Israel will restart its bombing of Gaza, moving from North to South Gaza as soon as the release of hostages ends, Israeli diplomats said here, but gave no details as to where they would move more than two million Palestinians now taking shelter in South Gaza. Briefing the media about IDF operations thus far, a security official, who asked not to be named, claimed that “100%” of Hamas posts overground in Northern Gaza have been “cleared” as Israel launched airstrikes followed by a ground invasion over the past month.
Speaking at the same briefing, Israel’s Ambassador to India Naor Gilon expressed the hope again that India would ban Hamas and designate it as a terror group. While New Delhi has called the October 7 attacks by Hamas as “terrorist acts”, the Modi government has not banned the group itself. The briefing by Israeli officials was held on the same day as a press meet by all Arab country ambassadors in the capital that called for solidarity with Palestine.
“The minute we finish the ceasefire, we are going back to the mission,” Mr. Gilon told reporters, “Once they stop releasing hostages, we will go back to what we were planning to do all along, to get rid of Hamas”. He added that the ceasefire effected last week, brokered by Qatar and the United States had been “imposed” on Israel as a condition for the return of Israeli hostages that had been taken by Hamas militants during the October 7 attacks in which 1,200 Israelis were killed. Israel has agreed to stopping the bombardment of Gaza, where more than 13,000 people, a third of them children, are believed to have been killed in the past few weeks. The Israeli government has also agreed to releasing Palestinian prisoners, many of them minors, and has thus far released triple the numbers of prisoners as that of Israeli hostages that Hamas has released, and allowed trucks carrying food, fuel and aid to enter South Gaza.
