put in place.

Prior to that, Indian embassy officials in Tel Avis had meetings with the Indian diaspora, including caregivers and Tel Aviv University (TAU) students.

“The first flight (of Operation Ajay) is expected to take off around 10 pm. Israel has assured full support,” said an Indian official on Thursday. The first group of Indians who had registered to return home will be put on the special flight, which, unlike other airlines, is charging a nominal amount.

Operation Ajay will continue until all Indians ready to move out of Israel are shifted out.

The External Affairs Ministry’s data on overseas Indians, updated in February, shows there are 12,467 Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) in Israel. However, the latest estimates indicate that at least 18,000 Indians are in Israel now. According to the Israel Malayali Federation officials, around 6,000-6,500 people are from Kerala, a majority being caregivers.

According to media reports, Israel’s Ambassador to China Irit Ben-Abba called on Beijing to leverage its close relationship with Iran to rein in Hamas. “We really hope China can be much more involved in talking to its close partners in the Middle East and particularly Iran.”

“Iran is definitely very much involved in what has happened.”

China has not condemned the Hamas attack on Israel. Its Foreign Ministry merely said it was “saddened” by the casualties, and added it was a “friend to both” sides of the conflict. In March, President Xi Jinping brokered a “peace deal” between Saudi Arab and Iran, marking Beijing’s entry into the Middle East’s inferno.

Beijing’s relations with Israel remained tense through the Cold War, as the latter emerged as a key US ally. That began to change, though, as China opened up and showed economic interest in Israel’s developments in technology and defense. Now its bilateral trade with Israel totals USD 22.1 billion, according to 2022 statistics from the International Monetary Fund.

More than half of Israel’s exports to China are electric components, including microchips, according to a June paper by Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.

That trade with Israel is crucial as the US urges its partners to implement curbs on Beijing’s access to cutting-edge technology. Intel Corp. abandoned a USD 5.4 billion deal in August to acquire Israel’s Tower Semiconductor Ltd. after failing to win Chinese regulatory approval in time as rising geopolitical tensions slowed down that process.