Israel Readies for All-Out War in Gaza
Israel intensified airstrikes on Gaza on Tuesday while the Israeli military prepared for a ground invasion of the Palestinian enclave that Israeli officials warned could be more destructive than any offensive there in recent history. Israeli airstrikes reduced parts of an exclusive Gaza City neighborhood to rubble as the Israeli government stepped up its reaction to this weekend’s cross-border incursion by Hamas gunmen who killed more than 900 Israelis and took more than 100 hostage. Israeli strikes have killed more than 780 people in Gaza since, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
Israel’s warnings of the coming offensive in Gaza have heightened fears of devastation among more than two million Palestinians trapped there. Israeli officials have urged Palestinians fleeing the bombing to leave the Gaza Strip entirely—an option they don’t have since the strip’s borders are sealed by both Israel and Egypt. “The scope of this is going to be bigger than before and more severe.
It’s not going to be clean…We are going to go very, very aggressively against Hamas," Israeli military spokesman Richard Hecht told reporters on Tuesday morning. “We should all change the paradigm." Israel has mobilized more than 300,000 reservists ahead of its planned assault on Gaza. The continuing airstrikes underscore a dilemma facing Israel’s government, which is trying to free the more than 100 Israelis who were taken captive during the Hamas raid over the weekend.
Hamas’s military wing on Monday threatened to execute civilian hostages if Israel continued to bomb civilian homes without warning. Israel’s heavy strikes on the strip also risk accidentally killing hostages, who are being held in unknown locations. “It’s a sensitive one," said
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