2023-10-10 10:24:52
Israeli soldiers patrol a road near the border fence with Gaza, October 10, 2023. JACK GUEZ / AFP
Israel is a nation in arms. Some 300,000 reservists responded, Tuesday October 10, to the mobilization “the fastest ever”, announced the day before by the army. Reached by telephone, reserve generals, former officers of the Southern Command and the Gaza Brigade, hung up politely one by one, confident that they had put on the uniform, that they were already in the vicinity of the enclave or that they were going there, and that they were now subjected to silence.
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All join forces concentrated around Gaza, while the army completed on Monday the evacuation of Israeli residents from this area. She assures that no more Hamas members are there, after three days spent tracking them down. On Tuesday morning, the army claimed that 1,500 bodies of Hamas fighters had been found on the Israeli side. On Sunday, a commando still managed to emerge from the north of the enclave. Now the army intends to impose a total siege on Gaza: “No electricity, no food, no gasoline. We fight human animals and we act accordingly”says Defense Minister Yoav Galant.
In fact, the electricity was already cut off, and nothing has entered the enclave since Palestinian commandos captured and damaged the regular crossing points in the early hours of the assault on October 7. The death toll from their attack continues to rise: on Tuesday it stood at 900 dead. The scale of the carnage, which astounds Israel, prompts Mr. Galant to barely distinguish, in his expression, these ” animals “ Hamas fighters from Gaza’s 2 million Palestinian residents. The massive campaign of Israeli strikes, accelerated since Sunday, has left nearly 700 dead.
Civilization versus barbarism
The minister’s vocabulary helps prepare Israeli opinion for the next phases of the war, which could be long and devastating. The army has been hammering home the same message for two days: “Hamas is the[organisation] Islamic State. » Mr. Netanyahu repeated this sentence on Monday. He draws an equivalence between the massacres committed by the Palestinian movement and those perpetrated by the jihadists who brought terror to Europe, from their strongholds in Iraq and Syria, almost a decade ago.
Mr. Netanyahu makes this new conflict in Gaza a war of civilization against barbarism, “which will change the Middle East”. “As the forces of civilization have defeated the[organisation] Islamic State, the forces of civilization must support Israel to defeat Hamas », he believes. He seeks to ensure the strongest possible support abroad, despite civilian losses which the Jewish state recognizes. that they will be disproportionate and that he hopes will forever be dissuasive.
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