Operation Iron Swords - Day 16 - 22 October 2023

Palestinian armed group Hamas launched thousands of missiles at Israel and deployed its militants to infiltrate Jewish settlements near the country’s border with Gaza on 07 October 2023. The 1,200 Israelis killed on the first day would be the equivalent of 36,000 Americans killed in an attack, as a proportion to Israel’s population of 9.3 million people (compared to 332 million in the USA). Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated: “Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed in one day". PM Netanyahu stated "On October 7th, Hamas murdered 1,400 Israelis. Maybe more. This is in a country of fewer than 10 million people. This would be equivalent to over 50,000 Americans murdered in a single day. That’s twenty 9/11s. That is why October 7th is another day that will live in infamy."

Israel bombarded Gaza relentlessly, killing at least 4,651 people and destroying entire neighbourhoods, according to Palestinian officials, The Gaza health ministry said over 14,245 were wounded in Israeli air raids. The Palestinian territory's health authority also reported that 1,873 of the people killed were children and 967 were women. Gaza’s Ministry of Health also reported that some 70 percent of victims of Israeli attacks are children, women and the elderly, indicating about 350 were elderly. About 1,023 people across Gaza were believed to be buried under the rubble, alive or dead, according to health authorities, including 600 children. IDF said it was holding 1,500 bodies of HAMAS terrorists. The Occupied West Bank saw 93 killed and 1,782 wounded, while Israel numbered 1,405 killed and 5,132 wounded. At least 307 Israeli soldiers had been killed since war started.

Hamas said it had 200 hostages and that 50 more were held by other armed groups in the enclave. It said more than 20 hostages had been killed by Israeli airstrikes. The number of people held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip has risen to 212, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Brigadier General Daniel Hagari said. The IDF military spokesman said earlier that the army had confirmed information about 100 missing persons.

Hamas said it won’t discuss the fate of Israeli army captives until Israel ends its “aggression” on the Gaza strip. “Our stance with regards to Israeli army captives is clear: it’s related to a (possible) exchange of prisoners, and we will not discuss it until Israel ends its aggression on Gaza and Palestinians,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan, speaking from Lebanon, told a televised presser. Hamas had suggested the hostages could be swapped for 6,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

There were about 5,200 Palestinians in Israeli prisons prior to Hamas’s attack on October 7. Since then, officials and rights groups said Israel had arrested some 4,000 labourers from Gaza who were working in Israel and is holding them in military bases. Separately, it had also arrested 1,070 other Palestinians in overnight army raids in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. since the beginning of the war, 727 wanted persons have been arrested throughout the Judea and Samaria Division and the Bekaa and Emekim Division, over 480 are associated with Hamas.

Amos Harel reported "David Meidan, who served as coordinator on abductees and missing persons in the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal, estimated over the weekend in an interview with Haaretz that Hamas has an interest in releasing the women, children and elderly people abducted. He added that the window of opportunity left for such a deal is “extremely limited. We need to end it within a week.”

A Hamas official has said “nothing is left” of the missile that struck a Gaza hospital, killing 471 people, the New York Times reported. Hamas reportedly turned down requests by the publication to review “any available evidence of the munition” that struck the site. “The missile has dissolved like salt in the water,” Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, told the New York Times in a phone interview. “It’s vaporized. Nothing is left.” Meanwhile, Salama Maroof, the head of the Hamas-run government media office, said in a text message to the publication: “Who says we’re obligated to present the remnants of every rocket that kills our people? In general, you can come and research and confirm for yourself from the evidence we possess.” However, Israel also turned down requests by the publication “to provide logs of all its military activity in the area at the time of the strike and declined to specify the video on which it based its assessment of Palestinian responsibility.” Popular anger is rising in the West Bank against the Palestinian Authority due to the events in the Gaza Strip, with solidarity demonstrations taking place over the past few days demanding the departure of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas , and the suppression of them by the Palestinian security forces. The status of the Palestinian Authority, which emerged from the Oslo Accords in 1993, and which was supposed to work to establish a Palestinian state, had reached a dead end for more than 10 years. sThirty years after the Oslo Accords, settlement construction has expanded in the West Bank, where the Israeli army regularly carries out bloody raids, and confrontations between Palestinians and settlers recur, while the Palestinian Authority clings to a negotiated solution.

