Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his emergency war cabinet Sunday and vowed to “demolish Hamas” as the Jewish state’s ground invasion to root out the terror group in Gaza loomed closer.
The Israeli army – backed by a growing show of force from US warships and aircraft in the region – is winding down its positions along the Gaza border as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians seek to obey Israeli orders to evacuate ahead of a planned ground offensive.
“Hamas thought we would be demolished. We are the ones who will topple Hamas,” Netanyahu said as he convened an expanded Israeli emergency cabinet, including opposition leaders, for the first time.
The fiery rhetoric comes as the situation worsens in Gaza, where Palestinian health workers are forced to store bodies in ice cream trucks as the local death toll rises.
The week-long war has claimed more than 3,700 lives on both sides.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have died – including at least 30 Americans, according to the Israel Defense Forces and US officials. Thirteen more US citizens have yet to be found. Israel said about 150 people were taken hostage by Hamas during the siege last weekend.
Netanyahu has invited President Biden to visit Israel soon, CNN said, citing sources close to the request. The White House said there were no plans to announce, at least so far.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Sunday to “destroy Hamas” as his country launched a ground invasion to eradicate the terror group in neighboring Gaza.POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Authorities in Gaza say more than 2,450 people have been killed in Israeli counterattacks.
Many of the dead on both sides were children and women, officials said.
Israeli forensic teams working to identify the bodies of those killed say they have found signs of abuse ranging from physical torture, to rape and mutilation, military officials said.
“We have seen dismembered bodies with their arms and legs cut off, people who were decapitated, a child who was decapitated,” a reserve officer told reporters Saturday, according to Reuters.
He added that many victims showed signs of rape.
“We see that they are in a severe level of abuse. We saw the shootings, and we saw the signs that were sheer torture,” said an army dentist who worked on identification and ID as Captain Mayaan.
An injured Palestinian man and boy arrive at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after Israeli shelling Sunday. AFP via Getty Images
Hamas has denied abusing the victims of its attacks, despite numerous photographic evidence and accounts emerging in the past week.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Sunday that 300 people had been killed and another 800 wounded in Gaza in the past 24 hours alone.
The Israeli army has been urging residents of the northern half of the Gaza Strip – including more than a million residents of Gaza City – for several days to move south.
On Sunday, the IDF vowed not to target certain routes to the south for three hours in an effort to convince Palestinians to leave the north en masse – despite Hamas telling locals to ignore Israel’s message.
“Residents of Gaza City and northern Gaza, for the past few days, we have urged you to move to the southern area for your safety. We would like to inform you that the IDF will not conduct any operations along this route from 10 am to 1 pm,” the army tweeted.
Gunmen from the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, are behind a pickup truck during an anti-Israel military march in Gaza City.SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
“During this window, please take the opportunity to move south from northern Gaza. The safety of you and your family is important. Please follow our directions and head south. Rest assured, Hamas leaders have ensured their safety and that of their families.”
But some civilians who have gone to the south say they plan to return to the north because they are not safe anywhere.
Hussam Abu Safiya, an intensive care doctor at the children’s ward of Kamal Edwan hospital in northern Gaza, said the order to evacuate was almost impossible for the facility.
“In this ward, as you can see, there are children on ventilators, and now we have been asked to evacuate the hospital. Where should we move this child?” he said.
The development comes as Israel’s US ambassador, Michael Herzog, confirmed to CNN that his country has no plans to “occupy or reoccupy” Gaza once the war ends.
“We have no desire to rule the lives of more than 2 million Palestinians,” Herzog said Sunday.
The week-long war has claimed more than 3,700 lives on both sides. Reuters
Hamas continued to respond to Israel’s continued bombardment elsewhere with its own rockets Sunday.
At one point, US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his delegation had to seek shelter in Tel Aviv to await a rocket fired by Hamas.
“While in Tel Aviv today, our delegation was rushed to a shelter to wait for rockets to be sent by Hamas. It shows you what Israel has to go through,” Schumer tweeted. “We must provide Israel with the support it needs to defend itself.”
In hard-hit Ashkelon, just south of Tel Aviv, chilling new details are emerging from survivors – including a Chicago resident who revealed her sister-in-law attended three funerals in one day.
“They were delayed repeatedly because of incoming rocket attacks in Ashkelon,” Deborah, 46, told The Post about the service. “[Mourners] had to lie on the grave in the cemetery during the siren.”
The mother of two added that Hamas terrorists had used the mobile phones of some of the people they killed to send pictures of their bodies to friends of the victims.
Palestinians react to damage from an Israeli military attack on the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday. AFP via Getty Images
“Hamas butchered them, butchered them, then used their own phones to send pictures to their friends,” Deborah said.
“Their poor child is 18 years old [friend] thought they were reaching out to say they were OK, and instead he received images of their butchered bodies. Can you imagine?”
Meanwhile, additional US strike aircraft arrived in the Middle East on Sunday, US Air Combat Command revealed – days after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin promised additional support.
“This arrival strengthens the US defense posture, increases air operations throughout the Middle East, and reassures our allies and regional partners that we remain ready to protect and defend their freedoms,” a statement on social media read.
Renewed fighting on Israel’s border with Lebanon on Sunday also fueled fears the conflict could spread.
Hamas’s armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, said it fired 20 rockets from Lebanon at two Israeli settlements while Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it targeted a barracks in Israel’s Hanita with a missile, killing one civilian.
Israel said it had fired back at Lebanon in retaliation.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued his tour of the Middle East on Sunday to try and thwart further escalation.
Blinken, who will return to Israel on Monday, said the Egyptian-controlled border crossing into Gaza would be reopened and the US was working with Egypt, Israel and the United Nations to get aid through.
Hundreds of tons of aid from several countries have been waiting in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula for several days pending an agreement for safe delivery to Gaza and the transfer of some foreign passport holders through the Rafah crossing.
“We have provided, Egypt has provided a lot of material support for the people in Gaza, and Rafah will be reopened,” Blinken told reporters in Cairo after what he called a “very good conversation” with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
President Biden has ripped Hamas for committing the “worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust” while putting his own Palestinian lives on the line.
“Over 1,300 innocent lives were lost in Israel, including at least 27 Americans. Children and grandparents alike are being kidnapped, held hostage by Hamas,” Biden said during a speech Saturday at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner.
“The humanitarian crisis in Gaza: innocent Palestinian families — and most of them unrelated to Hamas — are being used as human shields.”
Additional reporting by Alex Oliveira and the Post wire
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