Gaza fighting rages after Israel warns war will last all year
Shelling and missile strikes rocked the length of the Gaza Strip overnight into Tuesday, after Israel’s army warned its war on Gaza will last through 2024.
Despite relentless global demands for a cease-fire, Israel’s military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Monday the army was preparing for “prolonged fighting” expected to last “throughout this year”.
On Monday night into Tuesday morning, eyewitnesses reported missiles fired towards the city of Rafah in the south and shelling around the Jabalia refugee camp in the north, AFP reported.
Fighting was also reported around the central areas of Maghazi and Bureij, as well as the main southern city of Khan Yunis.
In Gaza, where UN agencies have voiced alarm over a spiraling humanitarian crisis, 2.4 million Palestinians remained under siege and bombardment, most of them displaced and many huddling in shelters and tents amid dire food shortages.
“Living conditions... are just hopeless,” said 43-year-old Mostafa Shennar, who fled Gaza City, now a largely devastated urban combat zone, and has been living in the crowded southern border town of Rafah.
Over 22,000 killed
Israel has so far killed at least 22,185 people, mostly women and children in response to the Hamas’s October 7 operation in the occupied territories which killed more than 1,100 people.
The Israeli army says 173 of its soldiers have been killed inside Gaza.
Throughout its bloodiest ever Gaza war, Israel has had the backing of its keystone ally the United States.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, which includes far-right and hardline nationalist groups, has said repeatedly it will keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed.
As 2024 started, a long-running political dispute flared again after setting off mass street protests last year against what is considered the most right-wing cabinet in Israeli history.
Political blow to
Netanyahu
The Supreme Court overruled a key plank of a judicial reform package that Netanyahu has defended as rebalancing the powers of politicians and judges, but which protesters have labelled a threat to Israel’s liberal democracy.
The setback on the so-called reasonableness clause dealt a political blow to the wartime cabinet already under fire over the intelligence failure leading up to October 7.
The army said Monday it would soon rotate out some of the more than 300,000 reservists called up after October 7, in part to prepare them for many more months of war ahead.
It said reservists from two brigades, which have some 4,000 troops each, will start returning home this
week.
Deadly West Bank
clashes
Violence has also surged in the occupied West Bank, where at least 321 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers since the Gaza war began, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.
In the latest clash Tuesday, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians, the ministry said.
Recent months have also seen almost daily exchanges of fire on the Lebanon border between the Israeli army and Hezbollah resistance movement in Lebanon.
Israel has also hit targets in Syria and launched strikes near Damascus overnight causing “some material damage”, state news agency SANA reported.
Yemen’s Ansarullah movement have also launched attacks at Israel and at cargo ships in the Red Sea, where the US military has assembled a multinational taskforce to protect the vital shipping lane.