Israel says Gaza war to last months, as fears rise of conflict spreading

Israel’s war on Gaza will last “many months”, the occupation state’s military chief has said, as a string of incidents outside the Gaza Strip have highlighted the risk of the conflict spreading. According to Reuters, Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi made his comment to reporters in a televised statement from the nominal Gaza border on Tuesday.

“There are no magic solutions, there are no shortcuts in dismantling a terrorist [sic] organisation, only determined and persistent fighting,” said Halevi. “We will reach Hamas’ leadership too, whether it takes a week or if it takes months.”

Israeli actions intensified around Christmas, particularly in a central area just south of the seasonal waterway that bisects the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army told civilians to leave the area, even though many said that there is no safe place left in Gaza where they can go.

“We are gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by Israeli forces, which has claimed more than 100 Palestinian lives since Christmas Eve,” said UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Seif Magango on Tuesday. “Israeli forces must take all measures available to protect civilians. Warnings and evacuation orders do not absolve them of the full range of their international humanitarian law obligations.”

Israel is determined to destroy Hamas despite global calls for a ceasefire in the 11-week-old war. The Islamic Resistance Movement launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October against Israeli military bases and settlements in the vicinity of Gaza, during which 1,139 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed, many of them by “friendly fire” from the Israel Defence Forces. The operation was in response to “daily Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people and their sanctities,” said Hamas, notably Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem. Around 240 Israelis were captured during the operation, 110 of whom have already been exchanged for some of the thousands of Palestinians held by Israel.

Palestinian health authorities say nearly 21,000 people have been killed in Israeli air strikes since 7 October, most of them children and women. Israeli bombs have laid much of the occupied Palestinian territory to waste. Thousands more Palestinians are buried under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure. Nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times.

The authorities in Gaza buried 80 unidentified Palestinians on Tuesday whose bodies were handed over by Israel through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, said the health ministry. According to the Islamic Waqf, or religious affairs ministry, the bodies were collected from the northern part of the Gaza Strip. They were buried in a long ditch at a Rafah cemetery in the south. “Pictures are being taken to identify them later,” a representative of the Waqf said during the burials.

Israel claims that it is doing what it can to protect civilians, and blames Hamas for putting them in harm’s way by operating among them, which the legitimate resistance movement denies. Moreover, even Israel’s closest ally the US has said that the occupation state should do more to reduce civilian deaths from what President Joe Biden has called “indiscriminate bombing”.

READ: Euro-Med submits findings on Israeli army executions in Gaza to ICC, UN, calling them ‘genocide’

There are now growing signs that the conflict is starting to spread. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia claimed responsibility for a missile attack on Tuesday on a container ship in the Red Sea and for an attempt to attack Israel with drones.

The Houthis have been attacking ships they say have links to Israel in the entrance to the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. The attacks are a response to Israel’s assault on Gaza, the militia says.

In related incidents, an Israeli air strike killed a senior leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria on Monday. And on the Lebanon border yesterday, Israel said Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at a church, wounding nine Israeli soldiers and a civilian, after which it fired rockets from near a mosque, drawing retaliatory air strikes.

In India, meanwhile, there was an explosion near the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi. The authorities said that no staff were hurt.

“We are in a multi-front war and are coming under attack from seven theatres: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], Iraq, Yemen and Iran,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told lawmakers on Tuesday. “We have already responded and taken action in six of these theatres,” he added, without specifying the one that had yet to see Israeli action.

Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer was meeting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Washington on Tuesday for talks on the war and the return of hostages, announced the White House.

The US has pressed Israel openly in recent weeks to scale down its war to a more targeted operation of raids on Hamas leaders. Nevertheless, Washington is still seen as a supporter of Israel, and US forces have been attacked by Iran-backed forces in the Middle East. The US military carried out retaliatory air strikes on Kataib Hezbollah forces in Iraq on Monday after a drone attack on a US base in Erbil left one American soldier in a critical condition, and wounded two others.

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