The Executive Director of the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Abi Al-Aboudi, believes that the Palestinian President “bet on the international community and international legitimacy that it would oblige Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders and give the Palestinians a state.” Al-Aboudi told Agence France-Presse, "The international community has proven that it does not care about the blood and suffering of the Palestinians, and this is of course the reason for popular anger.

Before the outbreak of war, an opinion poll published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research last September stated that 58% of Palestinians expressed their support for “a return to confrontations and armed intifada,” compared to 20% who supported negotiations and 24% who supported peaceful popular resistance.

According to the poll, 78% of Palestinians demand the resignation of Abbas (88 years old), who has headed the Palestinian Authority for more than 18 years. His term ended in 2009, but he remained in office without holding elections demanded by Hamas and a large segment of the Palestinians.

A second convoy of humanitarian aid trucks began the process of crossing into Gaza. A convoy of 17 aid trucks was allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt. It was the second shipment into the territory since Israel imposed a complete siege two weeks ago. The first fuel trucks entered the Palestinian enclave since the violence unfolded two weeks ago. Six trucks with fuel to power generators at two hospitals reportedly crossed from Egypt. Hospital personnel in Gaza had reported that doctors have been performing procedures by the light of cellphones in recent days due to severe fuel shortages.

The current military operation in the Gaza Strip should be the last, said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant. "There are two components - the ability of the air force and the ground maneuver. First of all, this maneuver should be the last in Gaza for one simple reason: after it there will be no Hamas. It may take a month, two or three, but after that Hamas will disappear," he said to the command of the country's air force.

The Israel Defense Forces Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi visited troops deployed near Gaza. He suggested a ground invasion of Gaza is imminent. Halevi said Israeli forces will enter the Gaza Strip on a mission to destroy Hamas operatives and infrastructure. A spokesperson for the Israeli military also suggested major operations will soon be launched, including a ground invasion of Gaza. The spokesperson said that in preparation for the next stage of the conflict Israel plans to increase its attacks on the Hamas stronghold in northern Gaza.

Israeli aircraft struck the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, killing two Palestinians and wounding several others. The strike hit an area near al-Ansar Mosque in Jenin refugee camp, a Palestinian militant stronghold in the territory. Jenin was the focus of major Israeli military operations earlier this year. According to Israel, "terror operatives" from Hamas and Islamic Jihad who were planning attacks were killed in an air strike. The Israeli military said al-Ansar mosque "was used by the terrorists as a command center to plan the attacks and as a base for their execution."

Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Italian Prime Minister Meloni. He said : "We have to defeat this barbarism. This is a battle between the forces of civilization and really, monstrous barbarians who murdered, mutilated, raped, beheaded, burned innocent people, babies, grandmothers.... This is a test, a test of civilization and we will win. And we expect all the countries that lined up to fight ISIS, to line up and fight Hamas, because Hamas is the new ISIS."

Israeli military spokesperson Admiral Daniel Hagari said “From today, we are increasing the strikes and minimising the danger. We will increase the attacks and therefore I called on Gaza City residents to continue moving south for their safety.”

"In Gaza, IDF forces raided today near the border as part of an effort to prepare the area for an attack, and later to collect information regarding the missing and abducted. This is a first-rate national mission. During one of the raids, an IDF soldier was killed and three soldiers were wounded. Their families have been notified.

"We operate from the air and we operate strongly. First, to harm terrorists and terrorist infrastructures. We have increased our attacks and will continue to act this way until we carry out the maneuver that will be under the most optimal conditions for the IDF. We are increasing the rate and scope of attacks on Hamas' terror capital - Gaza City.

