2023-12-06 01:01:09
Israel’s attack in the southern Gaza Strip will last several weeks and will probably only turn into a lower intensity operation with localized raids to hit specific Hamas targets in January 2024. This is the scenario outlined by US sources on CNN.
A member of Joe Biden’s administration, in particular, expresses concern about possible developments in the coming weeks. Washington has warned Israel “clearly” and “directly”: the defense forces (IDF) cannot use the strategies employed in the offensive in the northern Gaza Strip again and must act to minimize civilian casualties.
The words of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were explicit: Israel “can only win in an urban guerrilla war if it protects civilians.” American support is “not in question” but Israel risks turning “a tactical victory into a strategic defeat” if it does not do more to protect the population.
The US pressure, CNN observes on the basis of information from the Biden administration, develops through ‘advice’ provided behind the scenes and not with public messages. Israel’s response, in general, does not change: the target remains Hamas, which must be struck to prevent the militiamen from being able to replicate an attack like the one carried out on 7 October. This objective, according to a source referred to by the American broadcaster, cannot be achieved by the end of the year: for this reason, the United States expects “a longer campaign”.
Biden: “Stopping the truce is Hamas’s fault”
In the last few hours, President Biden reiterated Washington’s position: if the truce failed, Hamas is to blame. “Let me be clear: It was Hamas’s refusal to release the remaining young women hostages that broke the agreement and ended the lull in fighting,” she said in Boston, stressing that “these women and all others held in hostage by Hamas must be released immediately. We will not stop until we bring every one of them home, and it will be a long process.”
Recalling that he “spent hours with Qatari negotiators and others to support and extend the agreement”, Biden claimed to have “brought out more than one hundred hostages”, but Hamas’ refusal to release “civilian women, among 20 and 39 years old, blocked the truce.”
Biden defined as “shocking” the stories that continue to arrive about the sexual violence carried out by Hamas militiamen on women during the October 7 attacks. Violence that the American president invited to condemn “unequivocally and without exception” by addressing “governments, international organizations, civil society and the business world”.
“From the beginning we have had reports that Hamas used rape to terrorize women and girls during the October 7 attacks – said the American president speaking today in Boston – in recent weeks, survivors and witnesses of the attacks have shared stories horrors of unimaginable cruelty. News of women repeatedly raped, of bodies mutilated while still alive, of corpses desecrated. Hamas terrorists have inflicted so much pain and suffering on women and girls and then killed them. It is shocking.”
“Putting an end to violence against women and sexual assault has been one of the missions of my life – continued Biden – but the world cannot look the other way in front of what is happening. It is up to all of us, governments, organizations international, civil and business society, strongly condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists. Without misunderstandings, without exceptions”.
Read also
#Israel #December #win #war #scenario