War in Middle East: Army speaker: Preparations for taking Gaza started

According to its spokesman Effie Defrin, the Israeli army started taking the city of Gaza with “preparatory measures”. Israeli troops already held the outskirts of the largest city in the Gaza Strip, he said in front of journalists in the evening. The army started the “next phase of the war”.

According to his office, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously ordered the city of Gaza to take faster than previously planned. The “schedule for the conquest of the last terrorist strongholds and the defeat of the Hamas” should be shortened, his office announced without naming details.

The Israeli security cabinet agreed to take Gaza in early August. So far it is unclear when the soil offensive should begin. Media reported that the Gaza residents should be evacuated in refugee camps in the center of the sealed Gaza Strip until the beginning of October.

Around one million people live in Gaza City

It is feared that the offensive will worsen the already catastrophic situation of the civilian population in the sealed -off Gaza Strip, where a total of around two million Palestinians live. According to the Israeli military plan, the civilians in the city of Gaza – according to estimates around one million people – are to go further in tent quarters in the south of the coastal strip.

Defrin now said that the military would warn the civilian population and enable their evacuation to keep the danger to people as low as possible. In doing so, civilians should stay away from the active combat areas. As part of the preparations for the next phase, the chief of staff instructed around 60,000 reserve boards for the early September.

Military spokesman: Hamas is now weakened guerrilla organization

Defrin said in the evening that Hamas was no longer the same today as before Israeli military operation. “From a military terrorist organization, it has developed into a battered and weakened guerrilla organization,” said the army spokesman. The Israeli military will further exacerbate the damage for Hamas in Gaza, “a stronghold of the state and military terrorist of the terrorist organization” and end the dependence of the population on Hamas.

The trigger of the Gaza War was the attack by Hamas and other Islamist groups on Israel on October 7, 2023. In the unprecedented massacre, the terrorists killed around 1,200 people and more than 250 more than hostages in the Gaza Strip. Since then, according to the Palestinian Health Authority, more than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed. The number does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Almost all residents of the coastal strip have become inlands since the beginning of the war almost two years ago.