Hezbollah and Houthis threaten Israel as IDF fights in Gaza
A month after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, Israeli troops are already in the "heart of Gaza City", where they are destroying tunnels and fighting members of the Islamist group. In the last few hours, during an overnight air strike, the army and the intelligence agency Shit Bet announced the death of Muhsin Abu Zina, "one of the leaders of weapons production" of Hamas specialising in the manufacture of "strategic weapons and rockets".
Footage released today by the IDF showing Israeli Ground Troops alongside Armored Vehicles and Tanks having Captured a Block of Al-Rasheed Street along the Coast of Gaza City, meaning that IDF Ground Units have Penetrated much Deeper into the West of the City and the Northern… pic.twitter.com/nztCbFYDWi
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) November 7, 2023
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) also seized weapons from a warehouse "near a university" and discovered a missile launcher in an educational centre. "All this is further evidence of the Hamas terrorist organisation's cynical use of facilities and civilians as human shields," denounced Israeli military authorities, who also claimed to have located a tunnel in an amusement park.
Israel's main objective in Gaza is to rescue the more than 200 hostages and completely destroy Hamas as an organisation. This requires Israeli forces to take control of the main Hamas headquarters which, according to Jerusalem, is located under Al-Shifa hospital, the largest health centre in Gaza and where the IDF is already advancing.
In recent days, Israel has launched air strikes near the hospital complex. In one such attack on an ambulance, 15 people were killed and 60 others wounded, according to the Hamas-controlled enclave's health ministry. Israel, for its part, said the vehicle "was being used by a Hamas terrorist cell".
As fighting intensifies in the north, leaving more than 30 Israeli soldiers dead, the IDF has announced the reopening of a humanitarian corridor for civilians in the north to move safely to the south, as "time is running out to evacuate", warns Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee in Arabic.
🚨For the 4th day in a row, the @IDF opened an evacuation corridor for civilians in northern Gaza to move southwards. Since 10:00 am today, thousands of Gazans passed through.
— COGAT (@cogatonline) November 8, 2023
The corridor will be open until 14:00 so that Gazans in the north can evacuate for their safety. pic.twitter.com/VTin4VduPW
Israel has accused Hamas of trying to sabotage the humanitarian corridor by firing a missile at civilians. Meanwhile, Gaza's Interior Ministry has urged residents to stay in their homes in the north and not to share photographs of civilians moving south with white flags, as they are considered "Israeli propaganda".
According to UN figures, some 5,000 people took advantage of the humanitarian corridor from Salah al-Din to the south that was open for four hours. The UN, like many other international leaders, has also again insisted on a ceasefire in order to alleviate the severe humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
IDF says it has uncovered more tunnels in the northern Gaza Strip, near a ferris wheel and a university.
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) November 7, 2023
The IDF says paratroopers operating in northern Gaza found a tunnel adjacent to an old amusement park.
Another paratroopers team operating with forces of the 7th Armored… pic.twitter.com/2G4cg51EsV
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the Palestinian enclave "is becoming a graveyard for children", noting the high number of journalists and aid workers killed.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry has updated the death toll since the war began to more than 10,000, more than 70 per cent of whom are women, children and the elderly.
Guterres also condemned that "Hamas and other militants use civilians as human shields and continue to fire rockets indiscriminately into Israel". Alarm bells have been ringing again recently on the Gaza border, as well as in southern and central Israel as the 1,400 victims who were killed by Hamas a month ago were remembered.
The IDF says its troops eliminated overnight dozens of terrorists "in prolonged battles" and destroyed terror infrastructure throughout the Gaza Strip. This included a combined land, sea, and air strike on an anti-tank cell planning to attack IDF forces. pic.twitter.com/odf86CbxOR
— Ariel Oseran (@ariel_oseran) November 2, 2023
Gaza's future after the war
What has become known as Israel's 9/11 has been a turning point in the country's security strategy. For this reason, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel will have "overall security responsibility" in the Gaza Strip "for an indefinite period" after the war against Hamas ends.
"When we don't have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we could not imagine," he said during an interview with ABC News.
💥Interesting to find out whether Israeli PM Netanyahu shared his views about the future "security responsibility" for Gaza with the White House before going on @ABC pic.twitter.com/5t9wkLU1H4
— Noga Tarnopolsky נגה טרנופולסקי نوغا ترنوبولسكي💙 (@NTarnopolsky) November 6, 2023
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meanwhile, believes that Israel should not "reoccupy Gaza", although he has conceded that there may be a "transition period". Israel completely left the Gaza Strip in August 2005. A year later, in 2006, Hamas won elections in the territory, resulting in a blockade by Israel and Egypt.
Blinken said that Gaza should have "Palestinian governance" after the defeat of Hamas. "Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority would be a path to a two-state solution," he said at a press conference following the G7 meeting in Tokyo, where he supported Israel's right to defend itself but also called for "humanitarian pauses".
More residents from North Gaza are moving towards the south. Residents from East Shati RC, which has been relentlessly bombed, sought refuge at Al-Shifa, which is already sheltering tens of thousands. Finding no available space there, they made the decision to head further south. pic.twitter.com/RmVi0YlYUT
— Younis Tirawi | يونس (@ytirawi) November 8, 2023
Hezbollah and the Houthis, both backed by Iran, are raising the tone against Israel
In addition to Gaza, the situation is particularly sensitive on the Israel-Lebanon border. Since the start of the war, violence in the area has left 60 Hizbollah fighters and 10 Lebanese civilians dead, according to Lebanese authorities, while at least seven Israeli soldiers and one civilian have been killed in northern Israel.
This escalation between Israeli forces and the Lebanese Shiite group is the most significant since the 2006 war between the two. However, tensions could continue to rise. Ali Fayyad, a senior Hezbollah official, warned on Tuesday that the Lebanese group would respond "doubly" to any Israeli attack on civilians after an attack in southern Lebanon that killed three minors and an elderly man.
IDF footage shows massive explosion at a Hezbollah ammunition depot after the IDF attack last night in southern Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/BNvoIuMugZ
— Clash Report (@clashreport) November 8, 2023
Israel has repeatedly claimed it is attacking Hizbollah targets in response to missiles fired at towns in northern Israel, from which thousands of people have had to evacuate.
For their part, Yemen's Houthis have claimed a new drone strike against Israel earlier this week. Last week, Iranian-backed Yemeni rebels claimed another drone strike and confirmed that they had carried out three previous drone and ballistic missile attacks.
An Israeli 🇮🇱 F-35 shot down an Iranian terror regime 🇮🇷 Houthis “Quds-4” cruise missile over the Red Sea. @IAFsite @IDF pic.twitter.com/41C1SNPpQ7
— Avi Kaner ابراهيم אבי (@AviKaner) November 2, 2023
The Houthis claim to be acting in collaboration with the so-called "Axis of Resistance" against Israel, which includes Tehran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
