Israel-Hamas war: Gaza ground operation ‘only the beginning,’ Netanyahu warns

Speaking at the press conference, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the offensive in Gaza will be “difficult and long”.

He added that Israel is fighting its “second war of independence,” as he said: “We always said never again – never again is now.”

Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant said retrieving the hostages “is not a secondary mission, this is a mission of supreme importance”.

Qatar-mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas aimed at de-escalating fighting in Gaza continued on Saturday, a source briefed on the negotiations said, even as Israel intensified its assault on the enclave.

Talks have not broken down, but are taking place at a “much slower pace” than before the escalation from Friday evening, the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of negotiations.

Gaza’s besieged people had barely any communications with the outside world on Saturday as Israeli jets dropped more bombs on the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave and military chiefs said a long-threatened ground offensive was gearing up.

Qatar has been conducting behind-the-scenes diplomacy for more than three weeks, speaking to Hamas officials and Israel to promote peace and secure the release of hostages.

Its mediation last week led to the release of two American hostages, a mother and daughter, and two elderly Israeli women.

On 13 October, one million people were ordered by Israel to evacuate northern Gaza. The move garnered international criticism with the World Health Organization calling it a “death sentence for the sick and injured” and the UN warning it was impossible to execute and would lead to a “calamitous situation”.

The call to evacuate was repeated on 21 October with leaflets dropped in the north of the strip telling residents to leave “immediately”. It prompted Amnesty International to release a statement suggesting that the order could amount to a war crime under international humanitarian law.

The leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, has offered to release all hostages held in Gaza in return for the release of all Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails.

In a statement on the group’s official website, Sinwar said: “We are ready for an immediate exchange deal that includes the release of all prisoners in the prisons of the Zionist enemy in exchange for the release of all prisoners with the resistance.”

Tanks and troops, backed by pounding airstrikes, look to create the space to press on, but face fierce clashes with Hamas at a number of locations. Kim Sengupta reports from Sderot, close to the Gaza border:

In their biggest ground operation of the war so far, Israeli forces appear to have established, after fierce fighting, bridgeheads in northern Gaza for massed troops and tanks to punch south deeper into the territory.

The attack, which began on Friday night, was much larger in scope and scale than the half-dozen previous raids, with more than a hundred warplanes carrying out pounding strikes for hours from the air while Merkava tanks and Namer armoured carriers and troops moved in on the ground.

The aim was to destroy Hamas’s defensive positions, flush out ambush points, and sweep for mines and boobytraps. There was stubborn resistance at a number of points, with prolonged clashes in the Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun area and further east near the Bureji refugee camp near the southern city of Khan Younis, a place to which people had fled after warnings to leave their homes in the north.

Efforts to secure the release of more than 200 hostages will continue even during the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday, after announcing the war had moved to a second phase.

Asked at a news conference whether contacts to release the hostages would continue even during the ground offensive, Netanyahu replied: “Yes”.

He said the idea of a swap deal of hostages for Palestinian prisoners had been discussed within the Israeli war cabinet but declined to elaborate, saying revealing any details would be counterproductive.