TEL AVIV: Israel hit Gaza with more airstrikes even as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak became the third western leader to visit Tel Aviv after US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to signal his support for Israeli military’s assault while calling for easing the plight of civilians trapped in the fighting.
Israel made clear its bombings will not abate. “In the Gaza Strip, every place where Hamas has touched or is touching will be struck and destroyed. We really are a war machine that knows how to do two or three times what is being done now,” said an Israeli military officer.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 3,785 persons have been killed and over 12,000 wounded in Gaza since the conflict began. However, Israel is sceptical of the claims.
Air alarms went up in north and south Israel after Hamas fired rockets both from Gaza and Lebanon in response to the Israeli air strikes. The situation flared up in West Bank as well where a massive Israeli military raid led to clashes leading to the death of eight Palestinians. Israeli forces entered the Nur Shams refugee camp in West Bank and arrested over 80, including “63 Hamas terror operatives”. But an explosion during the incursion injured 10 Israeli defence personnel, some of them critically.
Meanwhile, the Iranian military chief Mohammad Baqeri in a phone call to Qatari Defence Minister Khalid bin Mohamed Al Attiyah urged regional countries to stop the US from transferring arms and equipment to Israel from its bases in the Middle East, reported IRNA. Sunak borrowed a phrase associated with Winston Churchill to promise backing to “in its darkest hour” and maintained he was aware that Israel was “taking every precaution to avoid harming civilians in direct contrast to the terrorists of Hamas, which seeks to put civilians in harm’s way”.
Biden flew directly back to the US from Israel after being forced to cancel the second leg of his visit to Jordan as a quartet of Arab leaders refused to meet him due to the bombing of the hospital in Gaza. Biden’s visit helped in Egypt agreeing to allow 20 aid trucks to reach Gaza in the coming days. This, however, is much less than 100 trucks required per day, as per UN estimates.
Israel’s Arab neighbours, on the other hand, turned down Israel’s game plan to drive out all of Gaza’s 22 lakh residents to enable the Israeli security forces to hunt down Hamas militants as well as dismantle its infrastructure of bunkers and bomb-proof tunnels.
Both Jordan and Egypt, whose leaders refused to meet Biden, are apprehensive that Israel is aiming for permanent expulsion of Palestinians and nullify demands for a Palestine nation in Gaza, West Bank and east Jerusalem. The outcome of visits by Biden and Scholz has been Israel agreeing to allow limited aid to reach Gaza, provided it does not benefit Hamas.