Israel security officials have signalled their readiness to embark on a ground offensive into Gaza that they say will be far more comprehensive and ferocious than any previous conflict with Hamas.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, visited troops on the Gaza border on Thursday, telling them: “You see Gaza now from a distance, you will soon see it from inside. The command will come.”
“I am tasked with leading us to victory,” Gallant told the soldiers. “We will be precise and forceful, and we will keep going until we fulfil our mission.”
Soon after Gallant’s statement, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, broadcast a video of himself with troops near the border also promising victory. At a meeting with his visiting British counterpart, Rishi Sunak, Netanyahu said: “This is our darkest hour.”
Following a Hamas attack on 7 October that killed at least 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, Israel has called up 360,000 reservists, and amassed a huge army around Gaza’s narrow coastal strip, while reinforcing defences on the northern border against the possibility of an attack from Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Joe Biden left Israel after a day of talks on Wednesday, saying that US and Israeli officials had discussed “alternatives” to a mass ground offensive into Gaza, which will almost certainly cause large-scale civilian casualties. More than 3,000 Palestinians have already died in the enclave from the past 12 days of aerial bombardment.
In a rare Oval Office speech on Thursday night, Biden explicitly backed Israel, calling for billions more in aid while seeking to link Hamas with Russian president Vladimir Putin, whose forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
“Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to annihilate a neighboring democracy,” he said.
Biden also stressed that the US could not “ignore the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace and have opportunity.”
Israeli officials are adamant that they have no choice but launch a massive assault, codenamed Operation Swords of Iron. Over the past 16 years since the militant movement seized power in Gaza, they argue, Israel has fought three significant conflicts with Hamas, but they said those campaigns were aimed at keeping Hamas in check rather than destroying it.
“The strategy was to have a longer gap every time between the different conflicts, but it failed and it cannot happen any more,” a senior Israeli security official said. “So the only conclusion is that we have to go in, we have to go in and clean it and to eliminate Hamas from the roots, not only militarily, but also economically, its administration. Everything should go away.”
“That’s the idea now and we are getting prepared for that,” the official said, and warned: “It won’t be clear cut and it won’t be as short as we would like as Israelis. It will be a prolonged campaign. It will take time.”
As apprehension spread across the region of a major war, the Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said: “All the indications are that the worst is coming. The catastrophe will have painful consequences in coming periods.”
Diplomatic efforts, Safadi added, had failed to fend off the conflict.
The threat of an all-out ground war loomed just as there was some hope of humanitarian relief reaching the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza, who have been cut off from water, food and medical supplies for the past 12 days. Under a deal brokered by Biden on his visit to Israel, the Rafah crossing on the Egypt-Gaza border was due to open on Friday to allow just 20 lorries of supplies to enter the territory. The Israeli government had said more could follow if the first delivery was not seized by Hamas.
Even this modest delivery was not entirely guaranteed. The state department said on Thursday that the new US special envoy for humanitarian issues, David Satterfield, was still trying to “negotiate the exact modalities” of the agreement, while Egyptian workers started repairing the road running through the Rafah crossing.
Aid agencies have warned that the life-saving assistance, if and when it arrived, was in danger of being too little too late in view of the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The emergencies director of the World Health Organization, Michael Ryan, said aid needed to get in “every day”, and called the initial convoy of 20 trucks a “drop in the ocean of need right now”.
On a visit to Cairo, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, said: “We need food, water, medicine and fuel now. We need it at scale and we need it to be sustained, it is not one small operation that is required.”
The threat of a ground assault on top of the constant airstrikes, now threatens to cut off even this slim lifeline to Gaza at any moment.
“There will be many injured who will lose their lives if sufficient fuel, medical supplies and life-saving aid is not delivered to hospitals in Gaza which are full of injured civilians from the continuous bombing and Israeli airstrikes,” said Riham Jafari, the communications and advocacy coordinator at ActionAid Palestine.
“Insufficient aid will cause health disasters and starvation as patients with chronic diseases and pregnant women and their infants will be unable to receive the medical care and nutrition they need, and this will endanger their lives. We know that the 20 trucks of aid currently promised is simply not enough.”
Humanitarian agencies have stockpiled life-saving supplies on the Egyptian side of the border, waiting for the crossing to open. The UN aid chief, Martin Griffiths, told the UN security council on Wednesday that the organisation sought to bring aid deliveries to Gaza back to 100 trucks a day, the level before the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Griffiths told the security council: “There is simply nowhere to go for civilians to escape the destruction and privation, both of which grow by the hour as missiles continue to fly and essential supplies, including fuel, food, medical items, water run low.
“Due to the scarcity of water, UNRWA [the UN relief agency] in some locations … is being forced to ration down to providing one litre of water per person per day. Bear in mind that the minimum by international standards should be 15 litres, and they’re getting one – and they’re the lucky ones.”
