“They are going to get into a mousetrap and I fear for their lives,” an Israeli veteran of the 1979 and 1982 wars in Lebanon told me yesterday afternoon, talking about what is coming for the Infantry that enters Gaza. “Time has passed,” he added, “but the challenge is the same: go house to house to eliminate terrorists without endangering civilians. It is almost impossible because Hamas, just like Hizbullah did in southern Lebanon, uses them as human shields.”
“The enemy will have placed explosives on every corner,” he explained to me as if he were telling the young soldiers who will be on the front line, “and will set up ambushes where you least expect them. It will be a tough and dirty fight, with many deaths. In these situations you have to repress your instinct for revenge and act with great cold blood. Is not easy."
Calm and cold blood is precisely what the US Administration is trying to impose on a country that is shocked and eager to use its immense military superiority to crush an armed group of no more than 20,000 men.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated in Cairo that Israel has “the obligation to defend itself,” but that “the form matters,” that the invasion must not betray “the values we share” and that “life must be preserved.” of civilians.” He then went to Amman and today he will be back in Tel Aviv.
This diplomatic effort overlaps with the incessant bombings in the north of Gaza, with the Hamas rockets that reach Tel Aviv, with the shells that Hizbullah fires from Lebanon and with Israel's air raids in Syria, where yesterday the Aleppo airport.
Every word Blinken says, every reflection on the course of the war, collides with the toll of victims, which continues to grow. The deaths in Israel now exceed 1,400 and in Gaza, 2,600. There are 3,400 Israeli and 9,600 Gazan wounded. These are very high figures, which, in just one week, exceed all those of other conflicts that have occurred in Gaza.
The risk of the war spilling over is immense, and to avoid it, Blinken jumps from capital to capital and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sends a second aircraft carrier with its battle group to the eastern Mediterranean.
There is no doubt that the United States is trying to impose its criteria on the Israeli war cabinet, which met for the first time yesterday and is ready to give the order to enter Gaza.
The US criterion is to buy time for diplomacy, impose military moderation, because there are still 700,000 people in the north of the strip, and facilitate care for displaced civilians.
Humanitarian assistance is urgent for the million evacuees who lack water, electricity, food and medicine.
The US wants to create safe zones in the south of the strip and open corridors for aid to enter, and its insistence gave results yesterday: Israel restored the water supply to the southern towns, where the evacuated people are concentrated.
This achievement will save lives and demonstrates how the US is getting Israel to moderate the siege. The Hebrew Government conditioned the restoration of supplies on the release of the hostages. None have been released, but the risk of thousands of people, as the UN anticipates, dying of thirst and hunger is too high and would put Israel in an even more difficult diplomatic position.
United Nations trucks from Egypt would have entered Gaza yesterday, but it was not possible. Israel requires that they register in case they carry camouflaged weapons, something that is not feasible because there are no instruments at the Rafah border to scan the cargo.
Blinken works on humanitarian aid, puts pressure on Egypt and Qatar so that Hamas releases the most vulnerable hostages, redoubles the military presence to deter Iran and Hizbullah, tries to save Israel's ties with Jordan and the Gulf monarchies and, in addition, tries to bring order to the top of Israeli power. More difficult, impossible.
Prime Minister Beniamin Netanyahu is not making things easier because he has not established himself as the leader capable of comforting and uniting the country. On the contrary, he still puts his political future above the general interest.
No one here ignores the fact that he did not visit the wounded or that he did not speak with the families of the hostages until he learned that the American president, Joe Biden, had held a 90-minute conference with them.
Netanyahu knows that when the war is over, a commission of inquiry will determine his responsibilities and that he can go to jail for negligence. Ministers and military chiefs will also be investigated and could also be convicted of criminal offences.
It is a sword of Damocles that conditions every meeting of the General Staff and the war cabinet, where generals and ministers measure their words and ask their lawyers for advice.
The prime minister's office has complained to the Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence service, because Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's chief of staff videotaped a meeting that was supposed to be confidential. Gallant has not trusted Netanyahu since he tried to oust him in March for warning that security was a disaster.
The lack of trust between members of the Government hinders decision-making and does not help to reduce the tension that is palpable on the street and, above all, in the West Bank.
In the last week alone, at least 55 Palestinians have been killed and another 1,100 injured there by gunfire from the army or settlers, who act with total impunity.
Residents of At-Tuwani, near Hebron, recorded how a settler shot an unarmed man at point-blank range. He was accompanied by a soldier who did nothing to prevent it. The video has gone viral in the occupied territories. It is just one example of the violence that has spread since Netanyahu entrusted the management of the West Bank to the Minister of Finance and leader of the settlers, the messianic Bezalel Smotrich.
Burning the territories now instead of calming them does not seem to be going to favor the military operation against Hamas in Gaza. On the contrary, it is an added difficulty to the many that Israel and, in turn, also the United States face.
