East Jerusalem – Israeli forces were inside the Gaza Strip on Monday, launching what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as the “next phase” of his country’s operation. The war against Hamas In response to the brutal terrorist attack they launched on October 7th. The Israeli military released a video showing soldiers entering Gaza from the north after another weekend of intense air strikes.
Health officials in the Hamas-controlled enclave said on Monday that more than three weeks of continuous Israeli artillery and rocket attacks have left more than 8,300 people dead, including more than 3,400 children. Israel insists that it only targets Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, and that the blame for all civilian casualties lies squarely with Hamas because it sparked war and hid among the civilian population in Gaza.
Israel says Hamas’s initial attack and continued rocket fire from Gaza has killed more than 1,400 people since October 7.
Determined to demonstrate his complete control over the war, Netanyahu visited some of his soldiers over the weekend, telling them they were “surrounded by a sea of love.”
A grainy IDF video showed Israeli soldiers carrying out a clean, clinical operation, as tanks rolled into Gaza as ground operations increased. The army claimed to have killed dozens of Hamas fighters who had holed up inside buildings in the densely populated strip of land – and in a vast network of tunnels dug beneath them, through which they attempted to attack the forces.
But many in Israel have a very different view of the war in their country, including Ryoma Kedem, who lost her daughter and grandchildren in the horrific terrorist attack when Hamas gunmen stormed their community near the Gaza border.
Over the weekend, Kedem joined a small protest in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, where she came to express her anger at her government and the man who leads it, Prime Minister Netanyahu.
“How long will we continue this bloodshed?” she asked. “If this man does not leave, we will not have a solution.”
Israeli government scholarship via Reuters
Although the IDF promised that war with Hamas would lead to a “new security reality” for Israelis, many in the country believe Netanyahu and his far-right leadership The coalition is an obstacle to finding the peace that has eluded the country since its founding in 1948, rather than the government’s desire to work towards achieving it.
Tensions are also rising rapidly in the larger Palestinian territories of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Four Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces in the past 24 hours, and there have been regular protests in solidarity with those trapped in Gaza.
The Health Ministry run by the Palestinian Authority, the Western-backed administration in the West Bank, announced Monday that about 330 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces since October 7.
Palestinian teenager Yazan Najjar was among those who expressed their anger over the weekend. He told CBS News that he believes the children of Gaza have been forgotten.
“It disgusts me that the world is turning its back on us and not doing anything to protect us,” he said.
As Israel bombs Gaza, there is no safe place to hide for some 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the narrow strip of land on the Mediterranean coast, running out of everything, including the basic necessities of food, water and medicine. Relief agencies say that the convoys of trucks allowed to cross into Gaza via its southern border with Egypt over the past week are woefully inadequate, and continue to call for the border to be opened more widely.
The desperation has become so intense that people broke into a UN warehouse over the weekend to grab anything they could get their hands on.
CBS News producer Marwan al-Ghoul is among those trapped in Gaza, and he drove through what remains of the northern part of Gaza City over the weekend. He saw children looking around among the rubble of a house that had just been destroyed by an Israeli air strike, searching for victims. A woman’s body appeared beneath the shattered concrete and twisted steel.
Ambulances rushed from one place to another throughout the weekend in Gaza, trying to rescue the seriously injured.
Many civilians took refuge in hospitals, which the Israeli army repeatedly ordered evacuated.
The Israeli army accuses Hamas of using Gaza hospitals as bases, placing weapons, fighters and even command centers in tunnels under buildings and in the buildings themselves – and using medics and civilians around them as human shields.
The Red Crescent says it cannot evacuate hospitals because if it tries to transfer hundreds of patients in intensive care, they will die.
As Israel escalates its war on Hamas, calls are growing from inside Gaza – and from around the world – with many calling for an immediate ceasefire on humanitarian grounds.
While UN Secretary-General António Guterres issued a personal call for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” neither the UN Security Council nor the full General Assembly, nor the US government, have gone that far.
The United States and the United Nations have urged Israel to prioritize the protection of civilians.
CBS News’ Pamela Falk at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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