Israeli leaders announced a historic wartime government Wednesday and ramped up a massive counterattack against the Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas, while fears grew that the Jewish state could soon face the “one-two punch” of a second battlefront amid clashes with the militant outfit Hezbollah along its northern border.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his ruling Likud Party would join with former defense minister and leading opposition figure Benny Gantz of the National Unity Party to oversee the nation’s response to the Hamas assault, which left more than 1,200 Israelis dead and nearly 3,000 wounded. The wartime Cabinet, officials said, will oversee the push to eradicate Hamas.
The unity drive was striking because the deeply conservative Netanyahu government had been facing furious domestic political headwinds and massive street protests over its policies in the days before Hamas launched its terrorist campaign across a broad swath of the country over the weekend.
Mr. Netanyahu appeared determined to project resolve ahead of an expected ground push by massed Israeli forces into the densely populated Gaza enclave that Hamas has established as its stronghold. His televised address Wednesday also detailed the growing list of atrocities committed by Hamas fighters. He said children were bound and shot in the head or beheaded, people were burned alive, women were raped and soldiers were beheaded.
“Every Hamas member is a dead man,” Mr. Netanyahu said in the speech. “We will crush and destroy it.”
Hamas, believed to hold 150 Israeli and foreign hostages from the raid, continued to fire missiles from Gaza at Israeli targets and struck the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon again.
The Israeli effort is drawing stern international condemnation from some quarters as food, water and fuel supplies are cut off from the more than 2 million Palestinian residents of Gaza.
The only working power plant in Palestinian-controlled Gaza was shut down Wednesday after it ran out of fuel. Coupled with Israel’s blockade on fuel supplies moving into the area, the plant shutdown will soon leave Gaza residents without electricity as Israel continues its relentless bombing campaign against Hamas sites ahead of the ground push.
Amid the death and destruction in Gaza, the U.S. and Israel kept the focus on Hamas and the atrocities and mass violence its militants perpetrated during Saturday’s multipronged assault on Israel villages, a music festival and other sites. The White House said the number of Americans confirmed killed during that assault has risen to 22, while another 17 U.S. citizens are missing and could be among the roughly 150 hostages in Hamas custody.
The death toll on both sides has topped 2,300 and is expected to rise in the coming days.
“I think we all need to steel ourselves for the very distinct possibility that these numbers will keep increasing and that we may in fact find out that more Americans are part of the hostage pool,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. He said the U.S. is aiding Israel with hostage rescue plans as Hamas threatens to begin publicly executing those prisoners.
President Biden met with American Jewish leaders at the White House Wednesday afternoon to assure them that the U.S. stands behind Israel in its campaign to avenge the attacks.
The delicate hostage situation is a top order of business for Mr. Netanyahu and his new unity government, which also includes Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. A former chief of staff and another government minister were named as “observer” members, according to The Associated Press, and the Cabinet is expected to deal only with matters of war.
Yair Lapid, head of the largest opposition party in the Knesset, did not appear as a member of the unity Cabinet, even though Mr. Netanyahu invited him to join.
Israel pounded Gaza with more airstrikes as images emerged of entire city blocks reduced to rubble. Palestinian leaders and some humanitarian groups have blasted Israel’s shelling campaign, but Israel has insisted that its full-bore approach is warranted given the Hamas militants’ penchant for basing operations in schools, hospitals and other locations packed with innocent civilians to use as human shields.
The White House said it is working with Israel and Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza, to establish a safe-passage corridor for civilians to escape the war zone. About 250,000 people have fled their homes in Gaza, according to media reports. The establishment of a safe route out of Gaza will be at the top of the agenda this week as Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits ahead of a follow-on trip to Jordan. The Biden administration has cast his trip to Israel as a demonstration of America’s unwavering commitment to its closest Middle East ally.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a plea to allow “lifesaving” supplies of fuel, food and water into Gaza and told reporters he had been in touch with regional leaders to keep the conflict from spreading.
“I appeal to all parties — and those who have an influence over those parties — to avoid any further escalation,” Mr. Guterres said.
Two-front war?
As it gears up for a potential full-scale ground invasion of Gaza, Israel may be facing the stirrings of a second front to the north. The Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militant movement Hezbollah, widely considered much more militarily capable and better trained than Hamas, has launched attacks across the Israel-Lebanon border. Hezbollah units on Wednesday fired anti-tank guided missiles at an Israeli army post along the northern border, The Times of Israel reported, and Israel responded with a drone strike on Hezbollah outposts.
Hezbollah said the strike caused a “large number” of casualties, but Israeli media did not immediately verify those claims.
Sirens rang out across northern Israel amid reports of a hostile drone infiltration across the Israeli-Lebanon border, but Israeli media reported that those warnings were dismissed as a false alarm.
Should it join the fight, Hezbollah would bring considerable capabilities. The group boasts more than 100,000 trained fighters, though most outside estimates put the number at 25,000 to 50,000. Still, Hezbollah receives significant funding and material backing from Iran, as Hamas does, but analysts say its fighters are better trained, have more effective weapons and are more battle-tested as a ground fighting force.
A Hezbollah entrance would represent a “one-two punch” for Israel, said Michael Doran, senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute.
“The Israeli nightmare scenario is that the first punch is from Gaza and then the uppercut comes from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is much more powerful by orders of magnitude,” Mr. Doran said in an interview.
Mr. Kirby again warned Hezbollah, Iran and other potential actors to stay out of the fight. So far, U.S. officials said they have seen no evidence that Hezbollah or any other group had prior knowledge of the Hamas terrorist campaign or is prepared to fully cast its lot with the Gaza-based movement.
“I’m not seeing any indications of additional players that are going to get involved to the detriment of Israel,” Gen. Charles Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday in Brussels, where Western defense chiefs gathered to map out military aid for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a surprise visit to Brussels and joined that meeting. Afterward, he expressed his solidarity with Israel.
“We are in war, so we understand,” he told reporters. “My recommendation to the leaders, to go to Israel and … to support people, just people. I’m not speaking about any institutions. Just to support people who have been under [terrorist] attacks, people who are dying now.”
The death toll in Gaza is expected to grow much higher in the coming days. Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, has enough fuel to keep power on for only three days, officials with the group Doctors Without Borders said. The World Health Organization said fuel and other critical supplies must be allowed into the area.
“In the Gaza Strip, hospitals are running on backup generators with fuel likely to run out in the coming days. They have exhausted the supplies WHO pre-positioned before the escalation,” the group said in a statement. “The life-saving health response is now dependent on getting new supplies and fuel to health care facilities as fast as possible.”
• Mike Glenn contributed to this report.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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