After a ceasefire of just under two months, Israel did what it has announced before: resuming the Gaza war. From half past one in the night from Monday to Tuesday, the air strikes carried out in various places in the Gaza Strip. Three hours later, the Gazan Ministry of Health already reported 232 deaths as a result of the Israeli bombs.
“Israel will now perform with more and more military power against Hamas,” wrote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Early on X on Tuesday morning. According to the Israeli government, the resumption of air strikes is a reaction to Hamas’s refusal to release the remaining hostages. In turn, the militant group says that it is precisely this termination of the ceasefire to jeopardize the fate of the hostages.
Ever since the file came into force, on January 19, there was doubts about Israel’s intentions to meet it in its entirety. Phase one started energetically, with the release of groups of hostages by Hamas, allowing help to the Gaza Strip, partial withdrawal of Israeli troops and the release of Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
Full withdrawal
But Israel never seemed to commit to phase two, in which it would completely withdraw from Gaza in exchange for releasing the 59 remaining hostages, of whom 24 are probably still alive. Netanyahu repeatedly emphasized that despite the file, his government was still planning to eradicate Hamas with military means. That is why commentators have seen for some time that the conversations about phase two would run out of nothing.
That fear has become reality, now that Israel owns the conditions of the file. Netanyahu demanded immediate release of the hostages, without being able to withstand the military withdrawal of his army from Gaza for longer. In recent weeks, Israel had also blocked the supply of relief supplies and electricity to Gaza. Hamas wanted to stick to the original agreements; The group spoke in the night from Monday to Tuesday of an Israeli “coup” against the agreements of the ceasefire.
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US President Donald Trump, who played a role in the creation of the cease-fire, was informed of the Israeli air strikes just before his arrival. “Hamas could have released hostages to extend the ceasefire, but opted for refusal and war instead,” said spokesman Brian Hughes of the National Security Council of the White House The Times of Israel.
At the beginning of this month, Netanyahu supported a plan from the American Middle East envy Steve Witkoff for extension of phase one. With the Witkoff plan, Israel already completely put the agreements of the agreement with Hamas to his own hands, and then to be able to say that Hamas refuses the plan in question. Even then, Hamas said he wanted to keep to the original agreements instead of joining this change in the rules.
Tents of displaced
In the night from Monday to Tuesday, reports came from everywhere in Gaza about Israeli attacks. The cities of Khan Younis and Gaza city in particular were hit hard. According to reports in Palestinian media, bombs fell on Al-Mawasi, an area in southwestern Gaza that Israel had set as a hiding zone. A few tents of displaced persons would have caught fire.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, reporters from the AP news agency saw explosions and plumes of smoke. Ambulances brought injured to the Nasser hospital, where patients were on the ground, some screaming. A young boy sat with a bandage around his head while a care worker checked him for more injuries. A young girl cried when her bloody arm was connected.
Many of the dead are citizens. Images from Gaza show that there are dozens of children, women and the elderly among the victims. However, Israel has killed at least one high Hamas officer: according to Palestinian media, this is a substitute head of Mahmoud Abu Watfa of the Ministry of the Interior.
Coalitators
In his own country, Netanyahu has been criticized for ages by families of the hostages, who blame him for not making everything to get their loved ones and family members free. They fear that resumption of the war predicts little good for the hostages. Various family members and released hostages placed an emoji of a broken heart on social media in the night from Monday to Tuesday.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz At the beginning of this month, Einav Zangaukeer, the mother of the Matan Zangaukeer held in Gaza. She then said that Netanyahu did everything to blow up the file, and that he fulfills a promise to his ultra -right coalition partner Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister of Finance.
Smotrich could not agree with the file from the outset. Netanyahu has to keep him a friend to keep his government afloat. Earlier, Smotrich wrote on X that the blockage of relief supplies is a harbinger for the ‘gates of hell’ in Gaza and a ‘total victory over Hamas’.