Prime Minister Netanyahu meets with Defence Minister Gallant and military chiefs at IDF command in Tel-Aviv on Oct 8, 2023<\/p>\n
Israel is engaged in a \u201cmulti-front war\u201d, its defence minister has said, hinting at military operations across the Middle East as the war in Gaza showed new signs of a dangerous regional escalation.<\/p>\n
Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Yoav Gallant said Israel was \u201ccoming under attack from seven theatres: Gaza, Lebanon<\/a>, Syria, Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the West Bank], Iraq, Yemen and Iran. We have already responded and taken action in six of these theatres,\u201d he told the Knesset, without specifying.<\/p>\n Iran-allied militias around the Middle East have attacked Israel and US military installations across the region since Hamas launched its devastating attack on southern Israel on 7 October, killing 1,140 people and taking up to 250 hostage.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s retaliatory war on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has already become one of the most destructive conflicts of the 21st century<\/a>, with estimates suggesting more than 20,600 people have been killed, 50,000 injured, and 85% of the Palestinian territory\u2019s 2.3 million people forced to flee their homes.<\/p>\n Fighting in the 41km by 12km territory has intensified since a seven-day ceasefire collapsed at the beginning of December. Israeli forces continued to bombard refugee camps in the centre of the strip for a fourth day on Tuesday, in an apparent sign of its promised broadening of the offensive.<\/p>\n Gallant\u2019s comments on Tuesday came as the war in Gaza threatened to spillover outside the borders ofIsrael and the Palestinian territories<\/a>. Earlier in the day, Egypt said a drone was shot down near the Red Sea resort city of Dahab, the second such occurrence in a month.<\/p>\n The drone\u2019s origin was not immediately clear, but Yemen\u2019s Houthi rebels, which are aligned to Iran, have disrupted global trade in the Red Sea with attacks on international vessels, and have launched drones and missiles towards Israel.<\/p>\n Explosions in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen were also reported on Tuesday. On Saturday, the US defence department explicitly blamed Iran<\/a> for the first time for a drone attack targeting a chemical tanker in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n The Dahab incident occurred a day after an Israeli airstrike outside the Syrian capital of Damascus killed a senior general in Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards<\/a>. An Iranian statement on national television said Israel would \u201cpay for this crime\u201d.<\/p>\n In Iraq, the US bombed three sites associated with Kata\u2019ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia it blamed for a drone strike that wounded three American soldiers based in the northern city of Erbil. The airstrikes drew sharp condemnation from the Iraqi government.<\/p>\n Separately, Israel and the powerful Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah have traded near-daily volleys of missiles, airstrikes and shelling across the frontier since 7 October. About 150 people in Lebanon have been killed, including 17 civilians, and 11 in Israel, including four civilians. Behind the scenes, the US is leading intense negotiations to try to de-escalate the hostilities on the Blue Line that separates the two countries, where the risk of miscalculation setting off a regional war is highest.<\/p>\n Despite increasing international outcry over the humanitarian disaster in Gaza<\/a>, including growing criticism from Israel\u2019s most important ally, the US, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said Israel would push on until achieving \u201ccomplete victory\u201d over Hamas. He reiterated during a visit to Israeli troops in Gaza on Monday that the fight \u201cisn\u2019t close to finished\u201d<\/p>\n