A bloody and extended ground battle in the densely populated winding streets of Gaza appeared imminent Tuesday as Israel massed its forces along the border to the sealed Palestinian enclave and called up 360,000 reservists to avenge a surprise attack by the Palestinian militant group Saturday.
The civilian and military death totals from just four days of fighting neared the 2,000 mark, with Israel revealing it had suffered over 1,000 deaths and more than 3,000 wounded since Hamas fighters poured out of Gaza to terrorize towns and villages across southern Israel Saturday.
Palestinian officials said over 900 Gaza residents had been killed even as Israeli fighter jets unleashed fresh waves of bombing runs over the area. Israeli fury was fueled by the mounting stories of the violence and atrocities committed by Hamas fighters in their surprise rampage across southern Israel Saturday.
Survivor accounts and videos told of some 260 concertgoers being mowed down by gunmen at an outdoor music festival, of an entire southern Israeli farming village virtually wiped out, of children and grandparents being snatched from their families and taken to Gaza as hostages, of families being wiped out by gunfire, their bloated, mutilated bodies left to rot in the open air.
“It’s not a war or a battlefield — it’s a massacre,” Israeli Defense Forces Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv told the country’s i24NEWS channel. “You see the babies, the mother, the father, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists killed them.”
“There are moments in this life … when a pure unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world,” President Biden said from the White House. “People of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend.”
In a sign the U.S. may be being dragged deeper into the fight, Mr. Biden on Tuesday dispatched Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Israel to underscore American support and discuss military aid just as a U.S. carrier strike group led by the USS Gerald R. Ford had arrived in the eastern Mediterranean over fears the Israeli-Palestinian clash could spill over into a broader regional conflict.
The Pentagon announced it also will deploy U.S. Air Force F-15s, F-16s, and A-10s to augment existing fighter squadrons in the region.
Mr. Biden also revealed that 14 Americans were among the many foreign nationals killed in the Hamas assault, and the White House said another 20 American citizens in Israel remain unaccounted for.
Hamas officials have already threatened to use the unprecedented 150 military and civilian hostages it captured in recent days as negotiating pawns as Israel ramps up its military response.
An escalating fight
Israel’s massive mobilization suggested the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had decided on a ground incursion into the densely populated Gaza enclave to destroy once and for all the stronghold of Hamas. Despite pleas from humanitarian groups to provide a corridor for civilians in Gaza to leave, Israeli military leaders said they had erected an “iron wall” around the territory in preparation for the assault.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in an address to the troops Tuesday, announced he had “released all restraints” of the soldiers ahead of the Gaza mission.
“Hamas wanted a change in Gaza, it will change 180 degrees from what it thought,” Mr. Gallant said, according to the Times of Israel. “They will regret this moment. Gaza will never return to what it was.”
But analysts said the street fighting and urban warfare Israeli forces will face in any incursion will likely nullify much of the Israel Defense Forces’ material and numerical advantages over Hamas.
On Tuesday, Israeli airstrikes targeted a large area in Gaza’s Rimal neighborhood and hit other areas known as staging areas for past Hamas attacks. Hamas confirmed that at least two of its senior military leadership were among those killed in the bombing.
Hamas continued its own barrage of Israeli towns and military installations near the Gaza border, hitting the Israeli city of Ashkelon with a salvo on Tuesday, IDF officials say Hamas has fired some 4,500 rockets into Israel since the operation began four days ago.
Israeli officials announced separately that the bodies of roughly 1,500 Hamas militants had been recovered found on Israeli territory, apparent victims of the firefights with Israeli forces in the hours and days after Saturday’s massive surprise assault.
An expanding conflict?
But there were ominous signs the fighting won’t be restricted to Gaza.
Israeli forces have been exchanging fire with Hezbollah militants based in Lebanon, and the IDF reported Tuesday that its units had responded after being fired on from missile sites inside Syria.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah have received heavy military and financial support from Iran, and Mr. Biden again on Tuesday issued a veiled warning to Tehran not to come to the aid of Hamas in the war. U.S. officials say they have not seen to date hard evidence that Iran’s theocratic regime knew of or helped underwrite the Hamas invasion, but Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made clear in his first public comments Tuesday that Tehran continued to back its Palestinian ally.
Israel, the ayatollah told a graduation ceremony at an Iranian military academy, had suffered an “irrevocable defeat both in terms of military and intelligence” since the start of the fighting.
“We kiss the foreheads and arms of the resourceful and intelligent designers [of the operation] and the Palestinian youth, but those who say that the recent great event is the work on non-Palestinians are making miscalculations,” he said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
U.S. adversaries Russia and China were also quick to blame American policy, saying that a heavy tilt toward Israel and a neglect of Palestinian grievances over the years was the root cause of the past week’s bloodshed.
“I think that many people will agree with me that this is a vivid example of the failure of United States’ policy in the Middle East,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al-Sudani, according to the Moscow Times. The U.S. “tried to monopolize regulating [the conflict], but was unfortunately unconcerned with finding compromises acceptable for both sides.”
Despite the risks and complications, Israeli officials say they have no choice but to press ahead. U.S. and Israeli military officials said they remain in close contact. Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke by phone with his Israeli counterpart, Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi.
“Hamas terrorists will find no shelter in Gaza. We will find them wherever they are,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, said Tuesday.
— Staff writer Jeff Mordock contributed to this report, which was based in part on wire service dispatches.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
• David R. Sands can be reached at dsands@washingtontimes.com.