The tanks positioned themselves there, below an undulation of the dusty terrain. The gentle slope of the relief makes the Israeli Merkava invisible from the Gaza Strip, located a handful of kilometers to the west. Friday October 13, the enclave is the target towards which they open fire with their 120 millimeter cannons. Between shots, the erected steel gun carriages pivot calmly. It would be enough to climb on the hillock to see, on the other side, the shells raining down on the buildings of the territory, so close, where a constant deluge of Israeli fire falls from the sky and from the earth.
In the south of the Jewish state, on the outskirts of Gaza, the Israeli military deployment which could make it possible to invade the enclave becomes more imposing every day, a week after the Hamas attack from the area on October 7. This struck civilian and military targets, causing the death of 1,300 Israelis, in addition to the taking of at least 120 hostages.
On Saturday morning, a twenty-four-hour ultimatum addressed the day before to more than a million residents of northern Gaza, ordering them to flee their living areas to take refuge in the South, was due to expire, leaving the threat of a large-scale action, in addition to the bombings already carried out by planes, artillery or drones which led to the death of more than 1,900 people.
Are Israeli officials about to take the plunge by ordering a massive entry of their troops into Gaza? This is not yet established. On Friday evening, Daniel Hagari, the spokesman for the Israeli army, declared that certain elements had carried out “in the last twenty-four hours” to commando-type infiltration operations in the territory in order to search for “terrorists”, “armament”and to carry out actions related to “missing people”.
More conventional force
Even if the exact shape that the Israeli operation in Gaza could take is not known, preparations for a ground intervention are very advanced. Along the strip of land, under blockade since 2007, groups of armored vehicles numbering in the dozens are becoming more and more numerous. They are found in places sheltered from possible rocket fire from the enclave, in the open countryside or near infrastructure deserted. A fairly large area around Gaza has been emptied of its inhabitants. In the middle of this fragmented system, in various places, giant engineering bulldozers are busy tamping down the earth on the edges of the roads in order to open traffic lanes for the tanks. Most of these concentrations of armed forces appear to be completing their deployment process, awaiting the next phase.
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