Progress Update: Israel Army Chief—Gaza War to Last ‘Many More Months’

Israel again pounded Gaza with air strikes and shelling on Wednesday after its armed forces chief warned the war raging with Hamas since the Oct. 7 attacks will last “many more months.”

This from Newsmax.com.

Explosion lit up the night sky over the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis—a focus of heavy urban combat since the Israeli army said it had largely gained operational control over Gaza’s north.

Witnesses said:

Heavy firefights however also raged again around Gaza City in the north, while an air strike wounded 11 people near Rafah, a far-southern city crowded with internally displaced people.

Despite reported deaths of almost 21,000 Palestinians and a reported humanitarian crisis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to keep up the campaign to destroy Hamas.

Armed forces chief Herzi Halevi said late Tuesday:

This war’s objectives are essential and not simple to achieve. Therefore, the war will continue for many more months.

The military reported:

The number of Israel soldiers killed inside Gaza has risen to 164.

Via the Red Cross, sources in the territory’s health ministry said:

Israel on Tuesday returned the bodies of 80 Palestinians killed in Gaza, after checking there were no hostages among them.

An AFP photographer witnessed a digger lowering the human remains in blue body bags into a mass grave in Rafah.

Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been suffering severe shortages of water, food, fuel, and medicines, with only limited aid entering the territory.

According to the UN:

An estimated 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas charged in an interview on Egyptian television:

The Gaza war goes beyond a catastrophe and a genocide.

The Palestinian Authority chief argued “what is happening now is much uglier than what happened” during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s creation when 760,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes.

Abbas said:

Netanyahu’s plan is to get rid of the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority.

The U.N. Security Council, in a resolution on Gaza last week, called for:

[The] safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale.

The U.N. requested the appointment of a U.N. humanitarian coordinator to oversee and verify third-country aid to Gaza, and on Tuesday Sigrid Kaag, the outgoing Dutch finance minister, was named to the post.

The resolution, which did not call for an immediate end to the fighting, effectively leaves Israel with operational oversight of aid deliveries.

In Rafah, hundreds turned up at the Abdul Salam Yassin water company carrying baskets, pulling handcarts and even pushing a wheelchair stacked with bottles to queue for clean water.

Rafah resident Amir al-Zahhar said:

This was my father’s cart. He was martyred during the war. He used it to transport and sell fish, and now we are using it to transport fresh water.

Elsewhere in the city, people split logs and stacked kindling as the lack of fuel forced them to burn wood for cooking and to keep warm.

One woman who was washing her family’s clothes by hand told AFP:

I’ve pleaded with people for water. I have absolutely nothing. I’ve borrowed everything, even the blankets, from others.

A White House official said:

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met Tuesday with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer to discuss shifting ‘to a different phase’ of the Israel-Hamas war.

The official said:

It was also meant as a chance to speak on the transition to a different phase of the war to maximize focus on high-value Hamas targets.

According to the West Bank territory’s health ministry:

Amid the Gaza war, violence has also flared across the Israel-occupied West Bank, with more than 300 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and settlers.

As reported:

An Israeli operation in a refugee camp in the north of the West Bank left six people dead early Wednesday.

The impacts of the war have reverberated across the Middle East, with armed groups backed by Israel’s arch-foe Iran escalating attacks.

Hezbollah reported:

An Israeli air strike on a Lebanon border town killed a Hezbollah fighter, with state media reporting two of his relatives were also killed.

In Syria, an Israeli strike Monday killed Iranian general Razi Moussavi, a senior commander in the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In Iraq, the U.S. military launched strikes Tuesday on pro-Iran groups which were blamed for numerous attacks on U.S. and allied forces.

Iraqi authorities stated:

The strike claimed at least one life.

Yemen’s Huthi rebels have repeatedly fired at Israel and at passing cargo ships in the Red Sea in attacks they say are in solidarity with Hamas.

The Pentagon stated:

U.S. military forces shot down more than a dozen Huthi attack drones and several missiles. No casualties or damage were reported.

Israel’s military said Tuesday:

[A fighter jet had intercepted] in the Red Sea area a hostile aerial target that was on its way to Israeli territory.

We trust the threat was eliminated.