The Israel Army issued recruitment orders to reservists, to mobilize tens of thousands of troops in the face of an expansion of their offensive against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, Israeli media reported on Saturday.
Several military correspondents, including that of the Radio of the Army, said that these reservists will be sent to replace those who are currently already mobilized in active soldiers throughout the country and in occupied West Bank, and that these can be sent to fight in the Gaza Strip.
The AFP asked about a military spokesman, who neither confirmed or denied these information, but people close to AFP journalists have already received their mobilization order.
According to Israeli public television, the security cabinet will meet Sunday to approve the expansion of the military offensive in Gaza.
After two months of truce with Hamas in Gaza and several weeks of unsuccessful negotiations, Israel resumed on March 18 its bombings, followed by land operations in the Palestinian territory governed by Hamas.
– Israel -Catar verbal cruce –
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu argues that military pressure is the only way to force Hamas to free the hostages he still retains.
On Saturday night, the Israeli president criticized Qatar, Emirate who, together with Egypt, intervenes as a mediator for an eventual truce with Hamas, and urged him to “abandon his double game and double language.”
“Israel will win this legitimate war with legitimate means,” said Netanyahu, in an apparent reference at the end of the negotiations.
His statements caused the energetic rejection of the Catarí government.
Qatar “Firmly rejects the incendiary statements (…) which are contrary to the most elementary rules of political and moral responsibility,” wrote in X the spokesman of the Emirate’s Foreign Ministry, Majed al Ansari.
Hours before, Hamas’s armed arm published the video of a Russian-Israeli hostage injured and detained in the Gaza Strip.
In the shot, released by the Ezedin al Qasam brigades and whose authenticity the AFP could not confirm, a lying man appears, with his head and left arm covered with bandages with brown spots.
The man, who speaks Hebrew with Russian accent, is presented as the “prisoner number 24” and says he was injured in an Israeli bombing.
The war between Israel and Hamas exploded after the unprecedented attack of the Islamist movement in southern Israel of October 7, 2023, which left 1,218 dead, most civilians, according to an AFP count, based on Israeli official figures.
In addition, Hamas’s combatants took 251 people hostage that day, 58 of which are still captive in Gaza, including 34 who, according to the Israeli army, died.
The Gaza Ministry of Health, controlled by the Hamas government, said on Saturday that at least 2,396 people have died since Israel resumed their offensive in Gaza in March, which raises the total number of fatalities since the beginning of war to 52,495 mostly civilians, figures that the UN considers reliable.
Meanwhile, thousands of Israelis protested on Saturday in front of the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv to demand actions that allow the liberation of hostages.
The Government assured that the objective of the expanded operation is to achieve the release of the captives in the hands of Hamas, but critics warn that it rather puts them in mortal danger.
The forum of the Families of the Hostages said in a statement that “any escalation in the fighting will put the hostages (…) in immediate danger.”
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