(Photo Credit : Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
On 26 January, Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, called for establishing an Israeli National Guard to prepare the country for a new “imminent” war with Hamas.
The Jewish supremacist minister made the statement after the Israeli army massacred 10 Palestinians during a violent raid in Jenin and its refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
Ben Gvir also called for a 40 percent pay raise for all officers and for strengthening the Israeli police force in case of a new war with Hamas.
“In such a scenario, there is only one solution: strengthening the police and establishing a national guard,” he said.
Gvir’s statement comes in light of military raids that began on the evening of 25 January and persisted into 26 January, in what is described as “one of the deadliest days” in the West Bank in recent years.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), several have been detained during the raids and transferred for interrogation by Israel’s security service. As a result of the incursions, intense clashes broke out between Israeli troops and resistance fighters, several of whom sustained bullet wounds.
An elderly woman is also among the dead, according to security officials. Eyewitnesses have referred to the situation as a “massacre.”
The national security minister made the news repeatedly in the last couple of weeks, most notably with his recent stunt to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque, barging into the holy site on 3 January accompanied by a large protection force.
Hebrew media also claimed that both Cairo and the UN told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it would be difficult to sway Hamas against responding to Ben Gvir’s storming of the holy site. Despite this, Netanyahu refrained from stopping Ben Gvir from carrying out the incursion.
In a statement released on 2 January, Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif Al-Qanoua vowed that Israel “will bear the consequences” of any escalation or threats against the Al-Aqsa Mosque and that the Palestinian people “will bravely confront … the occupation’s plans.”