Hundreds are dead and thousands injured as Israel engages for a second day in urban fighting with Hamas militants in the streets of southern Israel, while Lebanon's powerful armed group Hezbollah, in a coordinated attack, exchanged artillery and rocket fire with Israel in the north. This follows Hamas’s unexpected incursion Saturday into southern Israel from Gaza.
Hamas fighters poured through Israeli towns, killing 600 people and abducting dozens more, as violence spirals out of control and threatening a major new Middle East crisis. Hamas’s multiple captives — including women, children and the elderly — would be a possible trade off for Palestinians prisoners held by Israel.
U.S. citizens are among those taken captive but there are no details about them, nor about Americans who might have been killed, according to the Israeli strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, the Associated Press reports.
Three British men are dead and other Europeans reportedly are dead or missing after Hamas’s incursion.
Hamas, a militant movement and one of the two major political parties in the Palestinian territories, took over leadership in the Gaza Strip after its electoral victory in 2006.
Since then, Gaza, a 362-square-kilometer strip of land that’s home to more than 2 million people, has been under a full Israeli-led land, sea and air blockade that prevents people and goods from freely entering or leaving the territory.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that his security Cabinet has formally declared his country at war. Netanyahu pledged Saturday to inflict an “unprecedented price” against Hamas militants, and he called for a mass mobilization of army reserves.
Israeli airstrikes battered Gaza Sunday, hitting housing blocks, tunnels, a mosque and homes of Hamas officials in Gaza, killing more than 370 people, including 20 children, as Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed "mighty vengeance for this black day," the Reuters news agency reports.
Meanwhile, Israel is dealing with coordinated attacks from the north by militant Hezbollah. The group said Sunday it had launched guided rockets and artillery onto three posts of Shebaa Farms, part of Israel’s occupied Golan Heights since 1967. The area is a few kilometers away from the Lebanese border. Hezbollah said its attack there signals its “solidarity" with the Palestinian people.
"Our history, our guns and our rockets are with you," said senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine at an event in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahieh on Beirut's outskirts, Reuters reports.
Lebanon's Hezbollah, a Muslim Shiite militant group backed by Iran, is driven by its opposition to Israel and its resistance to Western influence in the Middle East. Based in Lebanon, its extensive security apparatus, political organization, and social services network fostered its reputation as “a state within a state.”
Hezbollah’s targeting of Israeli military positions in the disputed Shebaa Farms area points to the possibility of a major new Middle East war spreading beyond blockaded Gaza.
Hamas’ unexpected incursion is reminiscent of the surprise attack by Egyptian and Syrian forces against Israel 50 years ago almost to the day, igniting the 1973 Yom Kippur War that lasted less than three weeks and ended with Israel’s victory.
The latest of the Arab Israeli wars that shaped Arab-Israeli enmity in the region, the Yom Kippur War was ignited on October 6, 1973. On the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, otherwise called the Day of Atonement, Israel was caught off guard by invading forces from Egypt and Syria.
The 19-day war that followed has been considered one of the most traumatic events for the Israeli nation that pledged never to be caught off guard again and ended with Israel’s victory against the Arab forces and a subsequent armistice on October 25, 1973.
That war also put into question Israel’s intelligence failure to offset the surprise attack, as well as the weak performance of the Israel Defense Forces during the war’s first few days, and it mobilized the Israeli people against the Golda Meir government at the time.
During its 50th anniversary, the Hamas attack again raises questions about Israel’s unpreparedness as it is dealing with domestic political issues once again.
The protest movement that has been mobilized against Netanyahu’s efforts to overhaul the country’s judicial system draws a parallel with Golda Meir’s fledgling government in 1973 and Israel’s government today.
