The Israeli army says that it is resuming combat in
Gaza. That's after the I said Hamas violated the
terms of the ceasefire by firing in towards its territory
. There was no announcement from Qatar, the main
mediator in the negotiations as the deadline for the week
long truce ended for more. We're going to go
to Bloomberg's Paul Wallace, he's in Dubai. Paul
, what's the latest? Hi, so the truce
was due to end at 7 a.m. local time this
morning. That's 5 a.m. UK. There was no
announcement in the run up to it. Uh The
two sides had extended the truce a couple of times
beforehand, always at the last minute but not this
time and shortly afterwards, a few minutes after the
deadline passes, I'll put out a statement saying that
it had resumed combat operations and that its jets were
already striking Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. This
was not totally unexpected. Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu have been very, very consistent that the war
would resume. They said the ceasefire would never be
permanent and it was nothing more than a tactical cause
to try to get more hostages held by Gaza held
by Hamas released from, from Gaza. Nonetheless,
there were plenty of countries and world leaders including the
US that were hoping that this truce would hold at
least for a, for a bit longer. Ok
. So this was always going to be the case
, but we were getting away with ourselves with our
hopes. But there does seem to be a shift
in tone by the Biden administration towards increasingly stern messages
about the humanitarian toll. Take a listen to what
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had to say in Tel
Aviv yesterday, I made clear that before Israel resumes
major military operations, it must put in place humanitarian
civilian protection plans that minimize further casualties of innocent Palestinians
. That means taking more effective steps to protect the
lives of civilians including by clearly and precisely designating areas
and places in southern and central Gaza where they can
be safe and out of the line of fire.
So Paul, what impact is this gonna have on
Israel's tactics? Well, on the face of it
, there wasn't much of a change in the stance
from from the US based on Lincoln's comments yesterday,
but there is definitely a shift in tone. It's
it's pretty clear that the US is getting more and
more frustrated at the extent of the civilian deaths in
the Gaza Strip. The Health Ministry in the Hamas
run enclave is is saying that more than 15,000 people
um have died there since the war began on October
the seventh, um, interestingly blinking so alluded to
Israel, moving troops from the north of the Gaza
Strip where they're mostly concentrated at the moment to the
south. And that's something I think, um,
that the US is I is concerned about certainly based
on Brian's comments yesterday. So I think we can
say that behind the scenes, the US is increasing
pressure on Israel to rein in some of its operations
and certainly to do even more um to stop civilians
being, being harmed.