"Contrary to the reports that surfaced today, no fuel entered the strip. The documents that were distributed are of UNRA's internal fuel transportation at facilities in the Rafah area, for the benefit of UNRA and the hospitals. We monitor the movements of these fuels so that fuel does not reach Hamas. We uncovered another proof of how Hamas launches rockets near schools, hospitals, diplomatic institutions, kindergartens and more."

Palestinians said they had received renewed warnings from Israel’s military to move from north Gaza to the south of the strip, with the added warning that they could be identified as sympathisers with a “terrorist organisation” if they stayed put. “Urgent warning, to residents of Gaza. Your presence north of Wadi Gaza puts your life in danger. Whoever chooses not to leave north Gaza to the south of Wadi Gaza might be identified as an accomplice in a terrorist organisation,” the leaflet said.

Fighter jets attacked a Hezbollah infrastructure after an attempt to launch anti-tank missiles from it towards Israeli territory near Malkiyya was detected. Also, terrorists launched anti-tank missiles towards an open area in the Arab region of Aramsha in the north of the country. There were no casualties and no damage was caused.

The fighters of the Magellan unit during the last days of fighting made the first operational use of the "steel sting" means of warfare and attacked a launching position of the terrorist organization Hamas, from which launches were made towards the territory of the State of Israel.

An Israeli air strike on two of Syria’s main airports left one person dead and another injured, the Syrian state-run media outlet SANA has reported. Both airports have been put out of operation. According to SANA, citing Syrian military officials, “at about 05:25 am on Sunday, the Israeli enemy simultaneously carried out an aerial act of aggression with waves of missiles from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea west of Lattakia and from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan targeting Damascus and Aleppo international airports.”

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier delivered the speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. "Since October 7, nothing has been the same," Steinmeier said, adding that not since the Shoah had so many Jews been murdered in an attack. Steinmeier said that Israel had the right to defend itself, "And Germany stands firmly by Israel's side in this," the German president said. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attended a ceremony where a newly built synagogue was reopened, 85 years after it was destroyed by the Nazis. He warned that "antisemitic hate" did not have a place in the country, and was a criminal offense in Germany. "Our state will defend Jewish life — everywhere and at all times," the chancellor said.

The Zionist regime, acting as proxy for the US, has launched an onslaught on the Gaza Strip and is butchering women and children under the pretext of targeting Hamas, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said. Speaking at a joint press conference with Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa Naledi Pandor, held in Tehran, Amirabdollahian slammed the strikes on Gaza as a proxy war that the Israeli regime has waged on behalf of the US.

The top Iranian diplomat bemoaned the “bitter” fact that US President Joe Biden has, during a recent visit to Tel Aviv, voiced support for the Zionist regime, which is bombarding hospitals, mosques, churches and houses and killing women and children in Gaza under the pretext of attacking Hamas. It’s a great shame that Biden announced in Tel Aviv that the US would dispatch hundreds of planes and ships laden with arms to the occupied territories but has managed to coordinate plans for only 20 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter the besieged Gaza Strip, Amirabdollahian said. “This reveals that the Israeli regime has launched a proxy war against Palestinians.”

He warned that the region is currently like a “powder keg”, noting that any Israeli “miscalculation” in proceeding with the policy of genocide and forced displacement of Gazans will have “heavy and bitter consequences” for the region and the interests of warmongers. If the US and the Israeli regime do not stop their crimes against humanity immediately, there will be a possibility of anything at any moment and the region may spin out of control, he warned.

In a telephone conversation with his Luxembourgish counterpart Jean Asselborn, Amirabdollahian strongly slammed the Israeli regime’s genocidal aggression against Gaza and the regime’s new crimes, including a recent attack on a hospital in the besieged enclave and a subsequent fatal strike on a church.

“All measures taken by Palestinian resistance groups are aimed at countering the (Israeli) occupation in accordance with international law,” the Iranian minister said. “The Zionist regime’s new crimes, including… continued blockade of this territory to prevent water, food, medicines, and fuel (from reaching the people of Gaza) despite all the efforts made by the Unite Nations, prove the Zionist regime’s failure in the face of Palestinian resistance groups,” he added, Press TV reported.