One year of war | Israel will continue the fight, Netanyahu swears

(Jerusalem) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday to continue the fight against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, described as a “sacred mission”, on the occasion of the 1^er anniversary of the deadliest attack in Israeli history.

While Israel was meditating, the Palestinian Islamist movements Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah fired salvos of rockets against Israeli territory and the Israeli army carried out new strikes in Gaza and Lebanon.

Hezbollah claimed to have targeted the main Israeli military intelligence base, Glilot, near Tel Aviv.

In Tel Aviv, an evening ceremony with families and relatives of people killed or kidnapped during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 took place after an open memorial day in Reim (South), where at least 370 people had been killed. “It’s sad to see all these young people killed, as if they had been chosen by an evil lottery,” said Odette Keilin Harlev, mother of Hila Keilin, killed in Réïm.

“We have defined the goals of the war and we are achieving them: to overthrow Hamas, to bring all the hostages home, the living and the dead. This is a sacred mission, we will not stop until we have accomplished it,” Netanyahu said in a televised message.

“We will continue to fight,” he added after earlier asserting that Israel was changing “the reality” on the ground so that there would be no more attacks like that of October 7.

This attack resulted in the death of 1,206 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures, including hostages who died in captivity. Of the 251 people kidnapped during the attack, 97 are still hostages in Gaza, 34 of whom were declared dead by the army.

“War of attrition”

In the other camp, the spokesperson for the armed wing of Hamas, Abou Obeida, promised a “long, painful and costly battle of attrition” for Israel, after describing the situation of the hostages as “very difficult”.

In the devastated and besieged Gaza Strip, the Israeli army continued its offensive by claiming to have struck the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah (Center), which it said housed Hamas command centers.

In Lebanon, the Israeli army again intensively bombed Hezbollah strongholds, the southern suburbs of Beirut and southern Lebanon, and said it wanted to target the “coastal zone” in the south of the country.

It also indicated that it had sent reinforcements to support two divisions already deployed in the south of the country, where it launched a land offensive on September 30.

Promising to continue fighting Israeli “aggression,” Hezbollah called Israel a “cancerous” entity that must be “eliminated.”

Houthi fire on Israel

The war in Gaza and Lebanon is accompanied by an escalation between Israel and Iran, ally of Hamas and Hezbollah, while Israel threatened to retaliate after the firing of 200 missiles on 1^er October against its territory.

The head of US Central Command, General Erik Kurilla, spoke in Israel about the “continuing threat posed by Iran” and reiterated the United States’ “unwavering commitment” to the Israeli ally.

Iran called the October 7 attack a “turning point in the history” of the Palestinian struggle against Israel.

And the Houthi rebels of Yemen, also supported by Tehran, claimed responsibility for missile and drone strikes on Israel, which announced the “interception” of a missile.

A year after the start of a devastating Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, claimed that the Palestinian territory had been transformed into a “graveyard” and spoke of the “unspeakable suffering” of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

“A dark year”

“It was a dark year. We lost many relatives, friends, our homes and our source of income,” says Ramzi Baker, displaced from Gaza to Deir al-Balah.

Entire sectors of the Gaza Strip have been reduced to ruins, almost all of its 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced and at least 41,909 Palestinians have been killed there, the majority civilians, according to ministry data. of Health of the Hamas government, deemed reliable by the UN.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza entered southern Israel, using explosives and bulldozers to breach the barrier surrounding Gaza, killing indiscriminately on kibbutzim, military bases and at the festival site. Nova.

Western leaders have repeatedly emphasized Israel’s right to defend itself, while affirming the Palestinian right to statehood and the need to end Israel’s decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories.

“Until Victory”

After weakening Hamas, the Israeli army moved most of its operations to Lebanon in mid-September, against Hezbollah, which opened a front on October 8 against Israel in support of Hamas.

Since October 2023, more than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, including more than a thousand since the intensification of Israeli bombings on September 23, according to authorities. More than a million people have been displaced, according to the same source.

Israel has promised to fight Hezbollah until “victory”, in order to allow the return to the northern border regions of the 60,000 inhabitants displaced by the incessant rocket fire of the Lebanese movement.