While i negotiations in Cairo they become more and more complicated, Israel announced that it had started “aoperation in the area of Zeitunin the central part of the Strip, to continue dismantling and eliminating terrorist infrastructures terrorist operatives in the area”. Palestinian sources reported “intense air raids and tank advances” in the northern neighborhood of Gaza City and now comes the confirmation ofarmy of Tel Aviv: the operation – explained the IDF – is conducted by the 99th division and is based on intelligence information. So far, the Army added, “they have been 25 targets hit, including military facilities, tunnels, observation posts, sniper nests.” The ground troops – he concluded – are now “securing the Zeitun area”.
All this while the pressure increases in the southern part of the Strip with the tanks of the Israeli Security Forces which have been at the gates of Rafah, ready to enter the last city in the extreme south of the Strip. The Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera made it known that four people died and 16 others were injured in a bombing Israeli strike that last night hit a residential building in the city on the border with Egypt.
Meanwhile the United States they continue to warn Israel. This time the reminder comes directly from the president Joe Biden who said he would stop American arms shipments to Israel if prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will order onelarge-scale invasion of Rafah: “I clearly said to Bibi and the war cabinet: they will not get our supportif they actually attack these population centers”: the US president said in an interview with Cnn. The president explained that for the moment, Israel’s actions have not crossed this red line, even if they have caused tension in the region. “They did not enter populated centers,” he underlined. In his exclusive interview with CnnBiden also has assuming that American bombs were used by Israel to kill civilians in Gaza: “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a result of those bombs and other ways in which they attack population centers,” the president said, referring to the 2,000 lb. bombs (approximately 1,000 kg) whose supply has already been suspended from the USA.
And the reaction from Tel Aviv was not long in coming. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, From Gileadin an interview with Israeli television news Channel 12replied that that of the occupant of the White House “was a very disappointing, even frustrating comment“. The diplomat interpreted the move as linked to political pressure on Biden from Congress, protests on US campuses and the upcoming elections: “Naturally any pressure on Israel is interpreted by our enemies as something – Erdan added – that gives them hope . There are many American Jews who voted for the president and for the Democratic Party, and now they are hesitant“.
To make the situation in the Middle East even more tense, new threats fromIran. “We didn’t set out to build one atomic bombbut if Iran’s existence is threatened, there will be no choice but to change this military doctrine of ours“said a advisor of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameneias reported by the agency Student News Network. In the early 2000s, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa banning the development of nuclear weapons, calling them “haram“, that is to say prohibited by Islam, but in 2021 the then Iranian Intelligence Minister said that Western pressure could push Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.