Israeli forces intensifying air attacks on Gaza under expanded offensive
The Israeli army has confirmed that the intensified air strikes are part of a new expansion it is doing in the Gaza Strip, coined “Gideon’s Chariots”, saying that this is the way the captives are going to be released.
A few days ago, Netanyahu said that Gaza is going to see something it hadn’t seen in the last 19 months of war.
It comes after Israel’s security cabinet unanimously okayed and passed the plans after they were presented by the new army chief of staff, who came in some two months ago, picking up where his predecessor left off, saying that there needed to be an intensification of the war if Israel wanted to achieve its goals.
As part of this new expanding operation, Israeli forces are intensifying air strikes in an effort to move more ground troops in, starting in the north and then pushing Palestinians further south each time – first to the central part of Gaza, and then ultimately to an area in southern Gaza.
That still is a little bit unclear exactly where it’s going to be, but according to the army, they’re going to be operating in every single part of Gaza, not only for those military achievements, but also for the occupation of Gaza, for what they’re calling strategic land grabs.
US rhetoric on Gaza peace clashes with support for Israel’s intensifying military assault
Jeremy Scahill, cofounder of Drop Site News, says there is a disconnect between what is happening in Gaza and the rhetoric of the US administration about wanting to end the war in the besieged territory.
“What we’re witnessing right now on the ground in Gaza is a radical intensification of the forced starvation campaign against the Palestinians of Gaza,” Scahill told Al Jazeera.
For “more than two months, not a grain of wheat, not a pill of medicine, not a bottle of water, no fuel has entered the Gaza Strip – and the United States continues to fully support Israel in its scorched earth terror bombings of the Palestinians of Gaza,” Scahill said.
“There’s this sort of disconnect with the world of diplomacy, and with the rhetoric coming from the Trump administration,” he added.
During the Saudi-US Investment Forum in Riyadh earlier this week, Trump said his “greatest hope is to be a peacemaker and a unifier. I don’t like war.” On that same day, a series of Israeli attacks on the European Hospital in southern Gaza killed and wounded dozens of people.
