‘Many months’: Grim war update ahead of new year
The Israel-Hamas war is far from over, with Israel’s army chief confirming the campaign will continue for “many more months”.
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The war between Israel and Hamas militants is expected to rage on for “many more months”, Israel’s army chief confirmed days out from the new year.
Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, told a news conference on Tuesday that the military is expanding operations in southern and central Gaza.
“[The war] will continue for many more months, and we will work with different methods so that our achievements are preserved for a long time”, he said.
“There are no magic solutions, there are no shortcuts when it comes to thoroughly dismantling a terrorist organisation except being stubborn and determined in the fighting.”
He added the IDF would reach the Hamas leadership “whether it takes a week or whether it takes months”, according to the Times of Israel.
It comes after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the campaign, which began over 11 weeks ago on October 7, is far from over.
“We are not stopping, we are continuing to fight and we are deepening the fighting in the coming days, and this will be a long battle and it is not close to being over,” he said on Monday, according to the publication.
“We need patience, unity, and to stick to our mission.”
The campaign began after Hamas launched unprecedented attacks against southern Israeli communities, in which the militant group killed about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Hamas also took 250 hostages, of whom 129 remain inside Gaza, Israel says.
Since fighting began, at least 1,200 Israelis have been killed and 6,900 others have been injured.
In Palestine, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 20,915 people have been killed and another 54,918 have been wounded.
Israel’s army said it struck military sites and tunnel shafts in Jabalia, northern Gaza, as well as in Khan Yunis in the south, as heavy ground combat continued this week.
Black smoke clouded the sky over central Gaza on Tuesday afternoon and, in the south, horse-drawn carts carried some victims to hospital in Khan Yunis, AFP images showed.
Internet and telephone services were again cut across the Palestinian territory, “due to the ongoing offensive,” announced Gaza’s main telecom firm, Paltel.
“We are gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by Israeli forces,” Seif Magango, spokesman for the United Nations Human Rights Office, said in a statement.
“It is particularly concerning that this latest intense bombardment comes after Israeli forces ordered residents from the south of Wadi Gaza to move to Middle Gaza and Tal al-Sultan in Rafah.”
Mr Netanyahu, however, reiterated Israel would stay the course. “Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarised and Palestinian society must be deradicalised,” he argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published late Monday.
“These are the three prerequisites for peace”, he wrote.
Watching a child die
Some residents of Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza have returned to the ruins of their homes after strikes that Gaza’s health ministry said killed at least 70 people.
AFP was unable to independently verify that toll.
Sean Casey, a World Health Organisation Emergency Medical Teams co-ordinator, was part of a WHO mission to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah city after the refugee camp strikes.
In a video shot inside the hospital, Casey appeared to be fighting back tears as he described a nine-year-old boy, Ahmed, “being treated basically with sedation to ease his suffering as he dies”, after receiving a head wound when a building was struck.
Only a minority of Gaza’s hospitals are even partly functioning, says the WHO, whose Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeated his “call for an immediate ceasefire”.
The Israeli army said it was “reviewing the incident” at Al-Maghazi and added it is “committed to international law, including taking feasible steps to minimise harm to civilians”.
Israel has been under increasing pressure from its allies to protect non-combatants.
US-Israeli consultations
An estimated 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN, many having fled south.
Mr Netanyahu told members of his conservative Likud party on Monday that he was ready to support the voluntary migration of civilians out of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
He reportedly told party members “our problem is not whether to allow an exit, but that there will be countries that are willing to absorb an exit”.
In a statement, Hamas rejected as “absurd” any such discussion.
“There can’t be exile and there is no other choice than to remain on our land.”
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the idea of pushing Palestinians into Egypt “is a nonstarter”.
Blinken was meeting on Tuesday with Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan “for face-to-face consultations on a number of matters related to the conflict in Gaza and the return of hostages held by Hamas”, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said.
Originally published as ‘Many months’: Grim war update ahead of new year
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