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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that his military has “only started” its massive counterattack against the Hamas militants who rampaged through his country on Saturday, likening the Iran-backed Palestinian group to the Islamic State jihadi movement and saying its fighters committed terrorist acts such as tying up and executing innocent children.
In a nationally televised address shortly after Israel announced a “complete siege” of fuel, water, food and other vital supplies into Gaza, Mr. Netanyahu cast Israel’s war against the Gaza-based Palestinian group as a war for his country’s very survival, contending that Israel faces its greatest threat in decades.
The conflict could soon take an even more ominous turn. A top official of Hamas’ military wing warned Monday that the group was prepared to begin executing civilian hostages — on camera — if Israel bombed targets in Gaza without notice to civilians.
A large group of Israeli civilians, military personnel and foreign nationals, believed to number well more than 100, were taken captive by Hamas on Saturday.
“We announce that every targeting of our people who are safe in their homes without warning, we will regretfully meet with the execution of our enemy’s civilian hostages,” Abu Obeida, spokesman of the Qassam Brigades, said in a statement. He said the executions would be broadcast “in audio and video.”
SEE ALSO: Hamas attack puts new attention on terrorism at U.S. border
Mr. Netanyahu delivered his speech, which did not directly address the latest Hamas threat, shortly after U.S. officials said at least 11 Americans were among the 900 people — more than 90% of them civilians — killed by the Hamas attackers. Gaza officials said Monday that at least 700 Palestinians had died as the Netanyahu government launched a string of retaliatory attacks.
“We are on the third day of the operation,” Mr. Netanyahu said, according to English-language translations of his remarks. “We are in an operation for the home, a war to ensure our existence, a war that we will win.
“This war was imposed upon us by a despicable enemy — by beasts who celebrate the murder of women, children and the elderly,” the Israeli prime minister said.
As warplanes pounded Hamas targets in the poor, densely populated Gaza enclave, the Israeli military said it repelled a terrorist attack launched Monday from across its northern border with Lebanon, presumably from the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. That attack will deepen fears that Hezbollah or other actors could fully join the fight and draw Israel into a multifront war. U.S. officials said they were evaluating whether Iran played a role in helping Hamas plan Saturday’s attack.
The Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, activated more than 300,000 reservists since that assault, but the coming fight inside Gaza could be more complex and delicate than ever.
President Biden said the U.S. is firmly behind Israel and is working to secure the hostages’ release.
SEE ALSO: Ground war in Gaza holds huge risks, deep uncertainties for both sides
“While we are still working to confirm, we believe it is likely that American citizens may be among those being held by Hamas,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “I have directed my team to work with their Israeli counterparts on every aspect of the hostage crisis, including sharing intelligence and deploying experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery efforts.
“This is not some distant tragedy,” the president said. “The ties between Israel and the United States run deep. It is personal for so many American families who are feeling the pain of this attack as well as the scars inflicted through millennia of antisemitism and persecution of Jewish people.”
The White House was illuminated Monday night in the blue and white colors of the Israeli flag, symbolizing “the ironclad support and solidarity of the American people with the people of Israel in the wake of the barbaric terrorist attacks committed by Hamas,” the White House said.
The Associated Press reported that a volley of rockets from Gaza could be heard Monday evening hitting two neighborhoods in Jerusalem, wounding seven Israelis. Israeli warplanes bombarded Rimal, a residential and commercial district of central Gaza City, destroying, among other sites, the headquarters of the Palestinian Telecommunications Co.
Israel at war
The Israeli government announced a full-scale siege of Gaza as it ramped up its military response, with officials saying that all food, fuel and other goods will be cut off as it takes never-before-seen steps to obliterate the Hamas fighter network. The rare step of a near-total blockade could further devastate the impoverished territory, said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“The humanitarian situation in Gaza was extremely dire before these hostilities. Now, it will only deteriorate exponentially,” he said.
IDF officials said the extraordinary step was necessary.
“We are at war. We have been assaulted, attacked by a ruthless, inhumane enemy that has butchered our civilians,” IDF Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said in a video posted to social media. “I am sure … you’ll agree with me that you can’t expect us to provide electricity, water and energy to the very same enemy that has come across our border and killed our civilians.”
