ShareJERUSALEM: Zionist entity on Wednesday kept up its bombardment of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a political rival announced an emergency government for the duration of the conflict that has already killed thousands. The veteran right-wing leader was joined by the centrist Benny Gantz, a former defense minister, in the government and war cabinet as both put aside bitter political divisions that have roiled the country and sparked mass protests.
Their joint announcement came after Zionist soldiers sweeping battle-torn southern towns said they had found a total of 1,200 bodies, mostly civilians slain in the Islamist militants’ onslaught, the worst attack in the 75-year history. Gaza officials reported more than 1,000 people killed in Zionist entity’s withering campaign of air and artillery strikes on the crowded Palestinian enclave, where black smoke billowed into the sky and entire city blocks lay in ruins. Zionist entity has massed forces, tanks and other heavy armor around Gaza in its retaliatory operation against what Netanyahu labeled “an attack whose savagery... we have not seen since the Holocaust”.
US President Joe Biden has pledged to send more munitions and military hardware to its close ally and expressed revulsion at the “sheer evil” of the slaughter of civilians in the unprecedented assault Hamas unleashed from Saturday. Amid the crisis that has been labeled Zionist’s “9/11”, Netanyahu struck the political deal with Gantz and pledged to freeze for now his government’s flashpoint judicial overhaul plan that has sparked an unprecedented wave of mass protests since the start of the year. Netanyahu’s extreme-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish allies will remain in government, however.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid has not joined the temporary alliance, although the joint statement said a seat would be “reserved” for him in the war cabinet. “Zionist entity before anything else,” Gantz wrote in a social media post while the far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote that he “welcomes the unity, now we must win”. As the war has raged, fears have been intense in Zionist entity for the fate of at least 150 hostages—mostly Zionists but also including foreign and dual nationals—being held in Gaza by Hamas.
Hamas has claimed that four of the captives died in strikes and has threatened to kill other hostages if civilian targets are bombed without advance warning. Concern has mounted over the worsening humanitarian crisis in war-torn Gaza, where Zionists had leveled over 1,000 buildings and imposed a total siege, cutting off water, food and energy supplies for 2.3 million people. The enclave’s sole power plant shut down Wednesday after running out of fuel, Gaza’s electricity provider said. More than 260,000 Gaza residents have been forced from their homes, a UN aid agency said, while the European Union called for a “humanitarian corridor” to allow civilians to flee the enclave’s fifth war in 15 years.
Zionists appeared to be readying for a possible ground invasion of Gaza, but faces the threat of a multi-front war after also coming under rocket attack from militant groups in neighboring Lebanon and Syria. Zionist entity again struck targets Wednesday in southern Lebanon, an area controlled by Hezbollah, an ally of arch enemy Iran. Biden, who has diverted an aircraft carrier battle group to the eastern Mediterranean, issued a stern warning to foes: “To any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: don’t.” A first US aircraft has delivered “advanced armaments” to southern Nevatim Airbase, the army said, declaring that “our common enemies know that the cooperation between our militaries is stronger than ever”.
‘Staggering’ death toll
Zionist entity has been badly shaken by the deadliest attack since its creation in 1948 and the intelligence failure that allowed more than 1,500 militants to storm through the Gaza security barrier in their coordinated land, air and sea attack on the Jewish Sabbath. Hamas gunmen swept into small towns and kibbutzim and indiscriminately killed residents who hid in their homes or died defending their communities. Biden in a solemn White House speech Tuesday expressed his disgust at atrocities including murders of entire families, rapes of women and “stomach-turning reports of babies being killed”.
Troops have retaken more than a dozen southern towns near Gaza after days of grueling street battles that have left the bodies of at least 1,500 Hamas militants strewn in the streets. “We are discovering bodies of dead people in the various communities that Hamas infiltrated and where they conducted their massacres,” said army spokesman Jonathan Conricus. “The death toll is a staggering 1,200 dead Zionists ... the overwhelming majority of them” civilians, he said, with the army later also reporting 169 fallen soldiers.
Troops have encountered and killed several holdout Hamas militants, said military spokesman Daniel Hagari, who told reporters Wednesday that “over the past day, we’ve killed 18 terrorists”. The army has called up 300,000 reservists for what Netanyahu has said will be a “long and difficult” war. “The war is progressing well,” said Weizman Nissan, 72, a resident of Sderot near Gaza and a veteran of three wars. “The army is doing what it needs to do. It’s not killing children or women and is not slaughtering babies. It’s a moral army.
‘In a ghost town’
Heavy bombardment again rained down on Gaza, where the sky was blackened and Hamas said at least 30 people were killed in overnight strikes. Rubble, burnt out cars and broken glass covered roads in Gaza City, where bombs struck the Hamas-linked Islamic University. Also targeted were residential buildings, mosques, factories and shops, said Salama Marouf of the Gaza government’s media office.
One Gaza resident, Mazen Mohammad, 38, said his terrified family had spent the night huddled together as explosions shook the area, before emerging in the morning to assess the total devastation of their neighborhood. “We felt like we were in a ghost town, as if we were the only survivors,” Mohammad told AFP. Medical supplies, including oxygen, were running low at Gaza’s overwhelmed Al-Shifa hospital, said emergency room physician Mohammed Ghonim.
Fear and distrust
Unrest has flared in the occupied West Bank, where protests have been held in solidarity with Gaza and 27 Palestinians have been killed in clashes since Saturday. “My entire life, I have seen Zionists kill us, confiscate our lands and arrest our children,” said Ramallah coffee vendor Farah Al-Saadi, 52, who praised the Hamas assault.
Zionist cities have been eerily quiet and tense, with some residents noting a growing sense of fear and distrust between Jews and members of the Arab-Zionist minority. Frantic diplomacy has continued as international and regional powers sought to prevent a wider conflagration in the Middle East. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Zionist of using of “shameful methods” including “bombing civilian sites, killing civilians, blocking humanitarian aid”.- AFP
