The battle continues ….
Israel continues to build up forces on the border of Gaza ….
More aggressive comments from Israeli leaders….
Images of atrocities against Jewish adults and children circle in social media….
Gaza resident’s told to leave as the place is pounded ….
US and UK Naval presence increased ….
Explained as to warn off Lebanon from escalation of the conflict…Not join the action against Hamas
And quiet questions about an end game and hostages….
And will Egypt take the fleeing Palestinians?.. (No so far)
Those there are increasingly seeking refuge in UN sponsererd site’s…..
Hamas was NOT a group to go after Israeli civilians …(Deaths and causality figures for both side’s seem to be in flux )
Some want to know what changed and the group may have made a serious mistake against it’s future…
The growing background question for Israel….
How did this Happen?
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The Guardian….
Israel has said there will be no humanitarian break to its siege of the Gaza Strip until all its hostages are freed, amid growing concern over dwindling water, food and fuel supplies after a fifth night of bombardment.
The energy minister, Israel Katz, wrote on social media that no “electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter” until the “abductees” were free. The United Nations experts have condemned the Israeli bombardment as “collective punishment”, which is a war crime.
Israel is preparing to launch a ground invasion in response to bloody massacres carried out in 20 Israeli communities by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas last weekend, during which dozens of hostages were also seized, in the most serious escalation in the region for 50 years.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, landed in Tel Aviv on Thursday as part of a Middle East tour to show Washington’s solidarity with Israel, after a first plane loaded with US munitions arrived in Israel on Wednesday night. “You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself,” Blinken said at a joint press conference with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “But as long as America exists, you will never, ever have to. We will always be there by your side.”
Israel Defence Forces strikes killed at least 33 people within two hours overnight on Thursday, according to Al Jazeera’s local reporter, bringing the death toll in Gaza to 1,354. The reporter said fighter jets had attacked houses in several areas, and civil defence groups recovered the bodies of the dead. In some areas, residents were sifting through rubble with their bare hands looking for survivors and bodies….
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The UN said late on Wednesday the number of people displaced by the airstrikes had soared 30% within 24 hours to 339,000 – two-thirds of them crowding into UN schools….
Washington Post….
Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday in a show of support for Israel, where he said at least 25 Americans were killed since the cross-border assault by Hamas militants. While there, Blinken will also tackle the issue of unaccounted-for Americans who may have either been killed or taken hostage by Hamas. Israel is massing troops near the Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground assault; an IDF spokesman said Thursday that Hamas would no longer be tolerated as a “sovereign [entity] located adjacent to Israel.” In Gaza, authorities warned of dire water and electricity shortages after Israel ordered a “full siege” of the densely populated, impoverished Palestinian enclave. The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said Israeli airstrikes left hospitals at full capacity as medicine and fuel run out. Israel’s energy minister said “no electrical switch will be turned on” in Gaza until all hostages are freed.
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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday condemned the violence in recent days against civilians, both by Israel and Hamas. Hamas is a longtime rival to Abbas’s Fatah party, according to the official Palestinian News Agency (WAFA). “We reject the practices of killing civilians or abusing them on both sides because they contravene morals, religion and international law,” Abbas said during a meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan.
“It’s hard to reconcile this pragmatic version of Hamas over the past 15-odd years with what just happened, which will close the door on any kind of international acceptance,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to Palestinian peace negotiators and now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “What is the end game in this?”
That’s the question researchers and policymakers who for years have monitored Hamas are trying to answer as they revisit the group’s trajectory to understand the motivations for an attack so extraordinary in its scope and lethality that Hamas surely realized it was risking its own annihilation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to “cleanse” the area of Hamas in a war of vengeance whose toll on the militants “will reverberate with them for generations.”
NY Times….
At a news conference in Tel Aviv, Mr. Blinken said he had met with family members of Americans and those taken the hostage, and invoked the horrors of the Holocaust as he addressed the attacks. But he also suggested the need for restraint in strikes on Gaza, calling for “every possible precaution to prevent harming civilians.”
Here is the latest:
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The brutality of the Hamas attack was coming into clearer viewin the dozens of towns and a military base targeted: civilians, including children, shot dead in homes, in cars, on streets and in hiding places.
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Israel’s military said on Thursday that its troops were preparing “for the next stage of the war,” signaling that a ground invasion of Gaza could be coming.
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Israel has cut off water and electricity supplies to Gaza, where the health system “has begun to collapse,” the health ministry there said. Staff members at one hospital are scrambling to treat the wounded, who are crammed into corridors that are also filled with people who fled their homes amid Israeli airstrikes. Nearly 340,000 people in Gaza have been displaced by the conflict, according to the United Nations.
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The number of Americans confirmed to have died in the Hamas attacks rose to 27, according to the White House. The Biden administration said the United States would begin providing charter flights out of Israel on Friday for Americans who had been unable to leave. Mr. Blinken was scheduled to travel on to Jordan and then to Qatar, where the government has close ties to Hamas and often acts as an intermediary in hostage situations.
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While Israelis have largely shown solidarity since the Hamas massacre, Mr. Netanyahu’s government has begun to face a backlash in some quarters from people angered by the security failure. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military chief of staff, acknowledged that the army had not fulfilled its responsibilities and said, “We will learn, we will investigate, but now is the time for war.”….