Col. Conricus said Israeli forces have regained complete control of all territory in southern Israel but fighting with Hamas militants continues along the Gaza border. Any Israeli actions, he said, are aimed solely at Hamas, not innocent Palestinians.
“We have no business killing civilians in Gaza,” he said.
That stands in stark contrast with the tactics of Hamas, Israeli officials said.
Mr. Netanyahu likened Hamas to the Islamic State, the radical jihadi movement that established a so-called caliphate across swaths of Iraq and Syria nearly a decade ago. The group became known for its shockingly brutal tactics and killings. Mr. Netanyahu said those kinds of unspeakable horrors were on display over the weekend when Hamas launched a well-coordinated, multipronged assault on Israel.
“The atrocities carried out by Hamas have not been seen since the atrocities of ISIS. Children bound and executed with the rest of their families, young girls and boys shot in the back, executed, and other atrocities that I will not describe here,” he said. “We have always known what Hamas is. Now the whole world knows. Hamas is ISIS.”
Witness accounts in Israel have detailed more than 250 people at a music festival in southern Israel cut down in the first hours of the Hamas incursion and a farming village where the bodies of some 100 Israeli civilian victims have been recovered.
Mr. Netanyahu said Israel’s response will alter the course of history in the region.
“We have only started striking Hamas,” he said. “What we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations.”
Mr. Netanyahu also faces an immense challenge. Permanently eradicating Hamas will be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, without a long, bloody ground operation in Gaza — one that will almost certainly result in significant Palestinian civilian deaths.
“How are they going to define victory?” Jonathan Schachter, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, asked during a virtual panel discussion on the conflict Monday.
Hamas’ taking of hostages will significantly complicate the Israeli response in the coming days. A spokesman for Hamas said its militants will start killing one civilian hostage every time Israel launches an unannounced strike that hits Palestinian civilians in their homes in Gaza. Video of the killings of hostages will be broadcast, said Abu Obeida, spokesman of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
“We declare that we will respond to any targeting of our people who are safe in their homes without warning, with the execution of our civilian hostages, and we will broadcast it with audio and video,” Mr. Obeida said, according to a translation of his message.
Iranian involvement?
Hamas’ connection to Iran is now also under the international microscope. As the terrorist group’s main financial sponsor, Iran faces questions about whether it helped plan the weekend attacks. U.S. officials said there is no firm evidence but suspicions are swirling that Hamas may have had outside help, given the scope and lethality of its operation.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied any involvement by Tehran after a Wall Street Journal report, citing senior Hamas and Hezbollah officials, said Iranian security officials helped plan the attack.
“The resolute measures taken by Palestine constitute a wholly legitimate defense against seven decades of oppressive occupation and heinous crimes committed by the illegitimate Zionist regime,” the Iranian U.N. mission said in a statement, according to the country’s state-run Fars News Agency.
“We are not involved in Palestine’s response, as it is taken solely by Palestine itself,” the statement said.
Top Iranian officials, including President Ebrahim Raisi, praised the Hamas assault. It seems a virtual certainty that Iranian money helped Hamas carry out the operation.
“There’s a long relationship between Iran and Hamas. In fact, Hamas wouldn’t be Hamas without the support that it’s gotten over many years from Iran,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC’s “This Week” program on Sunday.
“We haven’t yet seen direct evidence that Iran was behind this particular attack. … But the support over many years is clear. It’s one of the reasons that over the last couple of years we have been resolutely working against Iran’s support for terrorism, for destabilizing actions in other countries,” Mr. Blinken said.
In the first extensive remarks from a senior Hamas official, Ali Barakeh, a member of the group’s exiled leadership living in Lebanon, said the attack was planned and carried out by a small group of commanders inside Gaza. He denied reports that Iran had helped plan and equip the strike or that it had advanced knowledge about the attack.
“Only a handful of Hamas commanders knew about the zero hour,” Mr. Barakeh told AP in an interview Monday, insisting that no one from the central command or the political bureau of Hamas was in the Lebanese capital last week.
The Hamas official predicted that Hezbollah, Iran and other allies would be prepared to “join the battle if Gaza is subjected to a war of annihilation.”
• Mallory Wilson contributed to this report, which is based in part on wire service reports.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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