The ‘green light to go’: Israeli defence minister tells troops they will soon see Gaza ‘from the inside’ as thousands of soldiers are stationed along the border – sparking fears ground invasion is imminent
- Yoav Gallant told Israeli troops to ‘get organised’ be ready’ to move into Gaza
An Israeli minister has told troops massing at the border that they will soon see Gaza ‘from the inside’ sparking fears a ground invasion is imminent.
Yoav Gallant, who is the country’s defence minister, told Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers to ‘get organised, be ready’ to move into the Palestinian territory.
Another cabinet minister has claimed that the military has been given the ‘green light’ to invade the territory whenever it is ready, warning that the tunnels dug by Hamas would become the ‘world’s biggest cemetery’.
Thousands of Israeli troops have gathered at the border with Gaza since pushing back Hamas terrorists that brutally massacred hundreds of people in a cross-border attack on October 7.
Since then the Jewish state has pummelled Gaza with airstrikes, killing thousands of people, and has warned people living in the north of the territory to leave for their own safety.
Tensions have been ramped up further in recent days after a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds of people, with Israel and Palestinian terror groups blaming each other for the devastation.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told troops to ‘get organised, be ready’ to move into Gaza
Thousands of Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) troops have gathered at the border with the Palestinian territory
Israeli soldiers patrol an area near the border with Gaza on Thursday, as fears mount over a ground invasion
Israeli air strikes have continued in Gaza for the 13th day after Hamas launched its surprise attack on October 7
An Israeli tank moves in an undisclosed location in the south of the country close to the border with Gaza
The violence has shown no signs of abating though, with Israel continuing to launch air strikes across Gaza, including in the south where civilians were told to take refuge.
And the fiery rhetoric has continued, with Defence Minister Gallant warning a ground invasion could happen at any time in a meeting with Israeli infantry on Thursday.
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‘Whoever sees Gaza from afar now, will see it from the inside… I promise you,’ he told soldiers who had massed just outside the border with the territory.
‘It might take a week, a month, two months until we destroy them,’ he added, referring to Hamas.
It came the same day that the country’s Economy Minister, Nir Barakat, told ABC News the military had the ‘green light’ to invade.
The cabinet minister added that the miles of tunnels built by Hamas under the territory would become the ‘world’s biggest cemetary’.
‘We shall do all efforts to bring our hostages, to bring our hostages [back] alive…’ he said, but the ‘first and last priority’ is destroying Hamas.
The explosion at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday saw a venomous blame game erupt between Israel and Palestinian terrorist groups.
Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) claimed an Israeli air strike was responsible for the blast, which health officials claim killed hundreds of people.
But Israel has insisted it is not responsible, instead laying the blame at the door of PIJ, which it said had caused it with a misfired rocket.
In the aftermath there were pro-Palestine protests across the Arab world, Europe and the United States, while Israel’s enemies vowed revenge.
As the violence to the south has raged, there has also been shooting at the border with Lebanon between the IDF and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.
In Gaza itself, authorities are still working out logistics for a delivery of aid into Gaza from Egypt, overwhelmed hospitals tried to stretch out ebbing medical supplies and fuel for diesel generators to keep the equipment running.
Doctors in darkened wards stitched wounds by mobile phone light.
A doctor at the largest hospital said staff were using vinegar from the corner shop to treat infected wounds.
Israel’s consent for Egypt to let in food, water and medicine provided the first possibility for an opening in its sealing off of the territory.
Many among Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are down to one meal a day and drinking dirty water.
Israeli soldiers patrol near the Gaza border on Thursday as fears mount over an imminent ground invasion
Smoke plumes into the air after an Israeli missile strikes in the Rafah, in the southern part of Gaza
An Israeli military Apache helicopter flies near the border with Lebanon on Thursday as tensions continue to rise
An Israeli F-15 fighter jet flies through the air close to the border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday
Palestinian emergency services look through the rubble of a building in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, after it was destroyed in an Israeli air strike
Israel did not list fuel as a permitted item, but a senior Egyptian security official said Egypt was negotiating for the entry of fuel for hospitals.
With the Egypt-Gaza border crossing in Rafah still closed, the already dire conditions at Gaza’s second-largest hospital deteriorated further, said Dr Mohammed Qandeel, of Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis.
Power was shut off in most departments to save it for intensive care and other vital functions, and staff members were using mobile phones for light.
