Israel Defense Minister Says He Has 'Released All the Restraints'

Israeli warplanes hammered the Gaza Strip neighborhood by neighborhood Tuesday, reducing buildings to rubble and sending people scrambling to find safety in the tiny, sealed-off territory now suffering severe retaliation for the deadly weekend attack by Hamas militants. Humanitarian groups pleaded for the creation of corridors to get aid into Gaza and warned that hospitals overwhelmed with wounded people were running out of supplies. Israel has stopped entry of food, fuel, and medicines into Gaza, and the sole remaining access from Egypt shut down Tuesday after airstrikes hit near the border crossing.

The war, which has claimed at least 1,900 lives on both sides, is expected to escalate. The weekend attack that Hamas said was retribution for worsening conditions for Palestinians under Israeli occupation has inflamed Israel's determination to crush the group's hold in Gaza. New exchanges of fire over Israel's northern borders with militants in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday pointed to the risk of an expanded regional conflict. Israel stepped up its offensive on Tuesday, expanding the mobilization of reservists to 360,000, the AP reports. Israel's military said it had regained effective control over areas Hamas attacked in its south and of the Gaza border.

A looming question is whether Israel will launch a ground assault into Gaza. In a new tactic, Israel is warning civilians to evacuate neighborhood after neighborhood, and then inflicting devastation, in what could be a prelude to a ground offensive. With troops massed along the border, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday that Israel is moving toward a "full offense" against Gaza and he has "released all the restraints," the Times of Israel reports.

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"Hamas wanted a change in Gaza; it will change 180 degrees from what it thought," Gallant said. "Gaza will never go back to what it was." Four previous rounds of Israel-Hamas fighting between 2008 and 2021 all ended inconclusively, with Hamas battered but still in control. This time, Israel's government is under intense pressure from the public to topple Hamas. On Tuesday, President Biden condemned the attack on Israel as "pure unadulterated evil." (More Israel-Hamas war stories.)