The war in Gaza will likely continue through at least the end of the year, an Israeli official warned Wednesday, seeming to dismiss the idea that fighting would end after the military offensive against Hamas in Rafah. <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said the year 2024 has been \u201cdefined as a year of combat\u201d by Israel\u2019s war cabinet. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are now in the fifth month of 2024, which means we expect another seven months of fighting to deepen our achievements and achieve our goal of destroying the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad,\u201d Hanegbi said. <\/p>\n
The comments came <\/strong>as Israeli tanks \u2013 seen Tuesday in central Rafah for the first time since the operation began earlier this month \u2013 continued to probe the southern Gaza city on Wednesday, despite mounting global pressure to stop the offensive. <\/p>\n The Israeli government had previously signaled that entering Rafah would be the final stage of its war against Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking some 250 people hostage. In response, Israel launched a devastating offensive in Gaza <\/strong>which has killed more than 36,000 people, according to Palestinian officials. <\/p>\n Despite the prospect earlier this month of striking a ceasefire-for-hostages deal with Hamas, the more extreme wing of Israel\u2019s war cabinet had urged that the Rafah offensive go ahead, arguing that destroying the group was more urgent and of greater importance than returning the hostages believed to still be alive in Gaza. <\/p>\n But Hanegbi\u2019s comments suggest that the Rafah operation may not mark the end of hostilities, raising questions about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s plans to wind down Israel\u2019s campaign and his plans for the post-war governance of Gaza. <\/p>\n While Netanyahu has portrayed Rafah as Hamas\u2019 \u201clast bastion\u201d his forces have been operating in northern areas the military previously said it dismantled the militants\u2019 command structure. <\/p>\n In a radio interview on the Israeli station Reshet Bet, Hanegbi said \u201cit was honestly stated in the first days of presenting the plans to the cabinet that the war would be long.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYou need to have patience and know how to stand strong. This resilience is what has allowed this nation to survive for 75 years, and even for 3,000 years before that. Just don\u2019t use a stopwatch on ourselves or set ultimatums,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Israel is pressing ahead with its military offensive in the face of growing global outrage, after an Israeli airstrike on Sunday killed at least 45 people and injured 200 others in Rafah at a camp for displaced people, which Israel had designated as a safe zone. <\/p>\n Video from the Tal al-Sultan camp showed scenes of horror: charred bodies being pulled from the rubble, a man holding the headless body of a child, fire raging from tents in the background. <\/p>\n The strike came days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to \u201cimmediately halt\u201d its offensive in Rafah, or any actions \u201cwhich may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.\u201d <\/p>\n The ICJ said the humanitarian situation in Rafah can now be described as \u201cdisastrous\u201d and could worsen still if Israel\u2019s operation in the city continues. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The war in Gaza will likely continue through at least the end of the year, an Israeli official warned Wednesday, seeming to dismiss the idea that fighting would end after the military offensive against Hamas in Rafah. Israel\u2019s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said the year 2024 has been \u201cdefined as a year of combat\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3902","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}