TEL AVIV/GAZA (Reuters/AP) : A senior Hamas official said the group is open to discussions over a possible truce with Israel, having “achieved its targets,” as death toll in three-day war reached 1,500.
Moussa Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera in a phone interview that Hamas was open to “something of that sort” and “all political dialogues” when asked whether the Islamist group is willing to discuss a possible ceasefire, reported Reuters.
Meanwhile, more than 900 Israelis have died, Israel’s Army Radio reported, while about 600 Palestinians have been killed according to the Palestinian health ministry. Thousands of others have been wounded in Israel’s strikes on Gaza.
Israeli rescue service Zaka said more than 100 bodies have been recovered from a small farming community that was the scene of a hostage standoff during Hamas’ attack.
Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel has “only started” a fierce offensive in the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas’ unprecedented attack on his country.
He delivered the pronouncement in a nationally televised address as Israel pressed ahead with a third day of heavy airstrikes in Gaza.
“We have only started striking Hamas,” Netanyahu said. “What we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations.”
Echoing those remarks, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, compared the incursion by Hamas militants into his country with the “abhorrent and unspeakable” actions of Isis. He also called on world leaders to designate Hamas as a terrorist body and to support Israel “in words and in deeds”.
Two Palestinian journalists killed
An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City killed two Palestinian journalists early Tuesday, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Wafa identified the journalists as editor Saeed Al-Taweel and photographer Mohammed Sobih. The airstrike occurred close to an area housing several media offices.
Three Palestinian journalists reportedly were shot and killed while reporting in Gaza on Saturday. The Committee to Protect Journalists, citing Palestinian press freedom groups, identified two of them as photographer Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi and reporter Mohammad Jarghoun. CPJ said it confirmed that freelance reporter Mohammad El-Salhi also was killed.
Lafi worked for Ain Media, and Jarghoun reported for Smart Media, CPJ said.
Biden and Netanyahu into uneasy partnership
US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, uncomfortable allies in the best of times, will put their uneasy relationship to a further test with Israel preparing a possible ground assault on the Palestinian Gaza Strip.
After months of strain over the path forward in the Middle East, the two leaders, who have known each other for decades, have been thrust into a wartime partnership following a deadly, multipronged attack by Hamas militants from Gaza into Israel.
US relations with Israel, Washington’s main Middle East ally, have frayed in recent months with the White House echoing Israeli critics who have organised protests opposing the far-right Netanyahu government’s plan to curb Supreme Court powers.
But the two leaders’ differences go much deeper.
As president, Biden has frequently stressed support for independent Israeli and Palestinian states. Administration officials say he has raised it in every conversation with Netanyahu, while asking him to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Having returned to office in late December, Netanyahu opposes Palestinian statehood anytime soon and has approved thousands of new housing units for West Bank settlers.
Their often fraught history includes Biden’s time as vice president during Barack Obama’s presidency, when Netanyahu tried unsuccessfully to derail a 2015 US-backed Iran nuclear deal.
Hamas is backed by Iran, Israel’s regional arch-foe.
By contrast, Netanyahu had a meeting of minds with Biden’s Republican predecessor and potential 2024 opponent, Donald Trump, whose ideological embrace of the right-wing prime minister was accompanied by staunch pro-Israel policies.
Netanyahu has nonetheless hedged and avoided taking sides in the U.S. presidential campaign.
After the weekend Hamas assault – the deadliest incursion since attacks by Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur war 50 years ago – Biden set aside differences in multiple phone calls with Netanyahu, saying his team was to give Israel “everything it needs” to fight the militant group, said a senior administration official.
Biden assured Netanyahu of “rock solid” U.S. support, scrambled to bolster Israel’s military arsenal and dispatched a carrier strike group closer to Israel in a major show of support.
In his public statements Biden has yet to say Israel should show restraint in its military response or expressed U.S. concern for the Palestinian people, often part of White House reactions during previous crises.
“The president emphasized that there is no justification whatsoever for terrorism, and all countries must stand united in the face of such brutal atrocities,” the White House said of Biden’s second call to Netanyahu on Sunday.
