Israel strikes Gaza after Netanyahu accuses Hamas of breaching ceasefire | Israel
Israeli warplanes struck Gaza on Tuesday night, shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the army to launch “strong strikes” there, in the most serious test of an increasingly shaky US-brokered ceasefire.
Eyewitnesses reported that shortly after Netanyahu’s statement, Israeli planes attacked Gaza City and there were explosions in the strip. At least seven people, including two children, were killed in separate attacks in Gaza City and Khan Younis, medical sources said.
The most important difficulty of the 18-day ceasefire in Gaza was the emergence of sudden violence. US vice president JD Vance tried to downplay the conflict, saying the ceasefire would continue.
Netanyahu ordered the attack following a clash between Palestinian militants and Israeli soldiers, and anger grew after Hamas handed over body parts of a hostage that Israeli soldiers rescued two years ago. The Israeli prime minister has called for an emergency meeting to discuss what he calls Hamas ceasefire violations, amid clamor from far-right figures in the Israeli government for a return to war.
Triggered the bombardment Hamas will postpone plans to hand over the body of a hostage scheduled for Tuesday night.
Israeli media said Hamas militants attacked Israeli troops in southern Gaza with anti-tank missiles and weapons early on Tuesday. Hamas denied responsibility for the attack and said in a statement that it remained committed to the ceasefire agreement.
An Israeli military official told Reuters that the attack violated the ceasefire because it was carried out east of Israeli forces’ agreed withdrawal line.
Israeli defense minister Israel Katz said Hamas would “pay a lot of price” for attacking Israeli soldiers and failing to hand over the remains of the hostages. “Today’s attack by the Hamas terrorist organization against Israeli soldiers in Gaza crosses a clear red line for which the Israeli Armed Forces will respond with great force,” Katz said in his statement.
Two US officials told The Associated Press that Israel informed the US before launching the attack.
The ceasefire, which began on October 10, has continued until today, despite similar violent incidents in recent weeks. US officials have made clear that they do not want to return to conflict in Gaza, and last week sent a number of officials to Israel in what the Israeli media derisively called “Bibisitting”.
US vice president JD Vance said he thought the ceasefire would continue despite Tuesday’s clashes. “That doesn’t mean there won’t be little skirmishes here and there,” Vance told reporters.
Earlier Tuesday, Netanyahu accused Hamas of “blatant violation” of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and said the militant group had returned body parts of a hostage Israeli soldiers rescued two years ago.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, Hamas must return the remains of all Israeli hostages as soon as possible. In return, Israel agreed to hand over 15 Palestinian bodies for every Israeli. Hamas has yet to return 13 bodies.
Hamas said on Tuesday that the latest order to attack Gaza would further delay efforts to recover the remains of the hostages.
Hamas also accused Israel of violating the ceasefire; The Gaza media office said Israel had violated the agreement more than 80 times and killed at least 80 people since the ceasefire came into force.
The International Committee of the Red Cross on Monday escorted Hamas members into Israeli army-controlled areas of Gaza to facilitate the search for the bodies, after Donald Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum to “quickly return” the remains of dead Israeli hostages on Saturday, “otherwise other countries involved in this great peace will take action.”
In the evening, Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam brigades, announced that it had returned the body of an Israeli prisoner; The Israeli government later confirmed that it had received the body from the Red Cross.
However, on Tuesday, the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, affiliated with the Israeli Ministry of Health, said there was no match to any of the 13 missing bodies and that the remains belonged to: Ofhir TzarfatiHis body was recovered by the IDF in the Gaza Strip in December 2023, less than two months after his abduction.
The Israeli military released footage of Hamas members reburying a body in an attempt to “make a false discovery” for the ICRC, stating that the group was “trying to create a false impression about efforts to locate the bodies.” Hamas has not yet commented on the allegations.
The news enraged Israelis, with far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich attacking Hamas and calling on Netanyahu to restart the war.
“The fact that Hamas continues to play games and does not immediately transfer the bodies of our martyrs is proof that the terrorist organization is still alive,” said security minister Ben-Gvir.
“We no longer need to ‘extort Hamas’ for its violations. We need to take its existence and completely destroy it, in line with the main goal set for the ‘war of resurrection.’ [war in Gaza]he said and added: “Dear Prime Minister, that’s enough hesitation. Give the order.”
Smotrich, the finance minister, wrote a letter to Netanyahu calling for “strong responses” to Hamas’s violations and called for “the destruction of Hamas and the elimination of the threat to Israeli citizens from Gaza.”
It was unclear whether the order to attack Gaza would be accompanied by additional punitive measures. The Times of Israel said the prime minister was considering changing the yellow line dividing Gaza, bringing more territory under IDF control or stopping humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.
Hamas has so far returned the remains of 15 hostages, and the bodies of 13 are still in the area.
The militant group said it did not know the exact whereabouts of all the bodies and had lost contact with some of its units that held the captives and were reportedly killed during Israeli bombardments.
In a separate development on Tuesday, police said Israeli forces killed three Palestinians they described as members of a “terrorist cell” during a raid near the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
