Netanyahu Assumes He Will Be Held Accountable After War for Failures That Enabled Hamas' Attack

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Wednesday, in a televised address to the nation, that Israel is preparing a ground invasion of Gaza, although without specifying when. Netanyahu has assured that the decision on when the Armed Forces will enter the Gaza Strip will be made by the government. "The timing of the military operation will be decided by consensus by the war cabinet," he said. On the eve of the 20th day of the state of war with the Hamas militia, the Israeli army maintains an imposing deployment ready for immediate action on the border of the Palestinian Strip, without yet launching the announced invasion to eradicate the Islamist movement that killed 1,400 Israelis and kidnapped 220 others on October 7. in the deadliest attack suffered by the Jewish state in its 75 years of existence. Netanyahu is responding to reports of alleged US pressure to delay the ground invasion of Gaza.

In his message, the Israeli head of government also encouraged civilians in his country to bring weapons and assumed that he will have to give answers about his political responsibility for the Hamas attack: "October 7 was a black day [...] Errors will be investigated to the end. Everyone will have to come up with answers, myself included. But all that will happen only at the end of the war."

Negotiations to free the hostages mediated by Qatar and fears of the conflict expanding regionally, following threats against US bases in the Middle East, are slowing the military advance. Netanyahu appears to have agreed to postpone an invasion that in the days after Oct. 7 seemed imminent. The goal would be for the U.S. to be able to protect its military facilities in Iraq and Syria with a dozen missile shields, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing Israeli and U.S. officials. The need to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid into the coastal enclave, where 2.3 million have been under a complete blockade for more than two weeks, is also behind the decision to postpone the ground offensive.

"Our goals are to eliminate Hamas' military and government capabilities and bring back the hostages," the prime minister said. "We are preparing for a ground invasion. I'm not going to specify when, how, or how much. Nor the different considerations that we make, which for the most part are not known to the public, and this is how it has to be, so that we can preserve the lives of the soldiers," he emphasized.

Despite these reports of pressure from Washington, President Joe Biden has denied that he had asked Netanyahu to delay the offensive in Gaza. Instead, he says, he had pointed out to the Israeli leader the need to do everything possible to secure the release of the kidnapped hostages. "I've told him that if it's possible to get them out safely, that's what he should do," he said. "It's his decision, but I didn't demand it from him," he added.

At a press conference in the White House Rose Garden with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Biden on Wednesday defended the need for a solution to the conflict in the Middle East that includes the establishment of two states, Israeli and Palestinian, in peaceful coexistence. In his most favorable statement to Palestinian positions since the beginning of the current crisis, he has again insisted that Israel "has a responsibility" to defend its citizens, but stressed that in doing so it must also protect innocent civilians in Gaza.

"We're going to make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself against terrorists. That's guaranteed. But you also have to remember that Hamas does not represent the vast majority of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip or anywhere else," Biden said.

"There is no going back to the situation as it was before 7 October," insisted the US president, who stressed the need for world leaders to be involved in making this solution, enshrined in the Oslo accords and official US policy, a reality, which has never been implemented on the ground. Biden has also launched a call to stop attacks by "extremist" Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank.

The US president has stressed the need for Israel's integration in the region and the normalization of ties with Arab states. Before the outbreak of the crisis, the United States was mediating to try to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Arab world's economic leader and custodian of Muslim holy sites.

Qatar Negotiations

Washington has also called on Israel to halt its plans for a ground operation in Gaza after Qatar, which is holding mediation to free 50 hostages, warned that the Israeli invasion would derail its negotiations. Qatari Prime Minister Abdulrahman al-Zani said Wednesday that he hopes to be able to announce "progress" soon. "There is progress. We have hope," he added.

In his televised address, Netanyahu also said he was doing "everything possible to bring the hostages home." He has also insisted that Gaza's civilians must move south, as the army has been saying in recent days. The area, however, is not exempt from Israeli bombardment, which is taking place throughout the Strip.

The concentration of infantry troops, tanks and artillery around the Mediterranean strip has been finalized for days. The military commanders are now just waiting for the order to advance. Meanwhile, aircraft incessantly bomb targets of the Ezedin al-Qassam militia in the densely populated territory. More than 6,500 Palestinians have been killed since the start of hostilities, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza government's health ministry. Of those, more than 2,700 are children. Israel's war with Hamas in 2014, the deadliest yet, killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, 538 of whom were children.

Some 400 children are dying every day in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israeli bombardments since the start of the war, UNICEF said Wednesday. The de facto authorities in Gaza have accused Israel of concentrating the attacks in the south of the enclave, where they say 65% of the casualties have been recorded this week, despite having ordered the evacuation of the north of the Strip on the 13th to avoid harm to the civilian population.

Humanitarian aid is barely reaching 2.3 million Gazans, of whom 1.4 million are now internally displaced, according to United Nations estimates. It only enters through the Rafah crossing, on the border with Egypt, one-twentieth of the daily necessities. Faced with a lack of fuel, essential to power electricity generators, UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, has announced that it will have to stop its operations from this Thursday. Six hospitals in the Gaza Strip have already had to suspend their activity due to lack of fuel.

The Israeli Armed Forces are ruthlessly pursuing their invasion plans, meanwhile. "We are preparing the area for a significant increase in military activity," said Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, one of the international military spokesmen. "That will happen in the second phase, that's why we're waiting for civilians to head south," he said.

In an unexpected twist after nearly three weeks of war, Hamas launched two long-range rockets from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. One in the direction of Haifa, 140 kilometers north on the Mediterranean coast, and another in the direction of Eilat, 300 kilometers to the south on the shores of the Red Sea. On the northern front, the army said it had attacked five Hezbollah units preparing incursions from Lebanon. And in the West Bank, four Palestinians were killed by Israeli drone fire in a Jenin refugee camp.

Washington increases its military deployment in the region

Since the outbreak of the crisis in the Middle East, the United States has been steadily reinforcing its military deployment, with an eye on Iran. Their motives: to serve as a deterrent force so that Iran and the militias that this regime sponsors do not intervene in the conflict and aggravate it or spread it to other countries. And to protect the troops it maintains in the area, which have already detected an escalation in attacks by pro-Rani guerrillas against their positions.

The Pentagon has counted a dozen aggressions in Syria and Iraq since the outbreak of the crisis and acknowledges its concern that such incidents could become increasingly serious and numerous.

"We have kept troops in the region since 11/<> to fight the Islamic State and others, (our presence) has nothing to do with Israel. My warning to the ayatollahs is that if you continue to harass our troops, we will respond and they will have to be prepared," Biden said in his speech to the press on Wednesday.

Washington is trying to quickly complete the deployment of elements of its advanced THAAD air defense system — similar to the one it has deployed in South Korea — and Patriot anti-missile systems. It has also sent an amphibious group led by the warship Bataan, a ship specializing in communications detection, and two aircraft carriers to the area. The Gerald Ford, the world's largest of its kind, is in the eastern Mediterranean, tasked with deterring the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah from opening a second front against Israel. The Dwight Eisenhower is en route to the Persian Gulf.

In addition, the Department of Defense has put more than 2,000 military personnel on alert for possible deployment in the Middle East, whose mission would be to participate in operations in support — not combat — of Israeli forces. It has also beefed up its deployment of fighter jets, including F-16s and F-35s.

In a speech at the U.N. Security Council, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Tuesday: "If Iran or its allies [in the region] attack personnel in our country, we will defend our people. We will defend our security quickly and vigorously."

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