Wider war concerns
Biden has directed his team to reach out to counterparts in the Gulf and neighboring countries to try to prevent a spiral into a wider war, especially focused on keeping the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah from opening a second front on Israel’s northern border, administration officials said.
While Biden appears to have given Netanyahu a free hand for now, the policy differences remain and he could change course if the Gaza death toll rises further and the fighting drags on, foreign policy experts predict.
Israeli TV channels said the country’s death toll from the Hamas attack had climbed to 900.
In Hamas-controlled Gaza, Israel pressed on with its most intensive retaliatory strikes ever, which have killed more than 500 people since Saturday.
“Eventually, if a conflict drags on for weeks or months, a number of US allies are going to lose patience and publicly call for it to end. At that point, you may see the U.S. back channel to Israel to try and convince Jerusalem to bring the fight to an end,” said Jonathan Panikoff, the U.S. government’s former deputy national intelligence officer for the Middle East who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank.
Biden also faces the potential challenge of securing the release of an unknown number of missing Americans who may be held by Hamas as hostages.
At home, Biden faces pressure on his right and his left, with Republican hardliners in Congress accusing him of emboldening Iran with a recent prisoner swap deal, something the president’s aides strongly deny.
“If President Biden can stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes, I hope President Biden can stand with Israel for as long as it takes,” said Republican Senator Tom Cotton, a foreign policy hawk, on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Some fellow Democrats, before the attacks, were asking Biden to scrutinize whether Israel merits the multibillion-dollar military aid package it receives each year, and calling for him to do more for the Palestinians.
The powerful pro-Israel lobby, headed by AIPAC, is a major force in US politics, often backs Netanyahu and is expected to play a role in the 2024 election.
Not in love with ‘Bibi’
Biden, 80, has called himself a “Zionist,” and he and Netanyahu, 73, have both spoken of having a long friendship.
But Biden went months without talking to Netanyahu this year. The Israeli leader was unhappy that he did not get a face-to-face meeting with Biden until Sept. 20 and it was not at the White House but in a New York hotel on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
There, Biden expressed worries about the need for stability in the West Bank and settler violence that increased tensions with Palestinians, a senior administration official said.
They appeared to find some common ground on a US push to broker a landmark agreement to open diplomatic relations between longtime foes Israel and Saudi Arabia. But the Hamas attack delivered a severe blow to that effort, leaving its future uncertain.
Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that despite Biden’s problems with Netanyahu, “the people of Israel and security of Israel are deeply ingrained in Biden’s DNA.”
“Biden is not in love with Bibi Netanyahu,” he said, using the prime minister’s nickname. “But he is in love with the state of Israel, the people of Israel and he’ll do everything he can to protect the people of Israel.”
Number of displaced people soars
As retaliatory Israeli airstrikes continue, more than 187,500 people have been displaced in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict, according to a report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, is hosting more than 137,000 people in schools across the territory. The report says airstrikes have razed 790 housing units and severely damaged 5,330 in the territory of 2.3 million people.
OCHA said damage to water, sanitation and hygiene facilities in Gaza has disrupted service for more than 400,000 people.
‘Iran and Hezbollah had no role’
A senior Hamas official on Monday said only a small number of top commanders inside Gaza knew about the wide-ranging incursion launched into Israel, but that allies like Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah “will join the battle if Gaza is subjected to a war of annihilation.”
Ali Barakeh, a member of Hamas’ exiled leadership, spoke to The Associated Press in his Beirut office as Israel bombarded Gaza and vowed a total blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory.
Barakeh said the attack was planned by around a half dozen top Hamas commanders in Gaza and that even the group’s closest allies were not informed in advance about the timing. He denied reports that Iranian security officials helped plan the attack or gave the go-ahead at a meeting last week in Beirut.
“Only a handful of Hamas commanders knew about the zero hour,” Barakeh said, adding that no one from the central command or the political bureau of Hamas was in the Lebanese capital last week.
He acknowledged that Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group have helped Hamas in the past, but said that since the 2014 Gaza war Hamas has been producing its own rockets and training its own fighters.
