The Israeli army spokesman announced that reservists would take a break from the war to prepare for prolonged combat.
Israel has warned that the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip will continue throughout 2024 after a New Year’s Eve marked by incessant strikes on the besieged Palestinian territory and rocket attacks targeting Tel-Aviv.
Nearly three months after the start of the war, sparked by a bloody attack on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement in Israel, army spokesman Daniel Hagari announced Sunday that the reservists would take a break from war in order to prepare for “additional fighting throughout this year,” he detailed.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after the October 7 attack from Gaza on its soil which left around 1,140 dead, most of them civilians. In Israeli retaliatory operations in Gaza, a total of 21,978 people, mostly women, adolescents, and children, have been killed since the start of the war, the Hamas Health Ministry announced on Monday.
Artillery fire and airstrikes for New Year’s Eve
On the ground, artillery fire and airstrikes, targeting in particular the towns of Rafah and Khan Younes (South) on New Year’s night, were reported by an AFP correspondent. According to Hamas, 15 bodies from the same family were recovered Monday from the rubble of a house bombed Sunday evening in Jabaliya, northern Gaza.
The start of the new year was also punctuated by warning sirens in several parts of Israel. “It was the first time I saw missiles, it’s terrifying, this is the life we live, it’s crazy,” said Gabriel Zemelman, 26, outside a Tel Aviv bar where he was gathered with his friends for New Year’s Eve.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas in power in Gaza, claimed responsibility for this attack in a video posted on their social networks, claiming to have fired M90 rockets in “response to the massacres of civilians”. On Monday, warning sirens sounded again in northern Israel.
A new truce is under negotiation
In the besieged Gaza Strip, where the humanitarian situation is desperate, the bombings continue unabated. The war has caused immense destruction in the small territory, placed by Israel under total siege since October 9, where famine threatens and most hospitals are out of service. On Sunday, around 120 humanitarian trucks entered the narrow strip of land.
International mediators, led by Qatar and Egypt, have been negotiating a pause in the fighting for several weeks, after a one-week truce at the end of November which allowed the release of more than 100 hostages and the entry into Gaza of a limited help. A Hamas delegation went to Cairo on Friday to convey “the response of the Palestinian factions” to an Egyptian plan providing for the release of hostages and a pause in hostilities.
The war in Gaza, which raises fears of a regional conflagration, has also reignited tensions on the border between Lebanon and Israel, an almost daily scene of exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and Lebanese Hezbollah, an Islamist movement close to Iran and which supports Hamas.