At least 80 wounded civilians and 12 dead were brought into the hospital on Thursday morning after witnesses said a strike hit a residential building in Khan Younis.
Doctors had no choice but to leave two of the incoming to die because there were no ventilators left, Dr Qandeel said.
‘We can’t save more lives if this keeps happening, meaning more children … more women will die,’ he said.
The Gaza Health Ministry pleaded with petrol stations to give whatever fuel they had left to hospitals.
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The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, gave some of its little remaining fuel stores to hospitals, according to spokesperson Juliette Touma.
The agency’s donation to Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest, would ‘keep us going for another few hours’, hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia told The Associated Press.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 3,785 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, the majority of them women, children and older adults.
Nearly 12,500 others were injured, and another 1,300 people were believed buried under the rubble, health authorities said.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly civilians killed during Hamas’s deadly incursion on October 7.
Roughly 200 others were abducted.
The Israeli military said on Thursday it had notified the families of 203 captives.
More than one million Palestinians, roughly half of Gaza’s population, have fled their homes in Gaza City and other places in the northern part of the territory since Israel told them to evacuate.
Most have crowded into UN-run schools-turned-shelters or the homes of relatives.
The deal to get aid into Gaza through Rafah, the territory’s only connection to Egypt, remained fragile.
Israel said the supplies could only go to civilians in southern Gaza and that it would ‘thwart’ any diversions by Hamas.
US President Joe Biden said the deliveries ‘will end’ if Hamas takes any aid.
Egypt must still repair the road across the border, which Israeli air strikes cratered in a no-man’s land and on the Gaza side.
No equipment had arrived to start the repair work as of Thursday afternoon, the Hamas spokesman for the crossing, Wael Abu Omar, said.
More than 200 trucks and some 3,000 tons of aid were positioned at or near Rafah, according to Khalid Zayed, the head of the Red Crescent for North Sinai.
Doctors stand outside al-Shifa hospital surrounded by a sea of dead children brought in from nearby al-Ahli hospital after the explosion
US officials said the first deliveries were likely to take place on Friday at the earliest, with an initial group of 20 trucks.
The Egyptian security official also said the first trucks were expected to go in on Friday.
Asked if foreigners and dual nationals seeking to leave would be let out of Gaza, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry told Al-Arabiya TV: ‘As long as the crossing is operating normally and the (crossing) facility has been repaired.’
Israel had previously said it would let nothing into Gaza until Hamas freed the hostages taken from Israel.
Relatives of some of the captives reacted with fury to the aid announcement.
‘Children, infants, women, soldiers, men, and elderly, some with serious illnesses, wounded and shot, are held underground like animals,’ the Hostage and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.
But ‘the Israeli government pampers the murderers and kidnappers’.
The Israeli military reported on Thursday that it killed a top Palestinian militant in Rafah and hit hundreds of targets across Gaza, including militant tunnel shafts, intelligence infrastructure and command centres.
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It said it also hit dozens of mortar-launching posts, most of them immediately after they were used to fire shells at Israel.
Palestinians have launched barrages of rockets at Israel since the fighting began.
Israel has said it is attacking Hamas militants wherever they may be in Gaza.
It has accused the group’s leaders and fighters of taking shelter among the civilian population, leaving Palestinians feeling in constant danger.
After Thursday’s strikes in Khan Younis, sirens wailed as emergency crews rushed to rescue survivors from the crushed apartment building.
Many residents were believed trapped under twisted bed frames, broken furniture and cement chunks.
A small, soot-covered child, dangling in the arms of a rescue worker, was taken out of a damaged building.
Gaza’s Hamas-led government said several bakeries in the territory were hit in the overnight strikes, making it even harder for residents to get food.
Violence was also escalating in the West Bank, where Israel carried out a rare air strike on Thursday, targeting militants in the Nur Shams refugee camp.
Israeli troops raided the camp the previous night and were still battling Palestinian fighters inside.
Six Palestinians were killed in the camp, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, and the Israeli military said the strike killed militants.
Ten Israeli officers were wounded when fighters threw explosives at the troops.
More than 74 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the war started.
Hezbollah militants in Lebanon on Thursday said they fired missiles into northern Israel, hitting a kibbutz.
The Israeli military said no-one was injured and responded with shelling on border areas in Lebanon.
Hamas militants also fired 30 rockets from southern Lebanon towards Israeli towns.
Violence on the border comes amid fears the Hamas-Israel conflict could spread across the region.
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