Jerusalem. The Israeli army will have to “execute” the political decisions on the war in the Gaza Strip, the Minister of Defense said yesterday, at a time when discrepancies begin to emerge in their ranks before the perspective of a total occupation of the Palestinian territory.
In recent days, the Israeli press has revealed the reserves and even the opposition of the Chief of the General Staff, General Eyal Zamir, to the decision of the Benjamin Netanyahu government to expand army operations in Gaza and beat Hamas to Hamas and bring back to the hostages.
The Kan 11 public television network reported yesterday that General Zamir had warned, during a meeting, that Gaza’s total occupation would mean a “trap.”
The Israeli media, who cite officials who requested anonymity, affirm that the government plans a new escalation of operations in the Palestinian territory, even in areas where hostages and very populated areas could be retained.
“It is the right and duty of the Chief of the General Staff to express its position in the appropriate forums,” defense minister Israel Katz said Wednesday. “But after decisions are made by the political level, the army will execute them with determination and professionalism (…) until the war objectives are achieved,” he added.
According to the newspaper Maariv, General Zamir warned yesterday that “intensifying the fighting could lead to the death of the hostages that follow in life” and would also have reiterated “its opposition to a decision to completely conquer the Gaza Strip”, which Israel already occupied between 1967 and 2005.
The head of the opposition, Yair Lapid, considered that “the direction undertaken by the government will lead to the death of all hunger for hunger, blows and torture.”
Netanyahu will bring together its security cabinet to make the final decisions about the new phase of the war.
“It is necessary to totally defeat the enemy in Gaza, to free all our hostages and make sure that Gaza no longer constitutes a threat to Israel,” Netanyahu reiterated on Tuesday.
“Hunger crisis”
In the besieged Strip of Gaza, where very little humanitarian aid enters, the civil defense yesterday reported the death of 22 people in the accident of a food truck that overturned over the crowd at night.
“The truck overturned when hundreds of civilians waited food aid in the Nuseirat area, in the center of the Gaza Strip,” said Civil Defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
For his part, Hamas denounced that “despite the recent limited authorization of some help trucks, the occupant (Israel) deliberately hinders the safe step and distribution of this help.”
Caroline Willemen, a person in charge of doctors without borders, denounced the “crisis of hunger” in Gaza and insisted that the situation is “devastating.”
“We continue to see patients who shoot them, or crushed in help distribution sites,” he added on social networks.
For its part, the Israel Embassy in Mexico issued a statement to inform that it led to the UN Security Council its concern that international media did not address the news about “suffering, hunger and torture, suffered by Hamas kidnapped”.
